Do Macs support WMA?

torleif · Post by **torleif** » Tue Aug 04, 2009 10:44 am

OGG decoders are only a few kilobytes in size, and you can download them for free.

In reality if you use MP3 you'll only run into legality issues if you have enough money to pay for the licence. In which case it would be easy to obtain one.

Brainsaw · Post by **Brainsaw** » Tue Aug 04, 2009 10:52 am

Afaik you only have to pay mp3 license fee if you create commercial software that en-/decodes mp3s. If the usage of such software would lead to legal trouble I might be in some ... I have mp3 songs of all my bands, former and presen, available on the net.

xDan · Post by **xDan** » Tue Aug 04, 2009 4:14 pm

it's fine to use MP3 for non commercial purposes as far as I know (I wish it wasn't! Then Ogg would be more popular). But this is (yet another attempt at) shareware, so is commercial.

Don't take the *whole* AAC! There's codecs within! Some not bound by mp3. And ANY up-to-date or even close computer can read mpeg. You probably don't want support on a clean XP?

as far as I can see from wikipedia and suchlike, MPEG uses MP1,MP2 or MP3. MP1 seems possibly free of patents by now, but that is so obscure I cannot find an encoder library for it. (plus I don't know how good the compression is).

If you're running a service based in the UK, isn't it possible to ignore the patent problems and use LAME? I'm no lawyer but I thought that the patents only apply when you distribute and run binaries in countries where the patents apply.

The encoder will be part of a shareware app installed on a persons computer. (probably most users will be in the US).

ADPCM wav isnt too bad.

yup, I will probably use something like that.

I know most shareware authors just go ahead and use MP3 anyway. But I'm not going to.

Dorth · Post by **Dorth** » Tue Aug 04, 2009 5:45 pm

MP3 -> MPEG1 layer 3
There's plenty of other mpeg audio codec, all of which read by any up-to-date app. Most have good licenses and compress well the sound, at least, it is compressed per opposition to wav.

xDan · Post by **xDan** » Tue Aug 04, 2009 7:40 pm

Dorth wrote:MP3 -> MPEG1 layer 3
There's plenty of other mpeg audio codec, all of which read by any up-to-date app. Most have good licenses and compress well the sound, at least, it is compressed per opposition to wav.

Can you name one? I'm looking at this and they all seem to be patented.

vitek · Post by **vitek** » Tue Aug 04, 2009 8:03 pm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_audio_codecs

Dorth · Post by **Dorth** » Tue Aug 04, 2009 8:13 pm

What Vitek said

Also, I did say most had good license. For example, mp2 has a 2$/unit, no other fee for encoding, I think and so on and so forth. Considering the effort put in it and the distribution channels you gain, it's well worth it.

xDan · Post by **xDan** » Tue Aug 04, 2009 9:36 pm

Yeah I've seen all links like that, scoured Wikipedia etc

So, uh, out of interest, does anyone here own a Mac?

(just curious ya know, not like I have any question regarding Macs to ask or anything... Oh! Wait a minute! There was this one question...)

BlindSide · Post by **BlindSide** » Tue Aug 04, 2009 11:52 pm

Mac? No, what's that? I thought this topic was about discussing the legalities of various audio encoding algorithms.

bitplane · Post by **bitplane** » Wed Aug 05, 2009 12:19 am

I just tried, and as suspected they can't open WMA files.

xDan · Post by **xDan** » Wed Aug 05, 2009 1:17 pm

ok, thanks bitplane