The QDesign Music Codec was originally LBpack, by Dmitry Shmunk. QDesign corporation bought the codec and hired the developer to create what would become the official audio compression in Apple's QuickTime v3.

The codec's official name is "RaveSound", according to this press release. It's commonly called QDesign Codec. It is one of the most agressive codecs known - meaning it compresses quite well at very low bitrates, but its aggressiveness introduces too many artifacts at higher bitrates.

The personal version comes with QuickTime Pro and allows encoding at bitrates up to 48kbps. The professional version allows bitrates up to 128kbps.

Hosted here are a Demo professional plugin for QuickTime Pro that works for 15 days, and MVP - QDesign's attempt to enter the audio library manager market - that has unlimited encoding of QDMC up to 128kbps. It can also encode MP3 but the encoder quality is terrible.

Apple is now steering away from proprietary codecs like Sorenson Video and QDesign, and focusing on standards (MPEG4). So, it's unlikely that QDMC will last long.

QDMC's site at QDesign is available here.

Date: 2000-08
Version: 1.2.51
Interface: Graphical User Interface
Platform: Win32
Download: mvppc12.exe - 2083Kb

Date: 1998
Version: 2.0
Interface: Graphical User Interface (QuickTime component)
Platform: Win32
Download: QDMC2_Pro_Demo.exe - 1327Kb