FLAC vs other lossless formats among BT users.

[Night0wl]

I would say that in order to get the entire Lossless fanatic and BT community to embrace wavpack, the developers would have to come up with something truly extraordinary. I mean FLAC already does anything the user want. Lossless fans are not the least bit interested in a format that can have lossy files (hybrid or not).

Also I don't get that hybrid stuff. Can it be played on the computer (in real-time) as lossless without decoding first. If it can't then you just found your answer.

As for SHN. many older files that are unavailable now are in SHN format. Does anyone encode to SHN now?

[emperorIX]

I would say that FLAC just won the popularity contest as well as does anything the user wants.

First of all I don't think FLAC takes long to encode, so that point isn't valid. I spend maybe 5 minutes decoding an entire FLAC CD into .wav and making it into mp3 using Lame. As for Encoding it probably takes even less time than that.

Monkey’s Audio is suitable for distribution, playback and archival purposes. However, it is a proprietary software, it is often too slow to decode on portable audio devices, and it has limited/problematic support on software platforms other than Windows. There are alternatives that provide the user with more freedom and official support for more platforms, such as the FLAC format.

APE has been almost abandoned as mentioned above. Many other lossless formats have some kind of patent linked to them. FLAC has very good multi platform support, as well as good Vorbis comment support.

I mean it shows up in your player as well as an mp3. Even better than mp3 in many cases, since the idv tag in mp3 isn't standardised.

Oh and one last reason. The FLAC format and especially encoding is being continually worked on and improved. How many other formats can that be said about?

I'm not familiar with wavpack, but I know .wav does not have good tag support. Does wavpack?

Checkout WavPack here: http://www.wavpack.com/

It's got all the functionality of FLAC and then some. So far, it only lacks hardware support.

It looks to be a pretty good codec and I like the fact that it is committed to being totally open and free, utilizing only only public domain techniques in its implementation.

I would say that in order to get the entire Lossless fanatic and BT community to embrace wavpack, the developers would have to come up with something truly extraordinary. I mean FLAC already does anything the user want. Lossless fans are not the least bit interested in a format that can have lossy files (hybrid or not).

Also I don't get that hybrid stuff. Can it be played on the computer (in real-time) as lossless without decoding first. If it can't then you just found your answer.

As for SHN. many older files that are unavailable now are in SHN format. Does anyone encode to SHN now?

Yes, unfortunately there are still those who do encode in the SHN format. there are a lot on ZOMB, I can't figure out why.

I was only really asking about the use of lossless codecs because I still use emule to find alot of the music I listen to. I'm into death and black metal and most if not all lossless trackers don't have a significant amount of these available. But, emule has tons, but most of them are in APE, a few in WavPack and about a third in FLAC. So, I was just wondering why FLAC was embraced so readily, but i think it was, as you noted, a matter of standardization and FLAC's superiority over other formats. Thanks for the responses.

[dunson]

It isn't. APE is Monkey's Audio something or other. And I assure you Apple Lossless is not open source. And BTW a Lossless format cannot be more lossless than another, so how can quality be better? If it's better then the other format isn't truly lossless.

http://www.monkeysaudio.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Lossless

Thanks for the clarification.

[grimms]

To give you a very simplistic short answer? Flac is better due to the way it compresses and maintains the quality of a CD (Rip) or Vinyl (Rip).

Other loseless formats like ape and wavpak don't compress as well. Also right now EAC is the application of choice and flac seems to compress and maintain the overall quality better then the other loseless formats mentioned as far as ripping goes.

Ripping is the most important reason why bt trackers hold flac on it's rightful high horse. EAC with flac is the ultimate achivement of what we all call or consider (Perfect 1:1 copy).

Guess my answer wasn't short. Oh well who cares.. you get the jest of what i'm saying (I hope).

[Annoyed]

Yeah, I believe the compression thing is the main reason that the sites use FLAC instead of the other lossless formats.

It doesn't matter to me. It's all lossless. I guess I would rather use FLAC though because of the compression.

[grimms]

And to add to the above. EAC with Flac is the ultimate achievement when using the right ripping setting in EAC. Also configuring the Flac encoder frontend with EAC as well. Google for plenty of tuts to help you all achieve those settings.

[Quylui]

WavPack will become a viable alternative when it's more widely supported. There is no distinct advantage that I can see FLAC has over WavPack other than widespread support.

http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index....ess_comparison

[dunson]

Great link! FLAC pwns

[kukushka]

sorry, did not study too deeply this question, maybe someone will correct me, i've read that flac is limited on multichannel audio, can't compress 5.1 24/96... while wavpack can

..ps what are the best tools for batch transcoding-tagging for lossless? and are there some program to auto correct file string in .cue file from .wav to .ape if it's been compressed?

[grimms]

WavPack will become a viable alternative when it's more widely supported. There is no distinct advantage that I can see FLAC has over WavPack other than widespread support.

http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index....ess_comparison

The whole problem is that wavpack has only limited hardware support and good software as flac has very good hardware and software support. until wavpack is widely supported which I doubt it will be unless people start listening to CD's made in 5.1 surround sound (Which won't happen for another 5-10 years or so, if it even happens). Flac will reign supreme.