The cook codec is a lossy audio compression codec developed by RealNetworks. It is also known as Cooker, Gecko, RealAudio G2, and RealAudio 8 low bitrate (RA8LBR).
Introduced in 1998, the cook codec was the first audio codec developed by RealNetworks in-house, and was named after its author, Ken Cooke. The design was largely based on G.722.1. It is a pure transform codec based on the modified discrete cosine transform with a single block size.
In 2003, RealNetworks introduced a surround sound version of cook, called RealAudio Multichannel. This was initially designated by the four-character code 'whrl', but is now identified as 'cook', as mono/stereo files are.
Although RealNetworks never published a technical description of the cook codec, others have reverse engineered the format, and as of December 2005, FFmpeg libavcodec contains a decoder capable of playing cook-encoded files. As of July 2009, Rockbox is capable of playing cook-encoded files as well.
Famous quotes containing the word cook:
“Women find ways to give sense and meaning to daily life—ways to be useful in the community, to keep mind active and soul growing even while they change diapers and cook vegetables.”
—Lillian Breslow Rubin (20th century)