FLAC Compression and what are you using

[Mike710]

Hi, hope the new year Is going well...

I just sat down and started to transfer my CD´s to my PC, I am using EAC (Exact Audio Copy) and well I am seeing how the program compresses to FLAC which Is how I want to store them to my PC for playback In Foobar2000, and on my DAP when needed.

I see data like 1004kbps which varies according to which track you play. I have EAC set up so It checks and test the track before copying and compressing to FLAC.

Is It worth compressing to FLAC, or should I just copy as WAV (original)? Are they any settings I should know about? What Is you´re preferred method and what app are you using?

Thanks

 

[aagstn]

I've used FLAC for 15 years or so and never noticed it sounding different from the CD. I rip with EAC on Windows or Freac on Mac using the default FLAC settings. It is a space consideration for me. I have about 1000 CDs I have ripped and try to keep it at a somewhat manageable size.

 

[fpitas]

FLAC is so-called lossless compression, nothing is lost (or gained) during the compression/ decompression.

FLAC - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[pavuol]

Why not to save some space, it costs just some CPU power and time. I use Freac as well, supports many settings and can handle batch tasks. Personally I prefer single song/single file output, unlike the whole album packed into single file.

 

[Martin]

I have several thousand CDs that I have ripped to FLAC over the years. FLAC is lossless and indistinguishable from WAV.

Someone on another forum years ago claimed they could hear differences between FLAC and WAV playback which he attributed to Foobar uncompressing the file during playback. He created a Foobar plugin that uncompresses FLAC to WAV before playback that he claimed eliminated the difference he was hearing. I cannot hear any difference but it was an interesting solution to a non-existent problem.

I chose FLAC years ago to save on disk space and I'm happy I did; I have 1.19TB in FLAC files.

I used to use EAC to rip CDs and Foobar for playback but now use JRiver for both. I use out of the box seettings and never had any issues with sound quality. I have a SanDisk Ultra Fit USB drive that I use for playback in our cars. I convert FLAC to 320kbps MP3 for that purpose.

Martin

 

[DJBonoBobo]

Don't use WAV, because it does not support tagging. FLAC is much more practical than WAV.

 

[DVDdoug]

I see data like 1004kbps which varies according to which track you play.

That seems a little high for CD audio which is 1411kbps uncompressed. But some tracks compress better than others. Or, is it 24-bits? It's always lossless bitrate is not an indication of quality.* There are compression settings 0-8.** With higher numbers the encoder "works harder" (and may take longer) and that should give you smaller files (lower bitrate).

Someone on another forum years ago claimed they could hear differences between FLAC and WAV playback which he attributed to Foobar uncompressing the file during playback. He created a Foobar plugin that uncompresses FLAC to WAV before playback that he claimed eliminated the difference he was hearing.

It's lossless so there is no difference unless something "goes wrong".

And it HAS to be decompressed to PCM (the same underlying format as regular WAV files) to play it. Compression is a lot like encryption and get garbage (pure noise) if you don't decode/decompress it.



* Except that a higher resolution file will have a higher bitrate. (A 24/96 FLAC will have a higher bitrate than a 16/44.1 FLAC.)

** IIRC, they've combined some of the compression settings so 5 & 6 may now be the same, or something like that.

 

[EdW]

I’ve used dBPowerAmp from Illustrate. Good error checking and album covers. Also batch processing of audio files, for example to create 320k files from your FLAC files for the car - just one click and your whole music collection is replicated at 320k. One of the few times I’ve seen all the cores on my CPU running flat out!

 

[audio_tony]

I just did a quick test.

I've got a 1kHz 24 bit test file that I converted form WAV to FLAC, and then FLAC back to WAV and..

sox 1k_24.wav 1k_24.wav.flac sox 1k_24.wav.flac 1k_24.wav.flac.wav

shasum 1k_24.wav 82fde1ac748d87a4cdd63f49b8a1ff2d12b675cc 1k_24.wav


shasum 1k_24.wav.flac.wav 82fde1ac748d87a4cdd63f49b8a1ff2d12b675cc 1k_24.wav.flac.wav

You'll note that the checksums are identical, which mean the file was unchanged during conversion.

 

[fieldcar]

Is It worth compressing to FLAC

Try comparing the FLAC and the WAV files with the Deltawave software. You'll get notified if the two files are bit perfect, and a ton of stats about the comparison. Also, you can play back the NULL comparison. Hint, the output will be perfect silence.

DeltaWave Audio Null Comparator | DeltaWave documentation

deltaw.org

Thanks to @pkane for developing this excellent software!

 

[FrantzM]

I just did a quick test.

I've got a 1kHz 24 bit test file that I converted form WAV to FLAC, and then FLAC back to WAV and..

sox 1k_24.wav 1k_24.wav.flac sox 1k_24.wav.flac 1k_24.wav.flac.wav

shasum 1k_24.wav 82fde1ac748d87a4cdd63f49b8a1ff2d12b675cc 1k_24.wav


shasum 1k_24.wav.flac.wav 82fde1ac748d87a4cdd63f49b8a1ff2d12b675cc 1k_24.wav.flac.wav

You'll note that the checksums are identical, which mean the file was unchanged during conversion.

QED


Quod Erat Demonstrandum :'That which was to be demonstrated'

Hi, hope the new year Is going well...

I just sat down and started to transfer my CD´s to my PC, I am using EAC (Exact Audio Copy) and well I am seeing how the program compresses to FLAC which Is how I want to store them to my PC for playback In Foobar2000, and on my DAP when needed.

I see data like 1004kbps which varies according to which track you play. I have EAC set up so It checks and test the track before copying and compressing to FLAC.

Is It worth compressing to FLAC, or should I just copy as WAV (original)? Are they any settings I should know about? What Is you´re preferred method and what app are you using?

Thanks

To answer your questions and tacking on what others have said.

Don't use .wav, no metadata. takes much more space than FLAC., which as you can see from the proof above, introduce no deterioration
Cut the album into multiple flac files with their *.cue files.. Corruption of files can happen on an HDD. This affects some files and this, randomly. when the albums in cut into multiple pieces it reduce the likelihood of losing the entire album.

Happy New Year!

Peace.

 

[Waxx]

I used EAC and Freeac, depending on the source. I had a lot of my vinyl recorded in wav in the past (did not trust mp3 when it came out) and set them to flac with freeac, and used EAC for cd ripping to flac (I got a few crates of cd's still upstair in my attic, all ripped to flac). There is no real difference in sound quality between both (i set them in the same way up), the difference is how they work (convenience) i think. That's why i use both each for what they do best (read: fastest).

 

[Repdetect]

I've ben use EAC on a PC as a preparation for downsizing. I have over 1600 cd's in FLAC (a few classical in WAV (just because) and have never had a problem. EAC is free and works well.

I would suggest that you consider creating a file from the cd booklets that are important to you, as I have discovered that the cd booklet info is not easily available elsewhere.

Some of the cd's that I have scanned have really interesting info on the artists..... and I have several reference books on jazz & jazz musicians that don't have that booklet info from the cd, especially info derived from the recording session.

I have a file of scanned booklets that I reference on a tablet when needed. This scan also provide you with cd covers that can't be found via EAC.

 

[SSS]

Used EAC for transfer my CD collection to disk as wav files. But there was problems to add the tags thus used another program to insert them. When downloading from streming service I use flac where the tags are added automatically right away. And storage size is saved. With my Laptop and Audirvana the decoding of flac is without any flaws. Sound is same like wav. Unfortunaely Audirvana needs the tags in order to build the index database. JRiver which I tried can work with the disk folder tree.

 

[Mike710]

Thank you all, really appreciate It!

It´s been very Informative, and yes you all have convinced me for sure. Since I have been away from my usual music listening In the past years, and now that I am back and see all the evolution and Innovation (to a point) that´s present, I had my doubts of course being a musician and just simply enjoying music as the music head I am I has to check In.

I have used/use LAC (lossless Audio Checker) which Is quite simple and straight forward, but I´ll surely check DeltaWave, thanks for the heads up!

My you all have a excellent...

Good care, and be safe...

Mike

 

[Brian Hall]

I had initially used the cd ripping capability of the DMP-A6. There were too many CDs it would not rip at all and whatever ID service they use could not get album art or other information for quite a few of the the ones it would rip. Good idea by Eversolo, but a bad implementation.

I cleared the ssd drive on the A6 and ripped all of my CDs with dBPowerAmp on a PC as lossless uncompressed flac. Didn't have any CDs that it wouldn't rip. I Have 2tb of storage space on the ssd drive installed in the A6 so didn't bother with compression.

It was fast and easy to copy the flac files to the ssd drive on the A6 using a usb disk drive.

 

[Mike710]

I had initially used the cd ripping capability of the DMP-A6. There were too many CDs it would not rip at all and whatever ID service they use could not get album art or other information for quite a few of the the ones it would rip. Good idea by Eversolo, but a bad implementation.

I cleared the ssd drive on the A6 and ripped all of my CDs with dBPowerAmp on a PC as lossless uncompressed flac. Didn't have any CDs that it wouldn't rip. I Have 2tb of storage space on the ssd drive installed in the A6 so didn't bother with compression.

It was fast and easy to copy the flac files to the ssd drive on the A6 using a usb disk drive.

Sorry, but Isn´t a FLAC file slightly compressed although lossless? What I mean Is how did you rip you´re CD´s to a uncompressed lossless FLAC file? It wouldn´t be a FLAC file then, or I misunderstood you´re process.

Cheers

 

[audio_tony]

Sorry, but Isn´t a FLAC file slightly compressed although lossless? What I mean Is how did you rip you´re CD´s to a uncompressed lossless FLAC file? It wouldn´t be a FLAC file then, or I misunderstood you´re process.

Cheers

There are 9 different levels of flac compression, 0 through 8, 0 being the least, 8 being the maximum.

The percentage of compression varies according to the music content.

Regardless of the chosen level, the music will always be compressed to some extent.

 

[EdW]

Sorry, but Isn´t a FLAC file slightly compressed although lossless? What I mean Is how did you rip you´re CD´s to a uncompressed lossless FLAC file? It wouldn´t be a FLAC file then, or I misunderstood you´re process.

Cheers

The important thing about FLAC is that the file is smaller than the wav file from which it is derived. The level of file size reduction depends on the FLAC level, more compression requiring a little more computation. But the recovered FLAC file will be always be an exact copy of the original wav - so the process is lossless.
FLAC compression relies on the fact that the data in the wav file isn’t entirely random. Some music will result in significantly smaller FLAC files - church organ music would be a good example. Others, like music containing cymbals etc. will not give such good compression.

 

[danadam]

Sorry, but Isn´t a FLAC file slightly compressed although lossless? What I mean Is how did you rip you´re CD´s to a uncompressed lossless FLAC file? It wouldn´t be a FLAC file then, or I misunderstood you´re process.

Apparently dBpoweramp has "special" option for uncompressed flac:

Compression Level 0 requires the least compression time, whilst Compression Level 8 the most. Uncompressed is a special compression mode with stores 16 bit audio in an uncompressed state.

I believe it's using something like this:

]$ flac --disable-constant-subframes --disable-fixed-subframes --max-lpc-order=0 some_music.wav

flac 1.4.3
...
some_music.wav: wrote 42741178 bytes, ratio=1.003

]$ ls
... 42741178 ... some_music.flac
... 42623660 ... some_music.wav

Don't ask me why.