Converting WAV to FLAC which FLAC Level is sufficient

[Snarfie]

My HDD becomes a bit cramp. Have a lot of CD's ripped to WAV files. Could creat some serieus space if i convert this WAV files to FLAC. question now is which FLAC level is small enough to have the same quality as the original WAV files. I could choose from 0 to 8. 5 is standard. Most WAV files are ripped from cd so 16 bit WAV files if i convert to FLAC 24 bit would that have any influence of the quality of te file (16 bit better than 24 bit??) Any preference to convert it with Foobar2000, Audacity, Windows media player or any other converter?.

 

[Bamboszek]

Every FLAC file is loseless, thus same quality as WAV. There are small diffrencec between compression level in FLAC. The bigger is number from range 0-8 the compression is better but requires more processing power for playback. Diffrence in size is neglible. Default level is 5 and I would suggest choosing that to ensure maximum compatibility across software and hardware players.

 

[Veri]

There is no quality difference whatsoever, the FLAC setting is used to set the compression level.

 

[BillG]

Default level is 5 and I would suggest choosing that to ensure maximum compatibility across software and hardware players.

The compatibility will be the same regardless of the compression level used. What will increase with the level are the computational resources required to compress.

 

[Snarfie]

Every FLAC file is loseless, thus same quality as WAV. There are small diffrencec between compression level in FLAC. The bigger is number from range 0-8 the compression is better but requires more processing power for playback. Diffrence in size is neglible. Default level is 5 and I would suggest choosing that to ensure maximum compatibility across software and hardware players.

Most of my WAV files are ripped from cd so 16 bit WAV files if i convert to FLAC 24 bit would that have any influence of the quality of the file (16 bit better than 24 bit??)

 

[BillG]

Most of my WAV files are ripped from cd so 16 bit WAV files if i convert to FLAC 24 bit would that have any influence of the quality of te file (16 bit better than 24 bit??)

You'll gain nothing by doing so. It won't magically increase the dynamic range of the source material.

 

[Bamboszek]

The compatibility will be the same regardless of the compression level used. What will increase with the level are the computational resources regarded to compress.

Not really. Today probably everything would handle level 8 without issues. Back in the days some portable players struggled with higher level FLAC. Anyway, I would stick to 5.

Most of my WAV files are ripped from cd so 16 bit WAV files if i convert to FLAC 24 bit would that have any influence of the quality of te file (16 bit better than 24 bit??)

You will gain nothing more than wasted HDD space

 

[Snarfie]

You'll gain nothing by doing so. It won't magically increase the dynamic range of the source material.

Thanx

 

[Snarfie]

Not really. Today probably everything would handle level 8 without issues. Back in the days some portable players struggled with higher level FLAC. Anyway, I would stick to 5.

You will gain nothing more than wasted HDD space

Thanx

 

[Cosmik]

I think someone needs to stress the idea behind FLAC compression:

It is no different from zipping a text document. The source audio file is a sequence of numbers that is no different from, say, a Microsoft Word document. FLAC compression (as opposed to MP3 and MQA which are lossy) merely removes redundancy in the numbers by, for example, substituting a token for patterns that might be repeating. Upon replay, the original numbers are re-substituted in place of the token.

Thus, upon replay, a FLAC file is an exact duplicate of the original audio; no better, no worse. There's no psychoacoustics involved, no assumptions, no compromises. The only issue is the small space advantage you might gain by giving the PC more time to do the compression, but this does not change the data in any way.

 

[BillG]

Back in the days some portable players struggled with higher level FLAC. Anyway, I would stick to 5.

When? Like a decade ago? Hahahah!

 

[maty]

How to make the best FLAC. Convert, recoder and CD rip.

https://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=157417.0

WAV 16 bits. FLAC 0 1024 kbps is the best option.

The information is the same, either FLAC 0 or 8, but the lower CPU load for decompression generates less noise, interference, jitter or whatever. Years ago, with my second system much less optimized, that I am able to differentiate between different degrees of compression, as I left record in some notes in my blog.

I guess the vast majority will be unable, as they are with MP3 320 kbps (LAME) vs FLAC 16/44 and ... but that is another discussion.

WAV vs FLAC 0 I am unable to differentiate, as expected.

The increase in size is very little, so just in case ...

 

[PierreV]

Thus, upon replay, a FLAC file is an exact duplicate of the original audio; no better, no worse. There's no psychoacoustics involved, no assumptions, no compromises.

and no pink jacket involved either!

 

[Veri]

The information is the same, either FLAC 0 or 8, but the lower CPU load for decompression generates less noise, interference, jitter or whatever.

Would love to see someone debunk this once and for all

 

[Vincent Kars]

FLAC uses linear prediction.
The advantage is that the prediction can be written as a couple of coefficients. They can be stored using very little space. The bad news is that there is nothing linear about audio. Hence there will be a residue. Store the coefficients + residue in a file and the decoder can reconstruct the original signal.

The “compression” level of FLAC is the amount of resources FLAC is allowed to spend on finding the best possible linear prediction. Obvious, the better this prediction, the smaller the residue.
However this will affect most of all the amount of CPU used when encoding.
At decoding time (playback), there is no search needed for an optimal solution. The decoder simply calculates the linear prediction using the coefficients and add the residue to it.
As FLAC uses FIR Linear prediction for its highest compression level, there is still a small performance penalty at playback time compared with e.g. level 0.

So a higher compression level will most of all affect encoding time and to a far lesser extend affect decoding time.
On todays CPU’s you will probably have a hard time to measure the difference between level 0 and level 8 even when encoding.
I/O I expect to be the limiting factor, not the CPU.

 

[simbloke]

Would love to see someone debunk this once and for all

Yes please. With the number of processes running on even a minimal custom Linux install I don't see how the compression level of a FLAC file would make much, if any, difference.

Decoding FLAC has been trivial for many years.

 

[Cosmik]

I just found that a stereo wav file of some 1960s pop compresses from 8.5MB to 6.3MB if you zip it, or 5.2MB if you tar.xz it.

 

[maty]

Intel i5 4460

But I appreciate the difference for years, with different operating systems, CPU (AMD and Intel) and hard. I do not know the reason. The CPU are more things apart from the ALU.

I am the first stranger, especially with the power of the current CPU, but I can not deny that I appreciate the difference. It bothers me a lot to ignore the cause. Not only do they sound different but in FLAC or it sounds better, as it happens with WAV. Being identical the information something must happen during the decompression so that some appreciate the difference.

 

[zermak]

I just found that a stereo wav file of some 1960s pop compresses from 8.5MB to 6.3MB if you zip it, or 5.2MB if you tar.xz it.

There are plenty of ways to compress a file and the results depend indeed on the compression algorithm used and the type of data compressed. If you used standard zip I am pretty sure the deflate algorithm has been used while the LZMA2 algorithm has been used for the tar.xz file.

@maty I am very skeptical about it. If you can hear differences from WAV and FLAC it means that your audio equipment and mainly your hearing system can pick up GHz frequencies of the transistor in the CPU while decompressing the files: which is my opinion is impossible.

 

[maty]

My experience contradicts my/our theoretical knowledge but it is what it is. What do I gain by publicly defending an issue that goes against what most people experience? And that also I can not show with measurements. It is frustratingly and irritating to me and others.