exhale - ecodis extended high-efficiency and low-complexity encoder

Software Release Notes, Version History, Known Issues, Upcoming Feature Roadmap

   The version of this distribution of the «exhale» software release is 1.0.5 (official pub­lic minor release) from June 30, 2020. Please check www.ecodis.de regularly for new versions of this software. A summary of each version up to this release, a list of known issues with this release, and a roadmap of additional functionality are provided below.


Chronological Version History

   Version 1.0.5  June 2020, this release

  • slightly reduced bit-rates with lower modes, better compatibility when using stdin

  • exhaleApp: support for Unicode text on Windows™, 44100 Hz with CVBR mode 1

  • exhaleApp: automatic upsampling of low-sample-rate input, better WAVE reading

  • exhaleLib: optimized noise filling tool for slightly lower bit-rates at CVBR mode <4

   Version 1.0.4  May 2020

  • finalized basic joint-stereo and TNS coding functionality, quality and stability fixes

  • exhaleApp: support for 32000 Hz with CVBR mode 1, added '-v' version command

  • exhaleLib: completed audio quality fine-tuning for very tonal and transient signals

  • compilation: support for MinGW (issue 5) and cmake (via CMakeList files, issue 6)

   Version 1.0.3  Apr. 2020

  • extended basic joint-stereo coding functionality for mid/high rates, minor bugfixes

  • exhaleLib: band adaptive joint-stereo coding for all CVBR modes, fixed rare crash

  • exhaleLib: audio quality fine-tuning, especially for very tonal and transient signals

  • makefile: -std=c++11 to allow for compilation with older versions of gcc (issue 4)

   Version 1.0.2  Mar. 2020

  • added basic low/mid-rate joint-stereo coding functionality, bugfixes, and speedups

  • exhaleApp: support for input sampling rates of up to 48000 Hz with CVBR mode 2

  • exhaleLib: frame adaptive joint-stereo preprocessing and coding (CVBR mode <5)

  • exhaleLib: accelerated R/D opt. coding, stability and quality fixes (issues 2 and 3)

   Version 1.0.1  Feb. 2020

  • improved low-bitrate coding efficiency and support for MPEG-D loudness metadata

  • exhaleApp: increased MP4 file versatility (issue 1) and calculation of loudness info

  • exhaleLib: backward compatible API extension to support writing of loudness info

  • exhaleLib: extended R/D optimized coding, improved short-transform quantization

   Version 1.0.0  Jan. 2020

  • compilation fixes and executable printout changes for Linux and MacOS™ platform

  • exhaleApp: fixed reading of WAVE files including metadata after the «data» chunk

  • exhaleLib: some tuning of transform and noise level detection for transient signals

  • exhaleLib: support for export as DLL on Microsoft Windows™ (not tested, though)

   Version 1.0RC Dec. 2019

  • initial release for testing with only basic channel-independent coding functionality

  • only support for Microsoft Windows™ (32-bit and 64-bit) platform provided so far.


Known Issues with This Release

   If you notice an issue with this release not mentioned below, please contact ecodis or a contributor with the details (configuration, input file) needed to reproduce the issue.

  • exhaleLib: Coding of stereo or multichannel input occasionally leads to slightly in­creased bit-rates because the predictive joint-channel coding provided by ISO/IEC 23003-3 has not been fully implemented. See the functionality roadmap below.

  • exhaleApp: Only basic WAVE input file reading functionality has been implemen­ted. Specifically, 8-bit WAVE input is assumed to contain an even number of audio samples, and the Broadcast and Extensible WAVE file formats are not supported.


Roadmap of Upcoming Features

   If you are in need of an additional library or application feature not mentioned below, please contact ecodis or a contributor with a request, and we will see what we can do.

  • support for coding with a core coder frame length of 768 samples, no version plan

  • exhaleLib: completed integration of predictive joint-channel coding, version 1.0.6

  • exhaleLib: finalization of support for 3.0–5.1 multichannel coding, no version plan

  • exhaleLib: speed-ups and further quality tuning for difficult signals, as necessary.


Written by C. R. Helmrich for exhale 1.0.5, June 2020. Available at www.ecodis.de/exhale/release.htm.


   exhale