General aspects of the format

TAK
	File:TAK-logo.gif
	lossless audio compression.
Developer(s)	Thomas Becker
Release	TBC
Type	Lossless
Recommended encoder	TAK v1.0
Website	Homepage (german)

The TAK (Tom's lossless Audio Kompressor) is a lossless audio compressor, promises compression performance similar to Monkey's Audio "High" and decompression speed similar to FLAC! While the basic format is ready and safe to use, many features like internal tagging, playback support for other players are yet to be implemented.

Features

high compression
fast compression and decompression speed
Streaming support
Error tolerance
- single bit error will never affect more than 250 ms
Error detection
- each frame protected by a 24-bit checksum (CRC)

Pros

Fast decompression speed (par with FLAC / WavPack)
Good compression levels (par with Monkey's Audio Extra High)
Error Robustness
Fast Seeking

Cons

Closed Source (at the moment)
No hardware support
Very limited software support (Only winamp plugin at the moment, SDK to be released soon)
Tagging is not mature at the moment (ApeV2 Tags can be added using Foosion's decoder stubble, but the decoder can't read the tags)
No Hybrid / Lossy Mode

Hardware and software that support TAK

Hardware

non

Software

Winamp Plugin 0.0.3 Alpha here

Recommended Settings

best compression - mode "Extra" with "Maximum" appended
fastest compression - mode "Turbo"
use ApeV2 tagging (will be used as internal tagging)

Future Features

Plugins for other applications, such as Winamp or foobar2000 (a Winamp plugin is already close to completion).
An SDK for other developers.
Internal tagging.
Unicode support.
Piping support.
MD5 audio checksums for verification and identification.
A german version.
Embedded cue sheets.
Embedded cover art.
Multi channel audio.

Frequently asked questions

non

External links