Flac

**Tokeman** · 02-04-2008, 03:21 AM

for a comparison: http://flac.sourceforge.net/comparison.html
th0r, problem with iPod is they are ridiculously expensive, especially if your planning on using wav or their lossless format, since you need a lot more storage space.

**krunktastic** · 02-04-2008, 05:06 AM

Originally Posted by th0r

Originally Posted by Tokeman

From what I read, FLAC is the closest you can get.

.wavpack has a little better compression but slower decoding than .flac, so i guess you can call that closer to an original cd; .wavpack also handles .cue sheets a little better than .flac does by allowing you to store the cd-text data inside the .cue sheet, whereas .flac stips that data with embedded .cue sheets

Eh, don't you just add the .cue back in with all the .flacs? And I'm pretty positive flac is 100% lossless, and with flac it is theoretically possible to create a 1:1 cd clone using the correct drive offset and such.

**athenaesword** · 02-04-2008, 05:20 AM

well harddrives are cheap nowadays. even with hundreds of albums as long as you keep what you actually want u'll hardly go above 100gb. alotta people keep flac for archiving purposes. if yu're into collecting movies, it'll hardly put a dent in your harddrive space

**BrownWren** · 02-04-2008, 06:14 AM

Well until recently I was an MP3 fan but a group of torrenters turned me onto flac I tried it and found the sound quality was by far much better than mp3's almost like sitting at a real concert

**Zaxx** · 02-04-2008, 06:56 AM

Originally Posted by leopalas

I download in mp3 to just listen when I'm out.

I download in FLAC format for collecting purposes. It is by far the best compression. You get the best quality possible.

Same here. I also do a lot of re-encoding to high vbr mp3 as well.

**The Wanderer** · 02-04-2008, 12:31 PM

flac is lossless and that's important for me. I simply got tired of low quality mp3's.

**hit79** · 02-04-2008, 12:35 PM

Flac sucks.I like low level compression.

**monk3y** · 02-04-2008, 01:04 PM

get more sounds more quality and enjoy it more =)

**mbucari1** · 02-04-2008, 01:30 PM

Originally Posted by Demigod

Originally Posted by Tokeman

I personally dl in flac because we never know what the future holds. MP3 and other such formats are not exactly the same quality as the orignal cd. From what I read, FLAC is the closest you can get. So, if and when a newer format comes out, and there are devices that support them, I can encode them and not worry about having quality loss before I even start the process, since encoding often includes some quality loss, I will not be doubling my loss.
That plus FLAC sounds sooo much better then MP3 on a high end system.

I agree with the points you've made. However, FLAC simply takes up too much space to be efficient in my opinion. Having a CD take almost 200 more MBs is simply too much and plus, the problem is that most MP3 players don't support FLAC so you'll have to manually transcode the files at least once.

Yes, there is definitely a problem of diminishing returns with lossless, but for some it is worth the cost. I Have a high-end speaker, but I only download flac for my FAVORITE albums, or when the only other option is a bitrate that I find unacceptable (192 CBR, v2 etc.)