jacksonbart Posted March 16, 2008 Share Posted March 16, 2008 I for one can't hear the difference in identical songs played in the two formats. Obviously FLAC saves about 40% on storage space on a HD. Am I missing out on anything else? My music server will record FLAC back into a audio CD, is it missing anything? Thanks inadvance. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Duke Spinner Posted March 16, 2008 Share Posted March 16, 2008 I ...Likeit ... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LoudnClear Posted March 16, 2008 Share Posted March 16, 2008 The only disadvantage you have in using flac is that you're now aware of something that 98% of people are not. Most people are unaware that they are losing a ton of audio information when they use MP3 or other lossy codecs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jbsl Posted March 16, 2008 Share Posted March 16, 2008 I've been using EAC with good results but cannot compare it to FLAC. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bill H. Posted March 16, 2008 Share Posted March 16, 2008 Interesting thread. My son tells me it is a good format..........not widely know about.............. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr. RF62 Posted March 17, 2008 Share Posted March 17, 2008 Can't believe I'm going to ask this... So there is a FLAC player??? I get enough "flac" I don't need anymore!!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JJkizak Posted March 17, 2008 Share Posted March 17, 2008 Sony Vegas Pro 8 can play it on the timeline. JJK Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest srobak Posted March 17, 2008 Share Posted March 17, 2008 Winamp can play it, and winamp pro has an encoder. However - it is still "lossy" compression. What many purists fail to realize however is that both FLAC and the current high bitrate mp3 encoders... and in fact in most encoders as far back as ATRAC2 only compresses where there would otherwise be null bits anyhow... so in truth - you aren't losing a thing, as huge areas within the 20-20k spectrum as silent anyhow... otherwise you would not hear "music", but instead - white noise. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jay481985 Posted March 18, 2008 Share Posted March 18, 2008 I think a properly encoded mp3 at 320 or flac or lossless do justice to most music. Though the je ne sais quoi of the cd is still prevalent when I pop one into my cd player. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrWho Posted March 18, 2008 Share Posted March 18, 2008 However - it is still "lossy" compression FLAC is not lossy at all! In fact, the acronym stands for "Free Lossless Audio Codec"http://flac.sourceforge.net/ Lossless means there is absolutely no loss of information, which means the exact original can always be retrieved. The downside to FLAC or any data compression scheme is that it requires processing time from your CPU to unpack the information. If you want better space savings, then it takes longer to encode - which sometimes can be an issue when ripping from a CD straight to FLAC. Storing as a .wav in the middle (like when using EAC) makes it take twice as long, but is more reliable. Btw, the free version of winamp also has a FLAC encoder on it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Duke Spinner Posted March 19, 2008 Share Posted March 19, 2008 thank you, Who ..Lossless .. is why I went to FLAC Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gilbert Posted March 21, 2008 Share Posted March 21, 2008 With some good headphones the difference is painfully obvious. MP3's suck big time. The only disadvantage you have in using flac is that you're now aware of something that 98% of people are not. Most people are unaware that they are losing a ton of audio information when they use MP3 or other lossy codecs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hooting_monkey Posted March 22, 2008 Share Posted March 22, 2008 Almost the entire Cowon player lineup supports flac and ogg. They are pretty much top of the line when it comes to sound quality and power output. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jwc Posted March 22, 2008 Share Posted March 22, 2008 I use apple lossless. Love it. jc Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PrestonTom Posted March 23, 2008 Share Posted March 23, 2008 However - it is still "lossy" compression FLAC is not lossy at all! In fact, the acronym stands for "Free Lossless Audio Codec"http://flac.sourceforge.net/ Lossless means there is absolutely no loss of information, which means the exact original can always be retrieved. The downside to FLAC or any data compression scheme is that it requires processing time from your CPU to unpack the information. If you want better space savings, then it takes longer to encode - which sometimes can be an issue when ripping from a CD straight to FLAC. Storing as a .wav in the middle (like when using EAC) makes it take twice as long, but is more reliable. Btw, the free version of winamp also has a FLAC encoder on it. Mike, Is it treuly lossless? By that I am asking if the 16bit signal actually going to the DAC (after all the packing and unpacking) is identical to what the origianl WAV file would have been (or could have been)? There are a number of interesting files that are FLAC. I have hesitated downloading them since I was thinking the quailty would not be true CD (redbook etc). Has my ignorance been getting the better of me? -Tom Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrWho Posted March 23, 2008 Share Posted March 23, 2008 As far as I know it is perfectly lossless - the signal going out is the same as the original signal going in. I've not actually tested it, but I would be extremely surprised to learn that something in the open source world claiming to be lossless isn't lossless. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LoudnClear Posted March 23, 2008 Share Posted March 23, 2008 Yes, FLAC is perfectly lossless. Think of it as winzip. You can zip your text document down to size. When you expand it back out, every last bit and byte are identical to the original file. Pure CD quality, no less, no more. OGG Vorbis is lossy, MP3 is lossy, Apple lossless is perfectly lossless, Windows Media Lossless is perfectly lossless. Kimball Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jacksonbart Posted March 23, 2008 Author Share Posted March 23, 2008 Thanks for the responces so far, here a link I have also discovered. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Lossless_Audio_Codec Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
InnerTuber Posted March 24, 2008 Share Posted March 24, 2008 I use AIFF. I do like FLAC, but it doesn't work with iTunes. What player do you like? Getting FLAC to an iPod takes some conversion. Getting anything bit perfect in and out takes some consideration at each step (storage method, bitrates, USB vs optical, pc or mac, DACs and such ...). So, for me, yes there is a huge disadvantage in that it is non-compatible with iTunes, since that is what I prefer having tried an awful lot of players. I will say if iTunes would handle FLAC I would be thrilled. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eq_shadimar Posted March 24, 2008 Share Posted March 24, 2008 As mentioned FLAC is totally lossless. I rip all my CD's to disk using FLAC. I use a combination of MediaMonkey and Winamp to manage my music collection. I generally use MediaMonkey to rip, organize, tag etc all my music files and Winamp for playback. Once in a while when I get a CD of a live Grateful Dead, Gov't Mule, Phish, etc show Winamp will show all the track information without having to re-enter it all in by hand. MediaMonkey is the only choice (in my opinion of course) if you have a huge music collection that you need to manage. MediaMonkey is able to sync with my portable device (Dell DJ30). When I transfer the files to my MP3 player MediaMonkey will automatically transcode the FLAC files to MP3 based on the parameters that I select (bitrate, playlists etc) as it puts them on the player. This way I can keep my "master" files as FLAC and convert them to MP3 (or other formats) as needed. I believe that MediaMonkey also works with iPods and iTunes. I do not use either of those products so I cannot confirm how well they work. Laters, Jeff Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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