What's the highest quality iTunes ripping file format? (Lossless?)

[DrJon]

Thanks for the thoughts, Brent. I totally see what you're saying. I'm kind of into audio- speakers, not portable. It can be pretty interesting. I've participated in some blind tests between different amps as well as different processors/preamps. Blinded, we couldn't hear any differences. We've posted the results (I can find the links if you like). And it's crazy how hot-under-the-collar people get. These WAV versus ALAC threads are totally tame by comparison.

For kicks, I'd like to try to see if I can tell a difference on this topic. I'm more thinking about this for long term usage, not for the iPod. Maybe I'll rip all of my CD's onto a big hard drive and use a computer for critical music listening at home. It's an idea for now...

 

[zip22]

Quote:

Originally Posted by JWolf if your iPod has had Rockbox installed on it, then forget ALAC as the compression is not all that good. FLAC at level 8 is better and will save you disk space.

because of this post and a previous post claiming flac is slow, i decided to do a test. i used the latest version of itunes, flac, and foobar.

FLAC level 5 1:30 289MB

FLAC level 8 4:51 288MB

ALAC 1:45 290MB

WaPack 1:26 287MB (supposedly "much faster" than flac - a bit faster, and also more compression than flac or alac - not included in the comparsions below)

The only significant diffence between the 3 options is time. flac level 8 is far and away the worst for time and there is almost no difference in file size.

to put things in perspective, on a 30GB ipod, you could fit 103.4483 albums with alac, 103.8062 albums with level 5, and 104.1667 albums with level 8. so you can fit almost 4 more songs by using level 8 but it will take you 5.83 HOURS longer to encode all the music than using level 5 (level 8 will take 8.42 hours - level 5 will take 2.59 hours). not worth it at all.

this is just one cd, and your results will vary, but i don't think the compression size or time of flac level 8 will improve significantly for you.

i give alac points because itunes automatically tagged all the files perfectly. i assume there are ways to do with flac and i would love to hear them.

 

[GIGANTOID]

Thanks Zip22 for finally doing something that should have been done awhile ago. There really is very little difference between the codecs. The bigest difference is what you plan to listen to the files through (software and hardware) and determine if it supports your codec. You'll find many more differences in the devices or software than the codecs themselves.

 

[K2Grey]

Zip22: I believe iTunes accesses some database for tagging. You can, in turn, use freedb to tag FLAC files.

DrJon: The reason why one doesn't hear a difference is because the 5i doesn't actually go to the DAC. Rather, the playback program first takes the compressed version and expands it back to the uncompressed version. Then the steps from there are the same. So the only way that there would be some kind of difference would be either 1) the decoding is faulty, although that is very easily tested and fixed or 2) the decoding introduces some kind of magic effect onto the computer which is likely to introduce extra errors for some inscrutable reason.

However these kind of codec deals are very easily tested away because of the existence of the foobar2000 ABX comparer which effectively functions as a double blind test because you don't know which is which and foobar2000 is inscrutable and its body language is not to be read easily.

 

[zip22]

here is a comparison of all of the lossless codecs available.
http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index....ess_comparison

 

[JWolf]

28,392,836 02 Kid A.flac
28,660,789 02 Kid A.m4a
50,184,668 02 Kid A.wav
27,800,812 02 Kid A.wv

40,454,857 03 The National Anthem.flac
41,018,880 03 The National Anthem.m4a
62,041,100 03 The National Anthem.wav
38,991,856 03 The National Anthem.wv

WAV = 112,225,768
Wavepack = 66,792,668
FLAC = 68,847,693
ALAC = 69,679,669

ALAC - FLAC = 831,976
ALAC - Wavepack = 2,887,001

ALAC - FLAC * 6 = 4,991,856
ALAC - Wavepack * 6 = 400,756,008

The upshot of all of these number is that ALAC is the least efficient lossless compression vs Wakepack at X 3 and FLAC at level 8. The times six was used to simulate a 12 track CD using these two tracks. Given the numbers on average you can get 1 CD for every 52 ALAC CDs in FLAC and in Wavepack you can get 1.5 ALAC CDs for every CD in ALAC.

The answer is to use your iPod (Rockboxed) with Wavepack instead of ALAC and you'll actually get 1.5 times the space and the same quality playback. FLAC while not nearly as good as Wavepack, is still better then ALAC and much much better supported. And ignore the time it takes to compress as that is irrelevent. What is relevent is the resulting files. FLAC and Wavepack at their best compression do not take more CPU to decompress then if compressed at the poor default levels.

Jon

 

[JWolf]

Quote:

Originally Posted by zip22 here is a comparison of all of the lossless codecs available. http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index....ess_comparison

The comparision is flawed. They are not using the best compression. So I don't concider there numbers valid. Especially when they did not tell you what compression levels were used.

 

[zip22]

Quote:

Originally Posted by JWolf The upshot of all of these number is that ALAC is the least efficient lossless compression vs Wakepack at X 3 and FLAC at level 8. The times six was used to simulate a 12 track CD using these two tracks. Given the numbers on average you can get 1 CD for every 52 ALAC CDs in FLAC and in Wavepack you can get 1.5 ALAC CDs for every CD in ALAC. The answer is to use your iPod (Rockboxed) with Wavepack instead of ALAC and you'll actually get 1.5 times the space and the same quality playback. FLAC while not nearly as good as Wavepack, is still better then ALAC and much much better supported. And ignore the time it takes to compress as that is irrelevent. What is relevent is the resulting files. FLAC and Wavepack at their best compression do not take more CPU to decompress then if compressed at the poor default levels. Jon

a) you are using 2 tracks. when judging a music library, you chose the smallest unit. that will give you a significantly larger margin of error. multiplying it by 12 only increases that error. my analysis of one album decreases this error by the factor of 12. my analysis is much more relevant and applicable to a full library. yours has much more error.

b)"Given the numbers on average you can get 1 CD for every 52 ALAC CDs in FLAC and in Wavepack you can get 1.5 ALAC CDs for every CD in ALAC." i'm confused

c) encoding time is very relevent to me. especially when flac level 8 took more than 3 times as long and was barely smaller. i would rather have 6 hours of my life than be able to squeeze 4 more songs on my player.

 

[The_Duke_Of_Eli]

At the end of the day lossless is lossless. Lossless files are big. If you wanted 10 000 songs in your pocket, then rip everythingi n 64 kbps mp3. You won't fit thousands of lossless files on your ipod, not until the new ipods are released before christmas (i imagine 120gb being the norm, with a 200gb available as well). Find whichever makes your files the smallest and just use that. It comes to a point where the hardware of the ipod is the limiting sound factor.

 

[zip22]

another data point

flac level 5 2:11 421MB
flac level 8 7:28 419MB
alac 2:24 420MB
wavpack 2:00 415MB

once again, flac level 8 is pointless. flac level 5 ties with alac.

 

[JWolf]

Quote:

Originally Posted by zip22 another data point flac level 5 2:11 421MB flac level 8 7:28 419MB alac 2:24 420MB wavpack 2:00 415MB once again, flac level 8 is pointless. flac level 5 ties with alac.

You don't get it.. The idea is to get more compression without a hit on the decompression. Level 5 FLAC is pointless. Level 8 is what should be used. You can let the computer do the comptression while you do something else. It's not that hard.

 

[zip22]

and another

flac level 5 1:49 348MB
flac level 8 5:35 347MB
wavpack 1:47 345MB
alac 1:57 350MB

again, same result. level 8 is not worth it level 5 and alac are close.

are those 1MB differences going to make a difference in the long run? i just purchased a hard drive for around $0.40 /GB. i can use 1 single GB - $0.40 and save myself (1MB x 1024) x 4:00 = 68 hours of my life. i will go with level 5 or alac, thanks. the 4 extra tracks on a 30GB player is not that much of a hit and my time is worth more than a few GB of space. you don't get it, the "more compression" you are getting is less than half a percent. it is costing you time and energy. all your getting in return is a file that is a sliver smaller. the point of diminishing returns - a supposed point at which additional effort or investment in a given endeavor will not yield correspondingly increasing results.

if there was a flac 10 that could save you an additional 1MB of space, but would take 30 minutes to encode, would you?

 

[JWolf]

Quote:

Originally Posted by zip22 a) you are using 2 tracks. when judging a music library, you chose the smallest unit. that will give you a significantly larger margin of error. multiplying it by 12 only increases that error. my analysis of one album decreases this error by the factor of 12. my analysis is much more relevant and applicable to a full library. yours has much more error. b)"Given the numbers on average you can get 1 CD for every 52 ALAC CDs in FLAC and in Wavepack you can get 1.5 ALAC CDs for every CD in ALAC." i'm confused c) encoding time is very relevent to me. especially when flac level 8 took more than 3 times as long and was barely smaller. i would rather have 6 hours of my life than be able to squeeze 4 more songs on my player.

if it takes 6 hours for you to encode an entire CD in FLAC level 8 or Wavepack x 3, then you have one hell of a POS computer.

Ok then, let's use the complete CD instead of just two random tracks...

ALAC = 308,121,600
Wavepack = 297,529,344
FLAC = 304,607,232

So what that now works out to is for every 29 CDs in ALAC you get an extra one in Wavpack. And for every 87 CDs in ALAC you get an extra CD in FLAC.

I used disk space used numbers this time instead of just the size of the file numbers to make it more realistic. And according to what I have read on the Rockbox site, ALAC support is not yet as good as FLAC or Wavpack on all model iPods that Rockbox supports.

 

[ObiHuang]

Quote:

Originally Posted by JWolf if it takes 6 hours for you to encode an entire CD in FLAC level 8 or Wavepack x 3, then you have one hell of a POS computer. Ok then, let's use the complete CD instead of just two random tracks... ALAC = 308,121,600 Wavepack = 297,529,344 FLAC = 304,607,232 So what that now works out to is for every 29 CDs in ALAC you get an extra one in Wavpack. And for every 87 CDs in ALAC you get an extra CD in FLAC. I used disk space used numbers this time instead of just the size of the file numbers to make it more realistic. And according to what I have read on the Rockbox site, ALAC support is not yet as good as FLAC or Wavpack on all model iPods that Rockbox supports.

What kinda logic is that? You're trying to tell us you'd rather have 300% more encoding time for 3% more compression? If you're going to argue FLAC Lvl 8 vs ALAC, you better not mention file sizes dude. You're better off arguing that more DAPs natively support FLAC.

 

[zip22]

6 hours was regarding encoding to fill the entire player

here are the disk use numbers for the 3 albums i have tested:

Code:

[left]album 1 flac level 5 303,341,568 bytes flac level 8 302,899,200 bytes wavpack 301,748,224 bytes alac 304,398,336 bytes album 2 flac level 5 441,507,840 bytes flac level 8 439,734,272 bytes wavpack 435,949,568 bytes alac 440,844,288 bytes album 3 flac level 5 365,289,472 bytes flac level 8 364,175,360 bytes wavpack 361,832,448 bytes alac 367,214,592 bytes[/left]

the average of all 3 of my tests is that you will get one extra album every 420 albums using flac 8 over flac 5. not worth it...