We don't really know what ICOM is paying for AMBE+, but it's probably that much or more.īut the real question is what we do for the future of digial voice.
Open source ambe codec software#
If I were engineering an entire product line and convinced the management that I could eliminate a $5 chip with some software engineering, it would probably be an easy sell.
Open source ambe codec code#
You use my code in DD-WRT and a lot of consumer equipment, and I have two wireless chip manufacturers and a supercomputing company paying for advice between today and Monday. Actually I have an OK reputation regarding project engineering. If you are able to help with development please contact David Rowe! Once Codec2 is stable and competitive, it would offer a real, developed-by-a-ham alternative to the patented AMBE voice encoder. David can be contacted at his email: David (at) Ī DSTAR protocol implementing Codec2 Digital Voice would significantly drop the entrance level and appeal to a much wider audience. Development milestones and source code are available through his website. Because of financial obligations, he's currently on hiatus from development to pay bills with other work. A free codec helps a large amount of people and promotes development and innovation"-ĭavid Rowe's development site is: He is currently looking for assistance, either financially or with coding. It is however possible to develop a open source, free-as-in-speech codec with similar performance at similar bit rates. "Due to patents and the amount of confidential information surrounding these codecs (AMBE) I don't think it is possible to make an open codec compatible with these closed codecs. What's the issue with AMBE?Codec2 developer David Rowe, VK5DGR talks about this on his blog:
It's advocates include Bruce Perens, K6BP, ( who is well known in open source software circles, and is a huge Free Software advocate. This open voice codec is called Codec2, and is in a highly experimental stage at this current point. However, the AMBE voice encoding scheme currently used by the DSTAR protocol is not open, rather it is patented by DVSI, Inc.ĭevelopment on an open source, freely available alternative to AMBE has been spearheaded by Australian amateur David Rowe, VK5DGR.
The DSTAR protocol is open and freely available, developed by the Japanese Amateur Radio League (JARL).