What is TAC?

TAC stands for Transparent Audio Compression. This format usestime to frequency encoding and advanced human hearing models to compress music. The design goal of TAC is to provide the audio fidelity of lossless compression with the compression ratio of lossy formats.

If you are looking for extreme compression, such as 64 kbps,TAC is not for you. We will not compress down to levels where the music is ruined. This does still leave room for some adjustments to balance file size (or bitrate) with audio quality. The demonstration program offers several options for making smaller files without easily detectable loss of fidelity. For the purist however, only the highest quality setting should be used.

TAC does not contain any software from other music compression algorithms and is believed to be unencumbered by any patent issues. The compressed audio file uses a unique bitstream format thatis incompatible with any other software. Early versions TAC used the bitstream format of AAC (Advanced Audio Coding), but this was discarded as it proved to be too limiting.

TAC does contain new and proprietary techniques for preventingthe sonic artifacts common to other formats. These will be held as trade secrets for now although they may be patented at a later date.

You need a Pentium PC 90MHz or above to decode TAC in realtime, and encoding is also done in real time on a P2-300. (way faster than AAC)

We believe that TAC is an audio encoding format for the future and that it is a true contender for the "lossless" or
"near lossless" audio compression idea.
We also believe that we have here an audio compression tool/technology that will satisfy audio enthisiasts.