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i have rips of my CD collection in wav format but think it would be better to have them compressed so they take up less space. don't want to use MP3 or any other lossy compression. so is FLAC the way to go? i read some time ago that FLAC is better supported than other formats e.g. WV on portable music players. on windows i use foobar which plays FLAC.
I asked a similar question a while back:
http://forums.hexus.net/audio-visual...ss-format.html
I hope the thread is useful!!
FLAC is lossless, thus provides the highest possible sound quality. It also exceeds WAV in being album to embed metadata(album art and so forth). However, you pay a large price in file size 500mb to 1gig per album and without high quality gear and sharp ears you'd really struggle to tell the difference between it and say something like 320kps/VBR MP3's. Also, it may not be compatible with your current MP3 player so check before you start ripping.
It really comes down to personal taste. Compare with your own gear and think about how much you're willing to spend on hard drives and backups, although price is an ever lessening problem with 3TB drives now available for £100ish. I used to be quite the fan of FLAC but nowadays. I'm happy with 320kps MP3 and similar, the quality is absolutely fine and it's far less hassle, particularly as my music collection has grown.
If you want more detailed info I highly recommend the hydrogen audio wiki: http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Main_Page
I ripped a lot of CDs and used Level 8 FLAC encodes,and the album size varied between 300MB to 600MB. FLAC is not lossy and you can convert it to other formats easily. I also tend to prefer AAC over MP3 if you are using lossy compression,at least from my own listening tests.
i was using WV but moved over to FLAC. i know of one portable music player that supports FLAC but not WV.
I'd suggest archival of FLAC, so you can convert it to whatever format you wish. Decent music players even support OGG and other well compressed file types nowadays, which will generally have a better quality than MP3 and AAC, look into it.
I'll not bother with the standard lossless vs lossy as you've ripped to wav so know what you're doing.Quote:
Originally Posted by northernpcgeek
As already mentioned, the meta data is a useful addition over wav. The main other one is checksumming - it's handy being able to get foobar to run a check against your collection once in a while, though flac isn't as good here as some of the other lossless formats though.
I started ripping my collection in the late 90s - went lossless a few months after playing with wm and mp3. Used monkeys audio for a long time and switched to flac about 4 years ago. I've just decided to covert all my single file flac/cue rips to one track per file flac given that's what stuff is now delivered in from the (decent) download stores and my purpose for ripping to cd images (to re-burn a copy of a lost disc) will now never happen ...
As I've stated elsewhere, my iRiver H120 MP3 player/recorder can play FLAC if the alternative OS is installed - Rockbox.
This may also apply to many other players so check yours out.