Topic: Lossless music formats

[Eric]

I know this is a DVD Forum but I'm asking here because I also know that Sebastien is very knowledgeable in the matter

Now that I've cancelled my TV service I spent much more time listening to music.  I ripped my CD's in MP3 format because my old MP3 player doesn't support any lossless format but I want to get a new one and re-ripped my entire collection.

I'm wondering what's the best format to use.  Is Flac now a defacto standard in lossless formats ?

I would also be interested in suggestions about players.  I bought only two in the last 7 years or so, they were both from Cowon and they both still work so I'm inclined to go with them again since I'm still anti-apple but if someone recommends something very good I don't mind changing brand.

And one last question, if storage space is not an issue, would it be better to rip to wav files ?

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Is Flac now a defacto standard in lossless formats ?

No,
the de facto standard for lossless audio is *.wav
Simply because it's present on every Windows PC and almost every ripping tool and player support it.

If with "player" you are talking about portable players MP3 (with 256 kBit +) will usually suffice. The loss in quality will not be noticeable due to the limitations of the system (frequency bandwidth, signal-to-noise-ratio, dynamics, bass volume, etc.).

When talking about a player for your home audio equipment MP3 with 320 kBit + will usually suffice, unless you belong to those very few people that actually own High-End equipment and have ears like a bat.

FLAC is for those enthusiasts that still cry about Betamax, FORTRAN, UNIX, Vinyl (no, probably not this one), etc. It may be great, but the mass-market will let it go extinct, or at least reduce it to a very small niche-product very soon.

[Eric]

FLAC is for those enthusiasts that still cry about Betamax, FORTRAN, UNIX, Vinyl (no, probably not this one), etc. It may be great, but the mass-market will let it go extinct very soon.

I'm sorry Michael but this statement is totally wrong.   They usually whine more about COBOL than anything else 

When I mentioned Flac as defacto lossless standard I meant for compressed lossless.  Obviously, no compressed file, lossless or not, could claim to be better than the original.

I still like my good old iAudio U2 which supports wav and bit rates up to 320 kbps.  I guess I should keep things simple and just re-rip everything to wav.

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

They usually whine more about COBOL than anything else  

Now that might be because most of the people that I know to use FLAC have formerly studied Physics and/or physical Oceanography. Hell, some of them still want the good old CRAY II back.

[Najemikon]

FLAC is for those enthusiasts that still cry about Betamax, FORTRAN, UNIX, Vinyl (no, probably not this one), etc. It may be great, but the mass-market will let it go extinct, or at least reduce it to a very small niche-product very soon.

That's unfair. I use FLAC for my main library ripped from my CDs and maintain a further compressed MP3 version for portability. My FLACs give me the quality of the originals without compromising on storage.

Comparing with Betamax, Fortran or Unix is absurd. With vinyl, more applicable. The only reason a superior format is lost is because the mass market are ignorant and push for faster/smaller/now. CD was never better than vinyl, but it was easier to manage. To accept CD as the standard over vinyl is one thing; to then accept a compressed version of a CD I've paid for? No, absolutely not! So I rely on FLAC for my main system and it's faultless.

It absolutely proved it's worth when I found a tool for ripping the audio from DVDs to FLAC. DVD audio tracks are far higher quality than CD and sometimes extremely so. For example, instead of buying the CD of Queen At Wembley, I ripped the DVD I already had and produced something far better than the album version. I also have a genuine DVD-Audio of Queen's A Night At The Opera album. You can't even play this in a standard DVD player. I could only play it in my PC because my Creative Audigy soundcard could natively process it. With the rip tool, it dug out the track and turned it into a play anywhere version for. Bohemina Rhapsody was better than I had ever heard it in my life and I know that song backwards.

Of course you need a system in which you can hear that difference. I can, so I'm happy.

Eric, it all comes down to bit-rate and equipment in my experience. MP3 is fine for most purposes and at the higher bit-rate becomes virtually impossible to distinguish from lossless for most purposes. I use the applications from http://www.dbpoweramp.com/ for the whole process.

[RossRoy]

Well FLAC has established itself as being the "open" standard. But it all comes down to your own ear and what your equipment can deliver.

First and foremost, if you want good advice on portable music players, visit anythingbutipod.com. They are obviously somewhat biased against Apple, but they are usually pretty good in their review. Their recommendation of a Sansa Clip/Clip+ as one of the better ultra portable player is dead-on. Especially if you put Rockbox on it (better have 20/20 eyesight though!)

IMO, keeping your music as WAV is completely ludicrous. It simply wastes space that could be used for much better things (more music!). As far as lossless codecs go, basically use whatever is compatible with the player you are buying. And if in the future you get a player that handles something else, just transcode away! It's lossless after all.

Personally, above all the MP3/OGG quality loss or whatever, the best argument against ANY lossy codec is transcodability. Basically, you lock yourself to whatever codec you decided to take, because once you encode into whatever, any subsequent transcode will kill quality.

I chose to go with FLAC for the archiving on the NAS, and I transcode everything to MP3-VBR for transfer to my Sansa Clip, even though my Clip can play FLAC.

[RossRoy]

Just thought of something else. If you read a bit about FLAC, you might come across some recommendations of encoding at compression level 5 (instead of the max of 8 ). This was true some years ago, when the difference in file size wasn't worth the difference in encoding time. These days, it really doesn't matter and you should encode at 8 at all time.

[Eric]

First and foremost, if you want good advice on portable music players, visit anythingbutipod.com. They are obviously somewhat biased against Apple,

I like them already 

Thanks all for the thoughts and recommendations.  I'll think about this for a few days before making my decision.