Audio Lossless Coding
| Developed by | ISO |
|---|---|
| Type of format | Audio compression format |
| Contained by | MP4 |
| Standard | ISO/IEC 14496-3 |
MPEG-4 Audio Lossless Coding, also known as MPEG-4 ALS, is an extension to the MPEG-4 Part 3 audio standard to allow lossless audio compression. The extension was finalized in December 2005 and published as ISO/IEC 14496-3:2005/Amd 2:2006 in 2006. The latest description of MPEG-4 ALS was published as subpart 11 of the MPEG-4 Audio standard (ISO/IEC 14496-3:2009) (4th edition) in August 2009.
MPEG-4 ALS combines together a short-term predictor and a long term predictor. The short-term predictor is similar to FLAC in its operation - it is a quantized LPC predictor with a losslessly coded residual using Golomb Rice Coding or Block Gilbert Moore Coding (BGMC). The long term predictor is modeled by 5 long-term weighted residues, each with its own lag (delay). The lag can be hundreds of samples. This predictor improves the compression for sounds with rich harmonics (containing multiples of a single fundamental frequency, locked in phase) present in many musical instruments and human voice.
As of 2006[update], there has not been wide acceptance of this format, possibly due to the lack of encoders and decoders available.
A reference implementation of MPEG-4 ALS encoder and decoder (mp4als - e.g. mp4alsRM22rev2) can be obtained at the MPEG-4 ALS homepage and it was also published as ISO/IEC 14496-5:2001/Amd 10:2007/Cor 3:2009.
There is a MPEG-4 ALS Decoder plugin for Winamp player.
On November 11, 2009, the FFmpeg open source project gained an MPEG-4 ALS decoder in its development version.
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