While the Alliance For Open Media “AOMedia” is most known for developing the AV1 open video codec, the associated AV1 Image File Format (AVIF), and the next-generation AV2, they are now working on the Open Audio Codec (AOC).
I was tipped off this morning to the formation of the Open Audio Codec (OAC) becoming public this week. The Open Audio Codec is based off the Opus audio codec and intended to be its successor.
This commit this week took to establishing the AOC project and based off the existing Opus codebase. The new README file explains:
“liboac is the reference implementation of the Open Audio Codec (OAC) specification.
OAC intends to be the successor to Opus and liboac is based on libopus. Both are works in progress.
This package implements a shared library for encoding and decoding raw OAC bitstreams. It also includes a number of test tools used for testing the correct operation of the library. The bitstreams read/written by these tools should not be used for OAC file distribution: they include additional debugging data and cannot support seeking.”
Opus development was driven by Mozilla, Microsoft (particularly during the Skype days), and others — many of who are governing members of the Alliance For Open Media.
So far to the new OAC codebase there has been some tuning adjustments, renaming various symbols to using an “oaci_” prefix and other preparations for establishing the new Open Audio Codec project.
The Open Audio Codec is just being established now and still in its very early stages, but those wishing to follow along about AOMedia’s Open Audio Codec can track this GitHub repository.
