I hope I speak for both of us when I say that the most important parameter of a lossless codec is it's compression ratio, here is my priority chart :
1. compression ratio
2. real-time playback decompression cpu usage
3. compression speed
that should be all the important stuff......
ape is almost-GPL
I really have a lot of faith in compiler optimizations, I really do (in fact my .APE plugin for xmms and the mac library and encoder are compiled from source) and in order to demonstrate the difference between them (and believe me I made quite a job with those optimizations) here is my jack output.........
before :
~~~~~~
\Benchmarking: Standard DES [32/32 BS]... DONE
Many salts: 116172 c/s real, 118061 c/s virtual
Only one salt: 115558 c/s real, 116961 c/s virtual
Benchmarking: BSDI DES (x725) [32/32 BS]... DONE
Many salts: 3929 c/s real, 4101 c/s virtual
Only one salt: 4025 c/s real, 4082 c/s virtual
Benchmarking: FreeBSD MD5 [32/32]... DONE
Raw: 4011 c/s real, 4118 c/s virtual
Benchmarking: OpenBSD Blowfish (x32) [32/32]... DONE
Raw: 240 c/s real, 250 c/s virtual
Benchmarking: Kerberos AFS DES [24/32 4K]... DONE
Short: 160307 c/s real, 165265 c/s virtual
Long: 414668 c/s real, 436493 c/s virtual
Benchmarking: NT LM DES [24/32 4K]... DONE
Raw: 1230860 c/s real, 1250874 c/s virtual
and AFTER :
~~~~~~~~~~~
Benchmarking: Standard DES [32/32 BS]... DONE
Many salts: 133568 c/s real, 135739 c/s virtual
Only one salt: 126387 c/s real, 129760 c/s virtual
Benchmarking: BSDI DES (x725) [32/32 BS]... DONE
Many salts: 4601 c/s real, 4666 c/s virtual
Only one salt: 4563 c/s real, 4600 c/s virtual
Benchmarking: FreeBSD MD5 [32/32]... DONE
Raw: 4022 c/s real, 4146 c/s virtual
Benchmarking: OpenBSD Blowfish (x32) [32/32]... DONE
Raw: 245 c/s real, 247 c/s virtual
Benchmarking: Kerberos AFS DES [24/32 4K]... DONE
Short: 163942 c/s real, 167288 c/s virtual
Long: 435456 c/s real, 447080 c/s virtual
Benchmarking: NT LM DES [24/32 4K]... DONE
Raw: 1208870 c/s real, 1238596 c/s virtual
obviously you may not approve this because this one does not use any multimedia functions.........
but I am always open for suggestions, if you got a nice multimedia benchmark tool I am sure interrested to hear about it