Which lossless audio codec do you use? Options

[Fandango]

- I liked the red icon

Me, too. But FLAC's golden-orange one isn't bad either.

[tgoose]

FLAC for support and for trading, since it's pretty much standard amongst trading communities (and yes, I'm talking about legal ones!). I used to encode the odd thing I actually ripped for myself (not much, since I have a CD player right next to my computer anyway...) in TTA because it was pretty fast, although YALAC will probably take over that if it's as good as it sounds and gets both Linux and foobar2000 support.

This post has been edited by tgoose: Apr 24 2006, 21:37

[satorippoi]

The results are simply astonishing - Flac and WV are leaders...ALAC and APE are far behind...TTA and SHN have no votes...

Here in Russia people are mailny fond of APE...and it is hard to make them think different...
As for me, it is WavPack...because of high decoding speed and embedded cue-sheet...

p.s. And yes, David is a great guy...

[Yaztromo]

Monkeys Audio

1) Good compression at normal and fast speed

2) The excellent Windows front-end.

[xmixahlx]

#1 wavpack (new encodes)
#2 flac (older encodes that i'm not going to convert for reasons of laziness)

i switched because wavpack seems to be more actively and interactively developed


later

[negritot]

I use ALAC because it's the easiest to use with iTunes, and my lossless files are only for personal use.

[Firon]

I still see Monkey's Audio as the majority out there, unfortunately.

[Synthetic Soul]

Considering only the FLAC and WavPack votes, the "Do you use FLAC or WAVPACK?" poll has a split of 56% to 44% in FLAC's favour, but in this thread the split is 62% to 38%... It would be nice to have enough votes that a more consistent conclusion could be made.

Also, why is Yalac an option, and who chose it?! I hope it was TBeck.


Look, an elephant!

[guruboolez]

The YALAC choice surprised me as well, but it makes sense, considering the life expectancy of a poll (12...24 months). Who knows... in one month, YALAC may appear as a valid choice (but if people are moving to this encoder, they can't vote for a second time...).


Where's the elephant? Or is it a new name suggestion for yalac (after monkeys and frogs, rats and penguins)?

[TBeck]

Also, why is Yalac an option, and who chose it?! I hope it was TBeck.

Look, an elephant!

No, No.

And i didn't pay for this vote!

Thomas

[Synthetic Soul]

The YALAC choice surprised me as well, but it makes sense, considering the life expectancy of a poll (12...24 months). Who knows... in one month, YALAC may appear as a valid choice (but if people are moving to this encoder, they can't vote for a second time...).

A very good point. It's inclusion may be justified in this poll's lifetime.

Personally I would prefer it if polls were closed after a short period of time, e.g.: one month. I think of a poll as a snapshot at a particular time. With this in mind I would rather see a new poll 1st January each year, that lasted for one month. This gives you an indication of preference at a given point in time.

By leaving polls open for one to two years (the last lossless poll was left open for over twenty months I think), by my limited logic the results get poluted over time, by new members voting.

The Yalac situation is a great example. Right now it has no right to be in the poll, but in six months maybe it will. However a noob looking at the poll in one year will think Yalac is not popular, but it may be as various members who voted in the poll's beginning have switched since that time. At least its exclusion would highlight to the noob that there must be a reason it was excluded (it is in alpha).

Where's the elephant? Or is it a new name suggestion for yalac (after monkeys and frogs, rats and penguins)?

Sorry, that was just me being weird. My post was a semi-bump, and the content was semi-diversionary. When I want to divert my kid's attention I always shout "Look, an elephant!" and point in the opposite attention to the one in which they shouldn't be looking...

Is this post an elephant post? Who knows... this poll seems to be fading into the distance all too quickly though.

And i didn't pay for this vote!

Edit: The other poll still has a FLAC/WavPack split of 56% to 44%, this one is now 61% to 39%.

This post has been edited by Synthetic Soul: Apr 27 2006, 13:45

[guruboolez]

Personally I would prefer it if polls were closed after a short period of time, e.g.: one month. I think of a poll as a snapshot at a particular time. With this in mind I would rather see a new poll 1st January each year, that lasted for one month. This gives you an indication of preference at a given point in time.

You have my vote. I'd also like to something less uncoordinated. A limited electoral time is also preferable in my opinion. One or maybe two polls per year, open for 2 or 4 weeks - with a fixed period. Therefore, comparison between polls would be more pertinent.

I like the idea of having two polls by year to get a better representation of changes. Such solution would be more acceptable for new members frustrated because they can't vote: in worst case they have to wait 5 months and not 11.
I noticed that dual-polls are possible since last IPB update. Why about creating a dual lossy/lossless poll instead of two separates one? It could be experimented.

[a_aa]

FLAC. Why? Well, why not...?

As long as it is lossless, I can always easily change to a not-seen-yet-outstanding lossless format to come - it's really not very important wich one I use at the moment...

[halb27]

I like Monkey extreme high for archiving purposes cause it yields a very good compression rate while being fast enough on encoding and decoding. Do this at the moment.

I like wavPack because of it's high quality (at 350+ kbps) productive lossy mode (usable with Rockbox) and the possibility of backing up a correction file to get a lossless archive. Think again about using it in the future for high quality CDs (but probably then without the correction file).

[Shade[ST]]

I'm the one who voted YALAC, because I currently have more YALAC archives on my computer than any other lossless format. I'm basically just waiting until the source code gets opened, to take a look (even if it's delphi -- I did some pascal in my youth ), and make a plugin for foobar

[Synthetic Soul]

I like the idea of having two polls by year to get a better representation of changes. Such solution would be more acceptable for new members frustrated because they can't vote: in worst case they have to wait 5 months and not 11.

That makes a lot of sense. I really don't see it to be a major problem to vote in a poll twice a year. I see it as your duty as a member, almost like a questionnaire a supplier might send out to clients.

One or maybe two polls per year, open for 2 or 4 weeks - with a fixed period.

With this new version of IPB you can set opening and closing times for a thread. Someone could create the poll one day to open at midnight that night and close 2/4 weeks later. As you say though, this needs to be co-ordinated; there's no point in twenty of us creating such a timed poll. Perhaps a thread a week in advance to alert users a new poll is coming...

I noticed that dual-polls are possible since last IPB update. Why about creating a dual lossy/lossless poll instead of two separates one? It could be experimented.

That would also make sense.

As I posted in the other thread, I was actually going to start this poll myself, but ran out of time. The reason I ran out of time was that I was messing about with additional questions for the poll. I started off including a poll regarding how people rip (tracks for archive; tracks for playing; image for archive; image for playing; etc.) but decided that it was really irrelevant to the lossless poll. I was then leaning toward questions regarding the reason for the choice (best compression rate; excellent compression with a reasonable speed; good compression and good speed; speed all the way; hardware support; other) and maybe a "What other features do you look for" poll (containing options regarding tagging; multichannel; kudos; error tollerance; etc.).... you might see why I ran out of time! Next time I'll start one when I'm not upstairs on the premise that I am getting ready to go out... it's less stressful for both me and my wife...

[guruboolez]

Maybe a pre-poll discussion might be opened to collect ideas about what may be a unified structure for all future polls. I didn't thought about ripping habits and it's indeed a good idea to join it in addition to the commonly used audio formats. Maybe different people could add interesting ideas, and maybe could we fix a date for the first poll, choosing people responsible of them (admins or mods only, members, etc...), put a sticky about the voting period, the planning and the conditions for creating a poll, etc...

[DARcode]

[...]WavPack seemed to have decent compression rates, error tollerance, multichannel support, and I was just really impressed with the way that David reacted to users' requests.[...]

Amen.

[PoisonDan]

Look, an elephant!

Look, behind you! A three-headed monkey!

/me wonders how many of the HA crowd will recognize this one.

[lanosk]

Look, behind you! A three-headed monkey!

/me wonders how many of the HA crowd will recognize this one.

Guybrush

[Xenion]

Wavpack for Me
Fast, Perfect Cue-Sheet Support, Cool

[miscellanea]

I'm using FLAC and WavPack but mainly WavPack now.

[Supacon]

Wow... wavpack is really starting to sound like the way to go.

I really do like my fast decompression time in FLAC though, because when I need to decode and lossily encode 400 CDs at once, that can nearly make a day's difference in time.

[Shade[ST]]

I think Wavpack has a compression option which makes it even faster to decode than FLAC, no? I just know I've had great experience with Wavpack.

[MusicLover]

I use Monkey's Audio - speed is not an issue for me, since I have a modern pc (everything used to be quite ok with an old one, though) - it's Extra High mode has a good compression rate and I cannot find any pluses over Monkey by Wavpack or FLAC...
I don't care about an error robustness since I have never ever had any issues with Monkey. It is being developed, BTW... 4 b2 came recently.
I understand that it is fashionable to use Wavpack, but I'm not much into Haute Couture