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⇱ AOMedia Open Audio Codec "OAC" Aims To Be The Successor To Opus - Phoronix


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AOMedia Open Audio Codec "OAC" Aims To Be The Successor To Opus

Written by Michael Larabel in Multimedia on 22 February 2026 at 09:57 AM EST. 71 Comments
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 (OAC).

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 OAC 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.

👁 Open Audio Codec


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.

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.