{"id":239,"date":"2016-04-11T15:20:59","date_gmt":"2016-04-11T06:20:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.criware.com\/?p=239"},"modified":"2016-04-11T18:04:00","modified_gmt":"2016-04-11T09:04:00","slug":"meet-adx2s-powerful-proprietary-codecs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.criware.com\/index.php\/2016\/04\/11\/meet-adx2s-powerful-proprietary-codecs\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet ADX2’s powerful proprietary codecs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Founded in 1983, CRI Middleware has a rich history of pioneering ground-breaking game technologies, from writing the first game ever on CD-ROM (Afterburner II FM_TOWNS) to assisting Sega in the early 90’s with multi-streaming and sound compression technologies. Without a doubt, developing advanced audio and video codecs is part of CRI Middleware’s DNA.<\/p>\n

When using the ADX2 game audio middleware, two proprietary codecs are available in addition to the ones from the console manufacturers. The first one, ADX, is a high-fidelity, high compression, low CPU-load codec running on all game platforms, mobile devices and embedded systems. With ADX, 48kHz stereo sounds can be compressed up to 1\/16.<\/p>\n

The second proprietary codec, HCA \u00a0(for High Compression Audio), \u00a0offers compression ratios comparable to the general-purpose audio codecs such as MP3 or AAC (from 1\/6 to 1\/12). However, this codec has been carefully tuned for games: not only is the CPU load very low compared to MP3 and AAC, it is also stable during decoding (without any spike) and it supports seeking.<\/p>\n

\"adx2_codec_tutorial_01\"<\/p>\n

Within AtomCraft, the sound quality (compression ratio) of the HCA encoding can be specified by a five-level value: 1- Hi Quality, 2- Medium Hi Quality, 3- Medium Quality, 4- Medium Low Quality, 5- Low Quality.<\/p>\n

\"adx2_codec_tutorial_02\"<\/p>\n

The HCA-MX codec is a variation of the HCA codec which reduces the CPU load even further when playing back a large number of sounds simultaneously. When using a conventional audio codec, CPU- load will typically rise as much as ten times when playing 10 sounds simultaneously, but with the HCA-MX codec , the CPU-load may rise as little as two times!<\/p>\n

\"adx2_codec_tutorial_03\"<\/p>\n

During the\u00a0HCA-MX playback, the audio data is decoded only after the mixing. Therefore, the engine can play hundreds of sounds on consoles, and tens of sounds on mobile platforms with a really small CPU cost.<\/p>\n

\"adx2_codec_tutorial_04\"<\/p>\n

*Mono, 48kHz, HCA-MX compression. For 16 simultaneous playbacks, about 9% of CPU load on iPhone4S.<\/p>\n

Here are some benchmarks done on the previous generations of iPhone:<\/p>\n

\"adx2_codec_tutorial_05\"<\/p>\n

*It should be noted that some functions such as filtering, pitch change or seamless concatenated playback cannot be used in HCA-MX.<\/p>\n

\"adx2_codec_tutorial_06\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Founded in 1983, CRI Middleware has a rich history of pioneering ground-breaking game technologies, from writing the first game ever<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":262,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[5,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-adx","category-tutorials"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\n\t\t