Re: Supported Audio Converter Formats
Re: Supported Audio Converter Formats
- Subject: Re: Supported Audio Converter Formats
- From: David Duncan <email@hidden>
- Date: Sat, 7 Oct 2006 09:39:48 -0400
On Oct 7, 2006, at 05:23 AM, Craig Bakalian wrote:
I am beginning to feel like the audio file formats is like a
refrigerator in a college dorm room. There are too many types and
formats of types which are stale and growing fuzzy bacteria on them
from just sitting there. I mean, I think they are just sitting
there. Why do we need so many types and formats. So, a developer
like myself has got to pick up this 6 month old hot dog and decide
if it is trash or food. The "audio world leaders" need to clean up
the refrigerator, if there are any "audio world leaders".
Part of it is legacy. Imagine if you got a brand new fridge and it
told you "you can't put that hamburger in here" (just to extend your
metaphor). The hamburger might be perfectly fine (thankfully you kept
it in deep freeze!) but now you have to throw it away because you
can't use it anymore.
However, I'll tell you that the page listing file formats is actually
pretty tame. Most of the complexity shown is in the number of data
formats supported by those file types, as you've already seen. There
are FAR more obscure formats out there -- I've written decoders for
some of them in the past =). There are also a lot of specialty
formats for synthesized music that aren't even covered there.
You know when it is getting bad when things like this are written,
"The Core Audio Format acts as a wrapper around numerous formats,
but this does not necessarily imply that the system can convert
between them. For example, a CAF file that wraps MP3 data can be
converted to an MP3 data stream, but may not be convertible to
other data formats."
Actually, that statement is simply saying that the CAF format can
store MP3 data, however it may not be possible to get anything but
MP3 data from a CAF file so storing that data, but this would be due
to the proper decoders and encoders being unavailable. An example of
this is trying to obtain MP3 data from an arbitrary data stream,
since there is by default no MP3 encoder on the system, you can't
obtain MP3 data from an arbitrary format.
Now, having said all that I can't say that life wouldn't be better if
a single file format (that could store data of any type and was
extensible) took over the world. As of yet however, at last two such
attempts at a format of that nature (AIFF & WAVE) have been showing
their age for a while, so I don't expect to ever see support for
multiple file formats going away.
--
Reality is what, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.
Failure is not an option. It is a privilege reserved for those who try.
David Duncan
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