Considering FLAC... Options

[p0wder]

I'm considering switching from MPC to FLAC. But I have one question. Does FLAC have Replaygain support, and if so, is it as robust as MPC's replaygain support?

[kl33per]

FLAC fully supports ReplayGain and it works in the same way as ReplayGain for MPC.

[indybrett]

And if you happen to have a DVD burner, it makes a great way to archive CD's in FLAC format. About 12 CD's per DVD (on average).

[PigsOnTheWing]

About 12 CD's per DVD (on average).

I thought about doing this...until I realized the dangers involved...if your DVD gets damaged, becomes unreadable, or is just plain lost, you're out 12 CDs instead of one. I'm sticking with putting a single CD (compressed with FLAC) onto a single CD-R. Call me paranoid.

[rc55]

Pigs: So why bother compressing?

Ruairi

This post has been edited by rc55: Oct 18 2003, 02:17

[indybrett]

About 12 CD's per DVD (on average).

I thought about doing this...until I realized the dangers involved...if your DVD gets damaged, becomes unreadable, or is just plain lost, you're out 12 CDs instead of one.

Ummm, no I'm not, because I own the originals.

This post has been edited by indybrett: Oct 18 2003, 02:55

[PigsOnTheWing]

Pigs: So why bother compressing?

Because I only want to do it once. I rip with EAC, compress with FLAC, and also encode as 256K AAC for use with iPod. I burn the FLAC files, the AAC files, and a .tiff of the album artwork onto a CD-R. I play mainly FLAC files on my PC...thru a pro sound board...connected to a high-end stereo system.

[PigsOnTheWing]

Ummm, no I'm not, because I own the originals.

You may still own the original CDs...but you'll be out all of the time and effort that went into ripping, compressing, tagging, burning, etc. For a dozen CDs...that's a lot of time...and time is money.

[indybrett]

Ummm, no I'm not, because I own the originals.

You may still own the original CDs...but you'll be out all of the time and effort that went into ripping, compressing, tagging, burning, etc. For a dozen CDs...that's a lot of time...and time is money.

To each, his own...

If I lost a DVD (a dozen CD's), I would be out about 2 hours. Big deal.

I have no worries with my method. The amount of time I have lost so far = 00:00:00

Edit: and you're right, you are paranoid. If your house burns down, you will lose everything anyway, unless you have offsite copies. And even if you do, a 1 kilometer meteor will turn all of that to ashes as well.

This post has been edited by indybrett: Oct 18 2003, 04:06

[JEN]

Another vote for flac. OK, mpc is the best lossy format, but its still lossy. I used to use ape but then switched over to flac

[buzzy]

Those with paranoia about their backups can give par2 a spin
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=9236

Though making a second copy and storing it might be just as easy.

[dewey1973]

If you use the flac front-end (included in the windows installer from the flac download page), one checkbox will automatically add replay gain info. If you encode one album at a time, one more checkbox will make it include both track and album info.

[p0wder]

Thanks for the help people. I'm now officially using FLAC.

I have one more question though. On the FLAC Frontend by Speek, there is a checkbox to "verify". What exactly does this do? I went ahead and checked it for my encodings because it doesn't sound harmful.

[Audible!]

On the FLAC Frontend by Speek, there is a checkbox to "verify". What exactly does this do?

It verifies the file as lossless to the source by decoding on the fly and comparing.
I'm not sure it's necessary at all....

With this option, a decoder is run in parallel to the encoder and its output is compared against the original input. If a difference is found flac will stop with an error.

From here.

[p0wder]

Thanks. I wonder if the verify feature makes it take longer to encode? Even though I used this option FLAC still encoded really fast.

[PigsOnTheWing]

If I lost a DVD (a dozen CD's), I would be out about 2 hours.

Wow! You're fast! That's only 10 minutes per CD! I'd like to know your secret...as I've got about 800 more CDs to go...

There's no way I can rip a CD with EAC, compress it with FLAC, also encode it to AAC via QuickTime Pro, scan the album cover and clean it up in Photoshop, make sure my tags are correct/complete (among other things, I also add the names of the composers and the album covers to my AAC files) and then burn everything back onto a CD-R in 10 minutes.

[DonP]

Pigs: So why bother compressing?

Because I only want to do it once. I rip with EAC, compress with FLAC, and also encode as 256K AAC for use with iPod. I burn the FLAC files, the AAC files, and a .tiff of the album artwork onto a CD-R.

Again, why bother compressing? The vast majority of albums have a short enough play time to store them uncompressed and still have room for AAC and artwork on an 80 minute CDR. Then they could still play in a standard CD player.

[indybrett]

@Pigs

Yeah, I don't do all of that. That's my secret. I can usually rip a CD and encode it to FLAC in about 10 or 15 minutes. That's with tags and ReplayGain information.

Again, you do what you want. I'm sure it works well for you. There is no reason for you to question the way I do things for my own use.

This post has been edited by indybrett: Oct 21 2003, 12:24

[PigsOnTheWing]

Again, why bother compressing?

Because that's what I choose to play on my PC. As I posted earlier, the FLAC files are stored on my PC and played back through my stereo. I also encode to AAC for playback with an iPod. When/if the iPod is able to support FLAC, I'll stop with the AAC encoding and stick to FLAC only. As to why I put the FLAC files onto backup CD-Rs, I told you, I don't want to go through the whole process more than once. I also have a great many audio CDs which are at or near the limit of how much music can fit on them, and those (data) tracks aren't going to fit onto a CD-R without the FLAC compression.

[PigsOnTheWing]

There is no reason for you to question the way I do things for my own use.

It was you who started by questioning the way I do things.

I agree with you...to each his/her own.

[dewey1973]

FLAC fully supports ReplayGain and it works in the same way as ReplayGain for MPC.

Does this mean that sweep will work on flac files?

[indybrett]

It was you who started by questioning the way I do things.

Can you please quote verbatim where I did that exactly?

[indybrett]

Ummm, no I'm not, because I own the originals.

You may still own the original CDs...but you'll be out all of the time and effort that went into ripping, compressing, tagging, burning, etc. For a dozen CDs...that's a lot of time...and time is money.

This is where you did exactly that, which started the process. Please go back and read the thread.

[Volcano]

FLAC fully supports ReplayGain and it works in the same way as ReplayGain for MPC.

Does this mean that sweep will work on flac files?

Not quite. To replaygain FLAC files from the command line, you can use metaflac --add-replay-gain <files>, but the problem is that on Windows, you can't use a wildcard (*.flac) for the file list, metaflac expects a list of literal file names. So at least to my knowledge, foobar2000 is the only Windows application capable of conveniently replaygaining FLAC albums.


Oh, and stop that flaming already, dudes

Edits... spelling, corrections, clarifications... my concentration == 0.

This post has been edited by Volcano: Oct 21 2003, 18:55

[rompel]

Not quite. To replaygain FLAC files from the command line, you can use metaflac --add-replay-gain <files>, but the problem is that on Windows, you can't use a wildcard (*.flac) for the file list, metaflac expects a list of literal file names.

I'm a bit rusty with using Windows, but my recollection is that problems like this were easily solved by issuing the command from cygwin's bash (or any other Unix-derived shell you have handy).

--John