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Topic: TAK 1.0.2 Final (Read 31961 times) previous topic - next topic
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TAK 1.0.2 Final

The final release of TAK 1.0.2 ((T)om's lossless (A)udio (K)ompressor).

Download links removed. TAK 1.0.3 is out.

1. TAK Applications 1.0.2

containing the GUI and command line compressor:

2. TAK Winamp plugin 1.0.6 (Updated 2007-11-12)

containing the playback plugin for Winamp:

3. TAK SDK 1.0.4

containing the SDK documenation and the decoding library dll:

4. TAK Decoding library 1.0.5

containing only the decoding library dll which is part of the SDK. It's provided for end users using third-party applications utilizing the library, who want to update the library to the current version:


History

2007-11-12
Replaced the Winamp plugin 1.0.5 with 1.0.6, which fixes some compatibility issues with Winamp 5.5: "If I have any tak file queued in the playlist when I quit winamp, the next time I try to start winamp it instantly crashes. The only way for me to start winamp again is to delete the local playlist files from winamp's directory."


Comments and discussion should go into this thread: TAK 1.0.2

What's new in the Applications

New preset configuration:

- Most of the presets have been modified to speed them up and to reduce the decoding requirements. Usually they are more than 50 percent faster while loosing only about 0.3 percent of compression efficiency.
- The fastest preset TURBO (-p0) is now using 8 instead of 16 predictors and compresses (on average) nevertheless better than FLAC -8 (with 12 predictors). The reduced cpu requirements should guarantee that this preset can be decoded on any hardware device capable to playback FLAC -8 (maybe even -5).
- Because of the insertion of the new TURBO preset we now have 6 instead of 5 presets: -p0 to -p5. The strongest setting is now -p5m and it's called INSANE.
- The maximum frame size (samples per channel) is now limited as follows: 4096 for TURBO and FAST, 8192 for NORMAL, HIGH and EXTRA, 16384 for INSANE. This way the specification of the memory requirements of the decoder is more accurate.

New Features:

- You can now manually set the frame size to 512, 1024 or 2048 samples to match the frame size of the LossyWav/LossyFlac preprocessor developed by the Hydrogenaudio.org-Members 2Bdecided, Nick C. and halb27. But caution: Frame sizes of 512, 1024 and 2048 are not backwards compatible and can not be decoded by TAK applications and libraries prior to V1.0.2!
- The Prefilter can now be disabled by the user.

Improvements:

- The strongest compression mode -p5m (aka -p4m in V1.0.1) is now encoding 62 percent faster on my system and is on average loosing only 0.01 percent compression!
- Tiny overall speed improvements.
- Better compression of some low passed files and files coming from lossy sources (especially low and medium constant bitrate). Up to more than 1 % for presets Turbo, Fast and Normal, up to 0.3 precent for High, Extra and Insane. This comes without any significant speed penality.
- Modification of the file read function of the decoder. It's now reading the file in smaller blocks. This will hopefully increase the decoding speed of high resolution audio, which seems to be suffering from the io system of V1.0.1.

Fixed:

- The file info function was rounding the file duration to the nearest second. Now it's correctly displaying the fraction with 2 decimal places. (30.53 instead of 36.00 seconds).
- When compressing 96 Khz audio with preset HIGH, preset EXTRA has been stored into the encoder meta data. This had no effect on the decoding or data integrity, but the file info function and media players will display the wrong preset.

What's new in the encoder/decoder library (affecting the applications, the decoding library and the Winamp plugin):

New features:

- Support for frame sizes of 512, 1024 and 2048 samples which have been introduced with TAK V1.0.2.
- Support for the additional preset INSANE introduced with TAK V1.0.2.

Improvements:

- The memory requirements have been reduced. Depending on the preset the encoder is now using 2 to 3 times, the encoder 1.5 to 2.5 times less memory. This may slightly improve the speed on some cpus. But i did it primarily to prepare later hardware implementations.
- Considerable parts of the source code have been partially rewritten or simplified. It's in no way important for the current users (well, like any modification it might even introduce bugs...), but it's part of the preparation of a later source code release. It's only one more step into this direction, there is still much more to do. As always, i can't tell you a release date.

Bug fixes:

- The decoder is expected to process any (damaged) data without any problems. But i have found and corrected two cases, where the decoder could crash. The chance for this was less than 1 : 1000 (for damaged files only!).
- In one place i used an invalid flag combination in a call of Windows' VirtualFree().

What's new in the SDK (compared to 1.0.3):

Interface changes (Adaptions for TAK 1.0.2):

- Added constants for the new frame sizes (Ttak_str_FrameSizeTypes): tak_FrameSizeType_512 to tak_FrameSizeType_12288.
- Added constant for the new preset INSANE (TtakPresets): tak_Preset_Insane.

Interface Compatibility:

- The decoder functions tak_SSD_GetStreamInfo and tak_SSD_GetEncoderInfo may now return the new values for the frame size (Ttak_str_FrameSizeTypes) and the encoder preset/profile (TtakPresets) which have been introduced with TAK 1.0.2 (see "Interface changes").

Comparison

The beta thread contains a link to Synthetic Souls's updated compressor comparison.

Plans for V1.0.3

The next version will most probably implement piping support for encoding.