What lossless audio formats have you played with?

[MetalMusicAddict]

I will at some point soon archive my 1200 or so CDs. Those TB drives will come down and Ill just dedicate a drive to it. Ill be going with FLAC. Its the mp3 of lossless to me.

I know there are other formats though. So I wondering what others you have used? Do the others give better compression than FLAC?


Free Lossless Audio Codec (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Lossless_Audio_Codec) - FLAC
Shorten (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shorten) - SHN
Monkey's Audio (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey%27s_Audio) - Monkey's Audio APE
WavPack (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WavPack) - WavPack lossless
Apple Lossless (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Lossless) - ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec)
WMA Lossless (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Media_Audio_Lossless) - Windows Media Lossless
Direct Stream Transfer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_Stream_Transfer) - DST
Meridian Lossless Packing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meridian_Lossless_Packing) - MLP
RealPlayer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RealPlayer) - RealAudio Lossless
TTA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TTA_%28codec%29)- True Audio Lossless

[ynnhoj]

the only format on your list i've worked with is flac. it worked more than well enough, so i never had a reason to look into anything else. but now you've given me some things to read about (need to satisfy my curiosity) :-k

[MetalMusicAddict]

Cool :)

[PatrickMay16]

In my experience, flac is a great deal of overkill. Even with the most incredible headphones, it's very hard to tell any difference between 320kbps and flac.

And for stuff that you'll be playing back on portable devices, car noise or whatever will drown out a lot of stuff, so you can just use 96kbps mp3 there.

I would advise you; save yourself some disk space and just encode your stuff as 320kbps mp3/ogg.

[MetalMusicAddict]

In my experience, flac is a great deal of overkill. Even with the most incredible headphones, it's very hard to tell any difference between 320kbps and flac.

And for stuff that you'll be playing back on portable devices, car noise or whatever will drown out a lot of stuff, so you can just use 96kbps mp3 there.

I would advise you; save yourself some disk space and just encode your stuff as 320kbps mp3/ogg.

I agree but this is off-topic.

[cowlip]

I have used flac and shn. SHN is harder these days on Linux because playback support is lacking

[MetalMusicAddict]

I have a show or two in SHN but I havnt tried to play them in linux. A little more on Shorten HERE (http://www.etree.org/shncom.html).

"The Shorten source code is the property of SoftSound Limited and has been made available to the general public for non-commercial use." <- Too bad. Is there a way to play them in gnu/linux?

Heres a Lossless comparison (http://www.bobulous.org.uk/misc/lossless_audio_2006.html) chart I just found.

[maniacmusician]

Flac is pretty good, and of course it's overkill, but I would probably use it if I could afford to. I'll probably not have that much space for a long long time.

If you use FLAC, make sure you go for level 8 compression. It takes longer but the difference in MB's starts to add up after a while.

As for the other formats you mentioned, I think that APE is pretty good; I haven't played much with it though. I'm not a big fan of any of the others. SHN has proven to be annoying for me in the past, and whenever I came across it, I would just convert to WAV and then to FLAC.

[RandomJoe]

I use FLAC. Have all my CDs on a server in back. I don't have a massive CD collection, but there's around 18GB right now.

Is it overkill? Maybe. But it allows me to recreate the original CD without any missing bits, or generate a new set of compressed files should a new format / bitrate / what-have-you arise. The first time around, I just ripped to MP3, 128kbps I think. (Storage space was at a premium back then...) The encoder wasn't the hottest thing around, and I could certainly tell the difference between the original and the MP3 but it wasn't highly objectionable. But then I wanted to make a smaller set to cram more time into my MP3 player for bike rides. Reencoding those 128kbps files sounded horrid. So I had to re-rip the original CDs - this time making sure I kept the original available for future use. (Which has happened a couple of times since.)

Besides, my network's plenty fast - I can stream the FLACs just fine so I'm not worried... The DVDs on the server take FAR more space than the CDs! (Storage space is no longer an issue...!)

I did briefly consider some of the other formats quite some time ago, but FLAC was the easiest one to work with in Linux and I've never had reason to switch.

[MetalMusicAddict]

If you use FLAC, make sure you go for level 8 compression. It takes longer but the difference in MB's starts to add up after a while.

Actually I think --best is the better setting. That way no matter what version you use your always getting the best it can do. Which seems the whole point to a lossless codec.

Why would you want less compression? :)

Heres my Grip FLAC setting: -V --best -T TITLE=%n -T ALBUM=%d -T TRACKNUMBER=%t -T ARTIST=%a -T GENRE=%G -T DATE=%y -o %m %w

[cowlip]

I have a show or two in SHN but I havnt tried to play them in linux. A little more on Shorten HERE (http://www.etree.org/shncom.html).

"The Shorten source code is the property of SoftSound Limited and has been made available to the general public for non-commercial use." <- Too bad. Is there a way to play them in gnu/linux?

Heres a Lossless comparison (http://www.bobulous.org.uk/misc/lossless_audio_2006.html) chart I just found.

There's a shorten plugin for XMMS/Beep here: http://rarewares.org/ http://rarewares.org/debian-packages-audio.html http://www.rarewares.org/debian/packages/unstable/ http://www.rarewares.org/debian.html

xmms-shn
shntool
shorten

It used to work if I put it in a gstreamer or xine plugin directory as well on older versions of Ubuntu, but now doesn't so Rhythmbox, Banshee, k3b etc won't play/burn my shns!

[juxtaposed]

In my experience, flac is a great deal of overkill. Even with the most incredible headphones, it's very hard to tell any difference between 320kbps and flac.

If you encode to lossy, what happens in a few years when lossy codecs are alot better? The music you have is stuck in an old lossy format.

Go with lossless, you can just reencode it to a better lossless codec later (absolutly no loss of quality when going lossless - lossless). Then, if needed, encode to lossy for an mp3 player...


SHN is harder these days on Linux because playback support is lacking

And Shorten is old and can't support tags.


Actually I think --best is the better setting.

--best is level 8, I think.


I know there are other formats though. So I wondering what others you have used? Do the others give better compression than FLAC?

FLAC - Good, standard. Decent compression.
Shorten - Old, no internal tag support, bad seeking, though fast encoding, and live show traders seem to like it.
Monkeys Audio - Amazing compression, but it is slow at higher levels. Still, great compression on the fast level. One bad thing is that it's closed source.
WavPack - Open source, better compression then flac, just as fast as flac, though not as much support. Faster encoding.
Apple Lossless - Probably decent, but its one of those things people who use iTunes are kinda forced into using.
WMA Lossless - Ewwww, yuck, microsoft.

I personally use FLAC and WavPack. I find WavPack better, but it doesn't have that great support on linux. Other lossless codecs to check out are TAK and OptimFrog. I think TAK is closed source, but the author is planning to open the source up sometime. Check hydrogenaudio.org for details about it.

I personally use FLAC and WavPack.

[BuffaloX]

Wavpack is the best format, from a tecnical point of view.
Fault tolerant, multi channel, bit and rate flexible. and other stuff I don't remember.
Both flac and ape (monkey audio) lacks some of the features in wavpack.
Most other formats are either obsolete or proprietary.

Flac is the ultimate for widespread support, but wavpack is getting there. :)

The advantage of lossless is ability to change formats without concern for loosing the quality.
With lossy formats you get the combined loss from both formats when converting.

[BuffaloX]

Oh I forgot,
320 kb lossy formats sound great, but Lossy formats especially mp3 have a tendency to ruin surround encoded audio. If you have enough HD space, don't bother with lossy formats. IMO.

[coder_]

I use FLAC for the CDs with nice sound and high quality OGGs for the rest.

I just ripped Rush's Snakes & Arrows to FLAC. YEAH, RUSH! This album _rocks_.

[Bloodfen Razormaw]

I've had flac and Monkey Audio. The later is obnoxious, and I only had them while converting them to flac. The compression was about equal, but it was only a single CD image, and since Monkey Audio is not free software it is not widely available in Linux repositories, while flac is very widely supported.

[Rhapsody]

I use FLAC, for various reasons.

It's fully free software.
It can be put in Ogg or Matroska containers.
It has much better compression than Shorten.
It has much better hardware and software support than WavPack.
It has pretty much all the features you could need or want.
It's fast to encode and faster to decode.

I only use it on stuff that I intend to reburn to CD though, so I can avoid the generational loss inherent to lossy formats.

[stchman]

I will at some point soon archive my 1200 or so CDs. Those TB drives will come down and Ill just dedicate a drive to it. Ill be going with FLAC. Its the mp3 of lossless to me.

I know there are other formats though. So I wondering what others you have used? Do the others give better compression than FLAC?


Free Lossless Audio Codec (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Lossless_Audio_Codec) - FLAC
Shorten (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shorten) - SHN
Monkey's Audio (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey%27s_Audio) - Monkey's Audio APE
WavPack (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WavPack) - WavPack lossless
Apple Lossless (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Lossless) - ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec)
WMA Lossless (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Media_Audio_Lossless) - Windows Media Lossless
Direct Stream Transfer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_Stream_Transfer) - DST
Meridian Lossless Packing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meridian_Lossless_Packing) - MLP
RealPlayer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RealPlayer) - RealAudio Lossless
TTA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TTA_%28codec%29)- True Audio Lossless


I agree, FALC is way overkill. If you are so worried about loss than just rip the CDs to .wav files. I have tried to tell the difference between .flac and LAME mp3 encoding and .ogg encoding

I guess if I had a $40,000 pair of speakers and the HIGHEST end audio setup / CD player I MIGHT be able to tell a couple % difference.

[stchman]

In my experience, flac is a great deal of overkill. Even with the most incredible headphones, it's very hard to tell any difference between 320kbps and flac.

And for stuff that you'll be playing back on portable devices, car noise or whatever will drown out a lot of stuff, so you can just use 96kbps mp3 there.

I would advise you; save yourself some disk space and just encode your stuff as 320kbps mp3/ogg.

Can you vary the bit rate encoding in OGG? I thought it was fixed.

[MetalMusicAddict]

Can you vary the bit rate encoding in OGG? I thought it was fixed.

.OGG is the container. Vorbis has always IIRC been variable bitrate. I never knew of it needing to be fixed. :-k

[juxtaposed]

Both flac and ape (monkey audio) lacks some of the features in wavpack.
Most other formats are either obsolete or proprietary.

Monkeys is proprietary.


The compression was about equal,

Monkeys always gave me considerably better compression then flac...


I agree, FALC is way overkill. If you are so worried about loss than just rip the CDs to .wav files.

What are you talking about?

WAV is always 1411Kbps (if its stereo), while i've had FLAC be anywhere between 400Kbps and 1100Kbps (average is 700-900 for me). There is a considerable ammount of space saved, and you can't tag WAV files.


I guess if I had a $40,000 pair of speakers and the HIGHEST end audio setup / CD player I MIGHT be able to tell a couple % difference.

Most people can tell the difference between 128Kbps MP3 easily if they know what to look (hear, but that doesn't sound right) for, while many can at higher bitrates.

However, you encode to some lossy format now, it will be obsolete in a few years. So will a lossless format, but you can easily reencode it to a better format (I converted alot of my FLACs from 1.1.2 to 1.1.4 awhile back, and allmost all my SHN files to WavPack and FLAC) with zero loss of quality (there is a big loss transcoding from lossy - lossy).


Can you vary the bit rate encoding in OGG? I thought it was fixed.

Vorbis does it with number settings, like q5, and it is variable bitrate.

[stchman]

Monkeys is proprietary.



Monkeys always gave me considerably better compression then flac...



What are you talking about?

WAV is always 1411Kbps (if its stereo), while i've had FLAC be anywhere between 400Kbps and 1100Kbps (average is 700-900 for me). There is a considerable ammount of space saved, and you can't tag WAV files.



Most people can tell the difference between 128Kbps MP3 easily if they know what to look (hear, but that doesn't sound right) for, while many can at higher bitrates.

However, you encode to some lossy format now, it will be obsolete in a few years. So will a lossless format, but you can easily reencode it to a better format (I converted alot of my FLACs from 1.1.2 to 1.1.4 awhile back, and allmost all my SHN files to WavPack and FLAC) with zero loss of quality (there is a big loss transcoding from lossy - lossy).



Vorbis does it with number settings, like q5, and it is variable bitrate.

You did not include the rest of the quote as I said the LAME mp3 encoding NOT 128Kbs encoding. Of course 128Kbs encoding is very lossy. LAME does not get that low unless there is near complete silence. I have encoded 320Kbs and LAME which varies but gets up near 256Kbs when the music is very busy and I cannot tell the difference.

I do have a what I think is a decent ear.

[juxtaposed]

You did not include the rest of the quote as I said the LAME mp3 encoding NOT 128Kbs encoding.

LAME can be 128Kbps. -V0 is 245 Kbps VBR, -V5 is 130Kbps.


Of course 128Kbs encoding is very lossy.

128Kbps (to me, and most others) sounds bad in MP3, but most people find 128Kbps Vorbis to be transparent (as in they can't tell the difference between it and the original).


LAME does not get that low unless there is near complete silence.

Depending on what you set it to.


I have encoded 320Kbs and LAME which varies but gets up near 256Kbs when the music is very busy and I cannot tell the difference.

Most lossy codecs are transparent at 320Kbps. But they are still lossy, and they can't be converted to another lossy format without loss of quality.

[kelvin spratt]

Now Now boys i certainly can hear the difference between lossy and non lossy formats but then i don't listen to much noise on my computer. I listen mainly to 24x96bit audio, or 24 96 mlp, i think wav sounds lossy to analogue, flac and monkeys are close to way as for the rest they are total
junk like listening to a tin can that my opinion

[juxtaposed]

flac and monkeys are close to way

Do you mean close to WAV?

All lossless formats are lossless, they sound the exact same as the original.


i think wav sounds lossy to analogue,

Analogue is more lossy then digital, as there is more potential for loss, though some people like analogue better, as digital is just a digital representation of the sound.

[StSteven]

Analogue is more lossy then digital, as there is more potential for loss, though some people like analogue better, as digital is just a digital representation of the sound.

If you are going to give advice on audio formats, you should at least know the basics. The above statement is total garbage. In the common vernacular, lossy means less than 16-bit/44.1kHz. That is the CD standard. Lossy refers to not being able to recover every bit of that 16/44 wav. 24/96 has more data, and technically is less lossy than "lossless" 16/44. What is so wrong with the statement above is that analogue is all of the information. There are no samples. It is what "lossy" gets further away from. You are trying to get back to the analogue. That is the only thing you can hear. You don't hear digital, you hear analogue. Everything is converted back to analogue before you hear it (thus the DAC in the computer or player). In the sense of lossy/lossless, analogue is perfect.

As for those of you who can't hear the difference, keep riping your cd's and keep them for yourself. If you ever encounter serious live recording traders, that lossy junk won't be tolerated. I can hear the difference easily, and my system is good, but no where near 40K.

Flac is best right now, because it is well supported. Shn is fine, but obsolete. The reason that the concert recording traders "like" it, is because it is so ubiquitous that it is hard to get away from. No new sources are being encoded in shn; they are all being encoded into flac.

[juxtaposed]

In the common vernacular, lossy means less than 16-bit/44.1kHz.

Lossy means whenever the signal is changed/info is lost. You loose nothing if you convert WAV to WavPack, but you do when converting anything to a lossy format like MP3.


Everything is converted back to analogue before you hear it (thus the DAC in the computer or player). In the sense of lossy/lossless, analogue is perfect.

I'm talking about how editing/doing stuff with audio is lossless in digital, but lossy in analogue. For example, if you tape a show or something and run it into the back of your soundcard in the Line In slot then there will be a degradation of quality.


Shn is fine, but obsolete. The reason that the concert recording traders "like" it, is because it is so ubiquitous that it is hard to get away from. No new sources are being encoded in shn; they are all being encoded into flac.

Alot the dead shows from bt.etree are in shorten, which is annoying.

When will traders get with the times and encode their shorten to flac or wavpack before uploading... And use tags.

Wow, they're really behind the times :P

[BuffaloX]

WavPack is the best overall technology wise, and the most versatile.
Flac is widely supported, and is quite good overall. ( features, speed, compression )

Ape sucks, The format changes making it incompatible with older decoders. Huge problem if decoder is not upgraded for your favorite apps, and it lacks features like error correction, streaming, multichannel, scalable bit-rate. Only strength is slightly better compression in some cases, It postulates to be fast, but in my experience Flac is much faster.

If the apps you use support wavpack It's an extremely cool format.
If you are unsure which to use, FLAC would be your best bet.

PS
All the other formats suck so bad, that I cannot believe you would seriously consider them.

[BuffaloX]

In the common vernacular, lossy means less than 16-bit/44.1kHz. That is the CD standard. Lossy refers to not being able to recover every bit of that 16/44 wav. 24/96 has more data, and technically is less lossy than "lossless" 16/44.


Lossy means whenever the signal is changed/info is lost. You loose nothing if you convert WAV to WavPack, but you do when converting anything to a lossy format like MP3.


Sounds a bit like the "sound engineer" vs the "programmer". :p

As far as I can tell, you are both right, but from different standpoints.
24/96 audio is much more than the human ear can recognize, thus to the human ear you have less loss, compared to CD quality, and so it is more true to the original audio source.
24/96 recordings can loose a lot, and still stay at a higher quality than 16/44

nevertheless even an inaudible loss is loss, and may affect surround encoding or hidden data.
Both on standard CD quality and enhanced 24/96 rates.

In audio compression, the term is solely about the latter part, namely being able to compress, and decompress to the exact same data, as was given to the compressor. Thus you have the exact same wave as output, as the input given to the compressor, disregarding if it's 8 bit 11 Khz or 32 bit 192 Khz.
If the compressor can do that it's lossless, if one bit fails it's lossy.
Lossless or lossy has NOTHING to do with anybody being able to hear it or not. Simply if it's an EXACT bit for bit copy.

[mozetti]

So, what apps do you guys use to decode your shorten files? I've got a ton of them and want to re-encode them to flac. I'd rather just do it in Ubuntu instead of using my Windows laptop to do it.

[juxtaposed]

Sounds a bit like the "sound engineer" vs the "programmer".

That's about right (with the mindset though, i'm not a programmer).


Lossless or lossy has NOTHING to do with anybody being able to hear it or not. Simply if it's an EXACT bit for bit copy.

Right.


So, what apps do you guys use to decode your shorten files? I've got a ton of them and want to re-encode them to flac. I'd rather just do it in Ubuntu instead of using my Windows laptop to do it.

On windows I used foobar2000, but they arn't planning a linux version as far as I know. It was the very best audio player/encoder/tagger/everything.