FLAC is fantastic!

Yep, FLAC is the best IMO. Every album I own is ripped to it, and they sound excellent :)
 
i just bought some axioms m22ti's and they very quickly found all the lacking sound qualities of Mp3's. I love FLACS, they are amazing, but i do need to invest in more harddrive space, cause when i download one album of FLAC i could of had at least 4 albums on MP3! I didnt know what i was missing with flacs though until i found some good speakers, i cant say better things about these axioms.
 
Hopefully in the future I will be picking up 2 250's or one 400 Gig'er. FLAC kills drive space, but its worth it.
 
I'm already sold on lossless, but what is the advantage of using EAC and converting to FLAC instead of like Windows media player to convert to lossless WMA?
 
GotNoRice said:
I'm already sold on lossless, but what is the advantage of using EAC and converting to FLAC instead of like Windows media player to convert to lossless WMA?
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EAC is good because it has better data recovery algorithms than WMP does, resulting in a better copy of the CD on disk if it's scratched or what have you. It can take a long time (sometimes a *lot* longer) to rip the CD, but you get a bit-perfect copy even off old media. As for WMA lossless versus flac, flac is portable across different platforms, and it's optimized for easy decoding. It takes even less cpu to decode than mp3s in my tests.

 
what would be considered good enough speakers to start using flac? i have a receiver w/ some onix speakers. i'm running digital out so all the converting is done on my receiver. would i hear the benefits of flac?
 
Xeero said:
what would be considered good enough speakers to start using flac? i have a receiver w/ some onix speakers. i'm running digital out so all the converting is done on my receiver. would i hear the benefits of flac?
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Take a couple of CDs and rip em to flac and mp3 and see if you can tell the difference. I think it's hard to identify a certain point where flac matters since everyone's ears (and minds) are different.
 
My normal response for is Lossless really needed.
Reasons to use Lossless
1. Better sound quality (however this can be hard to notice against well encoded lossy formats and poor equipment)
2. NEVER have to rip your CDs again! This is the biggest reason for me and should be the biggest factor for anyone planning to rip alot of CDs. You can ALWAYS transcode lossless formats to other formats without incurring a generation loss.
3. If the format you have does not work with application XYZ, transcode your lossless to whatever format works with it. This is what I do with my collection to put it on my Ipod, I wrote a script to transcode my flac to mp3. Their is even an app Anapod that will do this on-the-fly however I imagine that would greatly increase sync times.
4. Works as a true backup copy of your CDs. Should your CDs ever become damaged, you have what should be an exact copy.

Note: Better sound quality should not be most people main reason for using a lossless format. Most people in a blind test will not be able to tell the difference between a lossless format and a well encoded lossy format on average sound gear. Well encoded example would be using lame --alt-preset standard or better lame --alt-preset extreme. Now if you have high-end audio gear and a nice quiet environment then you may be able to tell.
 
^Some might argue that LAME.EXE is the best encoder with the proper settings. Well it is better in some ways:

1) It records to a high quality MP3 format, which some might say is just as good as FLAC - I disagree.

2) It can be directly uploaded to all MP3 players, FLAC cannot.

3) It takes up less space, but it's all relative to the amount of HD space you might have.

On another note with EAC which I'm not so crazy about is that it extracts the data to a loss-less wav file then compresses it onto FLAC so you need more space for both the wav and FLAC. Afterwoods it does delete the .WAV if you so choose.

Some might also say that Monkey's Audio is better, but FLAC is faster and has a 1.5 to 1 ratio which is very good.

Regular MP3's such as 192kbps are about a 5 to 1 ratio, much worse.

Combining Re-mastered cd's and FLAC are incredible.
 
I've been experimenting with kernal streaming to 96hz with Foobar2000. I only have one album in flac but comparing it to the same album in 320kbs mp3 or even ogg it sounds much more open and clear. With my new receiver + speakers the compression is really noticeable with 192kbs mp3s. Makes me wish all my MP3's were just in ogg format.
 
FLAC is good but I use APE, I like the UI in APE better and it took 2 seconds to set up, just picked high APE compression in the EAC options after I installed APE.
 
i use FLAC but i dont a good audiophile standard system yet. atleast i got all my music ready is lossless :)
 
Svperstar said:
FLAC is good but I use APE, I like the UI in APE better and it took 2 seconds to set up, just picked high APE compression in the EAC options after I installed APE.
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You based your encoding format on a UI? FLAC can be used with many applications, it is not really meant to be used by itself.
 
Qwertyman: Thanks for the collection of links. Good stuff.

GotNoRice: WMP employs very bad algorithms in my opinion. It will misread a CD and just keep on going without a worry. It cares so little, it won't even inform you that anything happened (I don't know if the program even knows anything happened.) This can range in effects from the negligible (not a bit-perfect copy which will probably only bother the perfectionists) to severe (cutting tracks in the wrong place so that the beginning/end of a song is put on the previous/next track). Also, it is very poor at getting any 'quality' data off of a damaged disc. And why support Windows anyway? They do not produce professional grade audio gear. And as mentioned, WMA format is platform dependent.


One thing to mention is that EAC only attempts to extract a bit-perfect copy. It is not guaranteed. This mainly concerns damaged discs. EAC will make many read attempts over a single area (which can cause the slowness mentioned). However, in the event of a failure it will inform the user and keep going (depending on how you have it configured). Once it is finished you can examine the 'problem areas' and decide how to handle the data. This is just a clarification of terms, because I've seen EAC recover an amazing amount of audio from a severely damaged disc. EAC is just very humble in its approach (if you can apply human attributes to software).
 
FLAC is more widely supportted than Apple Lossless.

FLAC is an open codec, Apple Lossless is not.

FLAC will never be restricted by DRM.
 
m1abram said:
You based your encoding format on a UI? FLAC can be used with many applications, it is not really meant to be used by itself.
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Yes I realize this, I listen to .APE in Winamp. I picked because I like the UI it gives when you look at songs in Winamp, and because it creates smaller files. While HDs are getting a lot bigger it is still nice to have that tad bit smaller compression.
 
You can play FLAC in winamp, there is a plugin for it.

And you probably have seen Foobar2000, I think it is far better program than Winamp. Winamp use to be my favorite until I found foobar2000.
 
m1abram said:
You can play FLAC in winamp, there is a plugin for it.
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Yeah I have FLAC files on my computer too, I just perfer to rip in .APE.

m1abram said:
And you probably have seen Foobar2000, I think it is far better program than Winamp. Winamp use to be my favorite until I found foobar2000.
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Foobar is ok but I like Winamp more, I am a big fan of the setup in Winamp, and I like the vis plugins, the whole "if it aint broke don't fix it" thing. I tried Foobar for a bit but went back.
 
Svperstar said:
Foobar is ok but I like Winamp more, I am a big fan of the setup in Winamp, and I like the vis plugins, the whole "if it aint broke don't fix it" thing. I tried Foobar for a bit but went back.
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Hey I agree use what you like. Just so you know Winamp is not getting much developer support anymore. In fact what I have heard is they pretty much no longer have any developer support for the product over at AOL. So you may want to consider other options soon. I believe, not sure on this that one of the original developers of winamp is the guy that started foobar2000.
 
Does anyone by any chance have a link to creating a cd that tests the offset of your drive? I had the link looked at it and didn't save it. I delt with putting masking tape on a cd and marking it with a permanent marker and such.

Edit: This link helps, but was not what i was looking for: www.accuraterip.com
 
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