Support for multiplication instead of shifts inside the encoder?

[insane-rabenauge]

Certain players (f.e. ffmpeg) use multiplication instead of shifts inside the adpcm decode loop.
f.e.:
sign = nibble & 8; delta = nibble & 7;
diff = ((2 * delta + 1) * step) >> shift;
if (sign) predictor -= diff; else predictor += diff;
This leads to sample differences during decoding.
What do you think about supporting this inside the encoder?
To be honest I can't really hear the difference but I'd like to know your opinion on this.
Cheers!

[dbry]

Yes, I am familiar with this. They describe the motivation for this deviation from the reference code here but neglect to mention (or are not aware) that this alters the audio data.

Normally the difference is negligible, but when I recently implemented 5-bit ADPCM I found that this difference is audible in quiet passages as a buzzing, especially with long frames. The problem is that the audio drifts away from the nominal values during the frame and then suddenly jumps back to the correct place with the next frame (generating an audible blip).

This is definitely incorrect behavior because everyone else does it the way the reference code shows (I've looked at libsndfile, SoX, Adobe Audition, Foobar2000 and Rockbox). I'm confident that hardware implementations do it this way also because they long predated FFmpeg's implemention.

One funny thing is that in the Multimedia Wiki article on IMA ADPCM someone commented that using multiplies vs. shifts+jumps produces different results and that this would be bad, but that's as far as it goes.

I suggest that it makes a lot more sense to FFmpeg to correct their code than for other implementations to start adopting this error (even as an option). Unfortunately I'm not sure how likely that is.

[insane-rabenauge]

Thank you for you input! I'll close this issue then :)

[dbry]

Thanks! I'll leave this issue open as a poor man's FAQ entry because I can see this coming up again, especially as people try the new 5-bit ADPCM variation.