TAK: Difference between revisions

Tom's lossless Audio Kompressor
	lossless audio compression.
Developer(s)	Thomas Becker
Release	TBC
Type	Lossless
Recommended encoder	TAK v2.2.0
Website	ThBeck.de/Tak/Tak.html (german)

VisualWikitext

Revision as of 17:38, 4 June 2013

Description

Tom's lossless Audio Kompressor (TAK) is a lossless audio compressor which promises compression performance similar to Monkey's Audio “High” and decompression speed similar to FLAC.

Features

High compression
Fast compression and decompression speed
Streaming support (necessary headers for decompressing the audio are written to the stream every 2 seconds)
Piping support for encoding
Error tolerance (single bit error will never affect more than 250 ms)
Error detection (each frame protected by a 24-bit checksum (CRC))
High-resolution (up to 24-bit/channel) audio support
Support for up to 192 Khz Audio
Seeking without seek table
APEv2 tags supported at end of file

Pros

Fast encoding speed (while providing better compression TAK encodes as fast as FLAC -8 in TAK's “Insane” and several times faster in “Turbo” mode)
Fast decompression speed (on par with FLAC / WavPack)
Good compression levels (on par with Monkey's Audio High)
Error Robustness
Fast Seeking

Cons

Closed Source
No hardware support
Limited software support

Software support

Windows

TAK 2.2.0 (official release which consists of a CLI, a GUI, a Winamp plugin, the SDK, and the decoding library)
TAK Decoder 0.4.4 - plugin for foobar2000 (supports tagging and ReplayGain)
dsfTAKSource 0.0.1.6 - DirectShow source filter to play TAK-files in Windows Media Player, Media Player Classic - Home Cinema, Zoom Player and alike
DC-Bass Source Mod 1.5.0.0 - DirectShow source filter to play TAK-files, amongst many others, in any DirectShow media player (as mentioned above)
Mp3tag – universal tag editor with support for TAK
shntool (since version 3.0.6)

Linux

ffmpeg can demux, decode and parse TAK since commit d7a473926504e2acfa6ae3bead0938e1f4e03441:[1]. First official release that supports TAK decoding is 1.1.
The GUI program (Tak.exe) and the command-line program (Takc.exe) work with Wine.
caudec is a command-line tool that can encode and decode TAK files, using the official binary (Takc.exe) with Wine (see: installation instructions). Caudec can also test file integrity and compute (and tag) Replaygain data. While it hasn't been tested at the time of writing, it is possible that TAK support in caudec works on OS X as well.

Hardware support

None

Recommended Settings

Default compression: “-p2” (formerly Normal) is the most attractive setting, providing an excellent compromise between compression and encoding speed. (At compression levels close to Monkey's Audio High (<0.4% difference), it is able to encode more quickly.)

takc -e [input file]

Highest compression: “-pMax” (same as -p4m) (This will create files which are comparable in size to file created using Monkey's Audio High. Decompression speed is comparable to WavPack Normal.)

takc -e -pMax [input file]

Fastest compression: “-p0” (This will create files which are comparable in size to Monkey's Audio Fast or WavPack High. Decompression speed is comparable to FLAC 0.)

takc -e -p0 [input file]

TAK Performance Graph

Graph showing encoding and decoding rate against compression, using data from Synthetic Soul's test on TAK 1.0.4
(see External Links)

Using TAK

TAK with foobar2000

Copy the takc.exe to your foobar2000 directory
Go to File → Preferences → Tools → Converter
Set it up as shown:

Screenshot of foobar 0.9.5 Converter settings for TAK 1.0.3

Note: replace -p2 with the desired compression level.

TAK introduced encoding from STDIN in version 1.0.3, eliminating the need for a temporary file and greatly improving overall compression time. If you are using an earlier version of TAK use the following command line instead:

-e -p2 %s %d

Use APEv2 tagging (will be used as internal tagging)

TAK with EAC

Please read the wiki guide, which details how to create TAK files with EAC.

Future Features

Unicode support
MD5 audio checksums for verification and identification
A German version
Embedded cue sheets
Embedded cover art
Multichannel audio

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the codec safe for use?: Yes. To check, convert a WAVE to TAK and back and compare the two (or use foobar's bitcompare tool).
Why should I use TAK?: TAK offers high compression ratios with great decoding rates.
What can I compress with TAK?: TAK 1.0 can compress any integer-format (up to 24 bits per channel) PCM RIFF WAVE file (.wav). Piping support as of v1.0.3 is implemented, so converting lossless files to WAV first is not necessary.
What about hardware support?: None at the moment. Although, -p0, -p1 and -p2 are the candidates for hardware playback.
Will the source be opened?: Yes, TAK will be open-source, as soon as the code is ported to C or C++ and documented. However, Thomas has mentioned that he would like to improve the codec before opening the source.

External Links

thbeck.de/Tak/Tak.html – Official Website (german)
TAK 2.2.0 Discussion Thread on HA (english)
synthetic-soul.co.uk/comparison/lossless – Comparison with Other Codecs (by Synthetic Soul)
flac.sourceforge.net/comparison.html – An Updated Comparison (from FLAC Homepage)

@@ Line 49: / Line 49: @@
 === Linux ===
 * ffmpeg can demux, decode and parse TAK since commit d7a473926504e2acfa6ae3bead0938e1f4e03441:[http://git.videolan.org/?p=ffmpeg.git;a=commit;h=d7a473926504e2acfa6ae3bead0938e1f4e03441]. First official release that supports TAK decoding is 1.1.
+* The GUI program (Tak.exe) and the command-line program (Takc.exe) work with [http://www.winehq.org/ Wine].
+* [http://caudec.outpost.fr caudec] is a command-line tool that can encode and decode TAK files, using the official binary (Takc.exe) with Wine (see: [http://caudec.outpost.fr/documentation/windowscodecs/ installation instructions]). Caudec can also test file integrity and compute (and tag) Replaygain data. While it hasn't been tested at the time of writing, it is possible that TAK support in caudec works on OS X as well.
 == Hardware support ==