[fallsroad]

Quote:

Originally Posted by leeperry /img/forum/go_quote.gif yes, the "Extra High" and "Insane" compression APE levels are laggy when you seek, but "high" isn't and still compresses better than FLAC -8 IME. I don't care for replay gain(I'm a bit-perfect kinda guy), neither do I care for error correction(are you sure FLAC carries ECC? anyway APE is bit-perfect...never had any glitch ) and WavPack compresses 5.1 better than FLAC. anyway, FLAC is fine...just a waste of space for PC-only playback.

A 64.2MB WAV encoded at High in APE leads to a file of 40.4MB.

FLAC at level 8, which does not suffer the anomalies of APE at the highest settings, leads to a file of 41.2MB

Hardly a waste of space in an era of 2TB hard drives.

Personally, I stopped using APE specifically because of the issues with Extra High and Insane encoding. That lag is a bug, not a feature. To each their own, of course.

 

[krmathis]

Quote:

Originally Posted by leeperry /img/forum/go_quote.gif yes, APE just compresses way better than FLAC...just like WV compresses 5.1 better than FLAC. FLAC is pointless on a PC, waste of space!

If saving space is the only think that matters, then why are you stuck at Monkey's Audio (APE)? When there are more efficient lossless encoders, like LA and OptimFrog...

Lossless Audio Homepage
OptimFROG Lossless Audio Compression

Lossless comparison - Hydrogenaudio Knowledgebase

 

[Chri5peed]

Quote:

Originally Posted by leeperry /img/forum/go_quote.gif anyway, FLAC is fine...just a waste of space for PC-only playback.

Umm, 500GB HDDs are not expensive.

Surely WAV is the waste of space.

 

[leeperry]

yes, some other codecs are slightly better than APE...but APE is widely supported on PC at this point, plus it's open source so support will not stop anytime soon.

that's the thing, I don't trust HDD's...a major french website just published the RMA figures of a big online webshop....some 1TB drives from Samsung/Seagate carry a 16% RMA failure, 1 drive out of 6 dies prematurely

lemme burn my Verb's, run them through CDCheck, catalog them, run PI/PO error checks when I'm bored...so far, zero data loss...and APE allows me to pack a tad more files per DVD too

I'd hate to lose 2TB of music

 

[fallsroad]

Quote:

Originally Posted by leeperry /img/forum/go_quote.gif yes, some other codecs are slightly better than APE...but APE is widely supported on PC at this point, plus it's open source so support will not stop anytime soon.

Monkey's Audio is open source?

I knew FLAC was, but not Monkey's (which went for a very long time without any updates until just recently).

And unless I am ignorant, I fail to see how APE files are any more or less supported on PCs than FLAC.

Honestly, absent a sonic difference, there is little difference between the two with the small exception of the odd behavior at higher compression rates for APE. I've used both with great results, and only stopped using Monkey's for encoding recently.

As for HDDs, those who care about their music collections do this thing called backing up. Very handy. I highly recommend it.

.

 

[leeperry]

hehe, yeah sure..backing up a few teras is piece of cake

I only said that APE is well supported, unlike TAK and all these closed source codecs.

Monkey's Audio Source Code License Agreement
Quote:

Monkey's Audio source can be included in GPL and open-source software

yeah, FLAC is fine...but I personally encode 5.1 in WavPack and stereo in "high" APE, no big deal

 

[fallsroad]

Quote:

Originally Posted by leeperry /img/forum/go_quote.gif hehe, yeah sure..backing up a few teras is piece of cake I only said that APE is well supported, unlike TAK and all these closed source codecs. Monkey's Audio Source Code License Agreement yeah, FLAC is fine...but I personally encode 5.1 in WavPack and stereo in "high" APE, no big deal

Preference is a beautiful thing.

I have my tunes on CD, and back up the HDDs. I went through a total drive crash many years ago without any back up, and learned my lesson the hard way.

 

[buelligan]

I haven't seen any mention of the possibility that in some systems, either due to elderly processors (like mine), CODEC problems, or excessive background processes, there may be latency which could result in higher word clock jitter. This may explain both why there could be a difference and why some hear it and some don't.

Just sayin'

Happy listening everyone

 

[khaos974]

.ape at upper compression levels (especially on insane) has seeking problems, it can take a few seconds to reach a specific a part of a track.

It's very annoying if you have .cue files with CD images, it's basically the reason I abandoned Ape for Flac. Finally I chose to have separate tracks anyway

so I could have stayed with .ape. But .ape still demands higher processing power.

PS: 2.5 in external drives are supposed to be more reliable than 3.5 in ones, they were originally built for notebooks while 3.5 in are built for home computers. That's why they are supposed to be more resilient to acceleration since notebooks are often moved while functionning.

 

[somestranger26]

Quote:

Originally Posted by khaos974 /img/forum/go_quote.gif PS: 2.5 in external drives are supposed to be more reliable than 3.5 in ones, they were originally built for notebooks while 3.5 in are built for home computers. That's why they are supposed to be more resilient to acceleration since notebooks are often moved while functionning.

This is not the type of thing you can make a blanket statement about. While 2.5" drives are used in laptops and many have features like g-force sensors to spin down the drive when they fall that doesn't mean the same drives are being used by external drive manufacturers (they usually use cheaper drives, hence why external drives cost about the same as an equivalent internal drive). OTOH, you have 3.5" drives ranging from cheap 5400-5900rpm 'consumer' drives on up to beefy, resilient, and pricy enterprise level 7200-15k rpm drives that vary in lifetime.

Whatever size of external drive you use, be it 1.8, 2.5, or 3.5", is going to crash and burn if you drop it too far to the ground, mishandle it, or otherwise damage it in some way. Platter size is really just up to your individual needs: 1.8 or 2.5" if you don't need a ton of storage and you want something fairly portable. 3.5" if you want something not-so-portable that can lug around a ton of data, such as an entire computer backup, while being much faster.

 

[stang]

Just get a SSD or two if you want your songs to be safe as possible. Personally I just use a 128GB SSD with Windows 7 on it and when I can be bothered I will put my 250GB HDD back in my rig. HDD's are very ancient but SSDs are extremely expensive right now. I use .wav and do not care about having no space left on my SSD. 1TB hard drives are under $100 now, where as a 32GB SSD will be around the same. I have no need for more space right now because I can't afford CDs. At $30 for a CD, I would spend hundreds of dollars on them. Australia is a rip off.

 

[donunus]

what if your flacs have some sort of replaygain gain type tag and the tag is gone when converted to wav? Dont you end up with the wavs sounding louder than the flacs? This could explain the whole perceived difference in sound quality?

 

[sonci]

Foobar flac decoder, is much better than monkeys one,
dont ask me how do I know..
If someone enable the Foobar feature write statistics to file tags, you will see that theres a lag of some millisec during writing of ape files, in playback
prove that Foo has some work to do with ape files, which in audiophille speaking will deteriorite playback..

 

[japc]

Quote:

Originally Posted by buelligan /img/forum/go_quote.gif I haven't seen any mention of the possibility that in some systems, either due to elderly processors (like mine), CODEC problems, or excessive background processes, there may be latency which could result in higher word clock jitter.

I think I've read that (perfectly reasonable) suggestion somewhere on the thread.

Quote:

Originally Posted by stang /img/forum/go_quote.gif At $30 for a CD, I would spend hundreds of dollars on them. Australia is a rip off.

Holy cows, that is expensive.

 

[Typhoon859]

Anybody know if the Cowon J3 player plays back FLAC properly?  Would it be okay to use it instead of WAV? 
 
On a different note, I've also been wondering, if I decode a FLAC file to WAV, compress it back to FLAC, then decode it again, and so on so forth, the quality should stay the same forever unless errors occur in the process right?