whats your favourite "lossless" compression method for music files

[weebroonieuk]

as the title suggests what ones do you use now or think is the best

info about how much they compress average file sizes per song and pros and cons of each codec would help

[DsW]

Just happens to be my area of interest at the moment...

I'm using FLAC to archive my CD collection. Compression isn't as good as something like Shorten but it's still pretty good. A major plus for FLAC is that it's gaining a lot of hardware and software support, not to mention being the choice for a lot of people.

I also looked at Wavpack, but this takes ages to compress (at highest settings, and compared to FLAC) and overall it only saved me on average 10MB per album so the time tradeoff wasn't really worth it. It's also not as well supported as FLAC.. but that may change.

The following thread provides a comparison table of the formats and a bit of discussion thereof. The table also gets updated as new information comes to light.

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/...howtopic=29655

[weebroonieuk]

cool a decent read there thanks ! ive already been playing with flac via db poweramp i had to convert songs so my vodaphone raped nokia 6630 could get some decent ringtones and music on it

think i will hunt out what "mp3" players support aac which is flac am i right ?

[DsW]

cool a decent read there thanks ! ive already been playing with flac via db poweramp i had to convert songs so my vodaphone raped nokia 6630 could get some decent ringtones and music on it

think i will hunt out what "mp3" players support aac which is flac am i right ?

To be honest if you're just using it for ringtones and music on your phone then lossless is overkill. If, however you want to archive your CD collection then lossless is worth it. You can then create MP3s or whatever from the lossless files if and when you need it.

The best tool for ripping CDs to a lossless codec is something like EAC in conjunction with AccurateRip.

BTW - AAC is not FLAC. AAC is a lossy codec with licence fees. FLAC is a lossless opensource codec.

http://www.apple.com/mpeg4/aac/

http://flac.sourceforge.net/

A couple of MP3 players support FLAC - the Rio Karma is one that springs to mind.

[unrealrocks]

As far as Lossless goes - FLAC is my favorite, with a patch practically any player will accept it

[këö¬t]

i use flac here on the highest compression setting. very handy to have a full quality copy of all my cds which i can quickly make into any bitrate mp3 with a few clicks.

[daniel_owen_uk]

Gonna have to go with everyone else and say FLAC.

[DsW]

As far as Lossless goes - FLAC is my favorite, with a patch practically any player will accept it

I guess you're talking about plugins for software players (e.g. Winamp)? Yeah, there is quite a lot of software support for FLAC.

As far as hardware DAPs go (e.g. iRiver), if it doesn't currently support FLAC then the only way to make it play is to convert it to a format that it does support but, as previously stated, that process is pretty straightforward. FLAC is the 'master' copy from which you can encode virtually any other format.

The WavPack codec can actually output both a lossless and lossy version of a track at the same time (called 'hybrid mode'), which can be handy if your DAP doesn't support the lossless format. You can, however achieve the same with any other codec using a program called Mareo and something like EAC.

[weebroonieuk]

cool much learned here ! i thought flac was a nickname for aac aswell ! , only used the aac for my phones ringtones so far so not alot id rather get around the way vodaphone stops me useing what i want an use mp3's and when i get a bigger memory card for it i can fit flac music on it

although im kind of swaying to the sound of a dedicated mp3 player for my music now , seen some that also support dab radio aswell , could be a new thread ....

[geezerone]

Don't mean to hijack this thread but I am trying to upload a ringtone (mp3 and aac) into a nokia 6230i but just says not enough memory but there is over 8MB?

Any ideas?

[jackvdbuk]

how big is the file?

[kushtibari]

Don't mean to hijack this thread

Don't think anybody will mind after 2 years

[geezerone]

how big is the file?

Approximately 800KB

Didn't realise thread was very old but doesn't matter lol

[toolsong]

As far as hardware DAPs go (e.g. iRiver), if it doesn't currently support FLAC then the only way to make it play is to convert it to a format that it does support

Not quite: http://www.rockbox.org

I also use FLAC with my iAudio X5L. It supports it natively like the iRiver but I run Rockbox anyway for better gapless playback.

Recently put Rockbox on my housemate's iPod Mini and it is fantastic, he is over the moon.

[Daneel]

I was using monkey audio, from this point on I'll probably use flac or wavpak

[Lourdes]

FLAC, it may not be the 'best' but it's by far the most popular with more softwre and portables supporting it than other projects.