FLAC Related Questions

[IstariAsuka]

Quote:

Originally Posted by BlackJackSkanz I thought FLAC only compresses the track so the difference between 5-8 or whatever level might be how long it takes to uncompress to play or space on the drive vs. any change in sound quality?

Decode requirements are about the same across all levels of FLAC, by design. Encoding at higher levels takes more time because it spends more time finding the best method, instead of just a good one. There are no differences in sound quality between different levels, and only minor differences in space.

 

[mushu]

Quote:

Originally Posted by IstariAsuka Decode requirements are about the same across all levels of FLAC, by design. Encoding at higher levels takes more time because it spends more time finding the best method, instead of just a good one. There are no differences in sound quality between different levels, and only minor differences in space.

Yeah exactly. I just stick to 4, which is a happy medium, but even with 0 compared to 8, there's only a couple of meg difference, which isn't all that much when thinking how big the size of the files are. Sure it adds up, but anything more than 4 is too slow for me. So, my FLAC collection would be a couple of hundred meg bigger. Well who cares when using multiple 160gb HDD's?!?

 

[Helter Skelter]

Who cares? I do. I have over 700 gigs of storage in my machine (will be over a terabyte once I get around to installing this new drive) and I value every single megabyte.

Also consider that I encode FLAC to go on my Karma, too. So space is at a premium there as well. It honestly doesn't take that long, at least on my machine.

 

[Alu]

A friend of mine has written an eac & flac howto of some sorts, you can check
it out on the following page : http://forums.danomac.org/viewtopic.php?t=27

This was mainly to help you with your problem, uzziah, if it hasn't been
answered yet.

 

[perplex]

why do people use FLAC instead of WAV? does FLAC take less space?

 

[scottder]

I use MAREO as a front end for encoding with EAC.

MAREO

 

[Piccolo Daimaou]

Quote:

Originally Posted by perplex why do people use FLAC instead of WAV? does FLAC take less space?

Yes. It takes the WAV file and compresses it to a smaller file size while maintaining the sound quality of the WAV. A FLAC file still takes up quite a bit of space, though.

 

[scottder]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Piccolo Daimaou Yes. It takes the WAV file and compresses it to a smaller file size while maintaining the sound quality of the WAV. A FLAC file still takes up quite a bit of space, though.

Of course with HD prices going down, and HD space going up (there are 300Gb HDs out ther, 500 aren't far away). Lossless is nice option.

Scott

 

[OracleGuy]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Piccolo Daimaou Yes. It takes the WAV file and compresses it to a smaller file size while maintaining the sound quality of the WAV. A FLAC file still takes up quite a bit of space, though.

Also, FLAC files can have metadata tags (like MP3s) while WAV files do not.

 

[scottder]

Quote:

Originally Posted by OracleGuy Also, FLAC files can have metadata tags (like MP3s) while WAV files do not.

I use DBpoweramp to convert my lossless (flacs) to lossy formats, and it maintains the tags from the flacs (including replaygain). Quite handy.

Scott

 

[thomasshi]

Quote:

Originally Posted by OracleGuy Also, FLAC files can have metadata tags (like MP3s) while WAV files do not.

any advantages to use FLAC instead of APE?

 

[morphsci]

Quote:

Originally Posted by thomasshi any advantages to use FLAC instead of APE?

For me because my squeezebox can handle the streaming of FLAC files that is an advantage over APE.

 

[scottder]

Main advantage I see is that flac seems to have more support in software. I use both windows and linux. Plus my Rio Karma supports it.

Scott

 

[Helter Skelter]

Quote:

Originally Posted by thomasshi any advantages to use FLAC instead of APE?

It's open source and much less resource-intensive to decode. For these reasons, it's getting a fair bit of support by integrated devices like the Squeezebox, and portable players like the Rio Karma and the iAudio M3.

 

[Guust-Fi]

I've heard that flac tags are hard to retag afterwards. How much of this is true and what program would you use to do the tagging?