FLAC & APE, Comparison? Options

[®om]

I see most of people who use lossless use FLAC codec...

I did some tests, & I don't know why more use FLAC instead of APE...

I tested with:
FLAC compression 8 (maximum)
APE 3.98a1, compression normal

Size of files: FLAC - APE (Kb)
file 1: 1268 - 1246
file 2: 31049 - 30387
file 3: 27871 - 27213
file 4: 33252 - 23975 (!)

So APE normal compress more than FLAC maximum...

APE Encoding was shorter than APE encoding (far away).

Decoding seems to be equivalent (APE maybe better).

So why people prefer FLAC, what advantages?

If I forgot anything to compare, or else...
Thanks...

[atici]

Oh no please use the search. Or just click on Forums->Lossless Codecs. You'll see many threads about this question.

[®om]

Oh no please use the search. Or just click on Forums->Lossless Codecs. You'll see many threads about this question.

I find on a topic:

FLAC has poor compression ratio? I think the difference is rather tiny  I used to use Monkey's Audio but now switched to FLAC because it has error detection/recovery + is supported in more platforms.

For the error detection/recovery, APE 3.98 has MD5 hash in technical info in foobar file info

[user]

hm, flac has way shorter decoding times / cpu usage than ape.

ape is fast encoding, yes, flac, too.
But the decoding is important for portable devices, industrial support.
and afaik, flac has already commercial support.
if you look at the file size differences in percent %, you will see, it is neglectable.
Lossless files are big, if 1% bigger, who cares ?
and wait a short time and have a look at wavepack 4.0
My personal favourites: flac & WavePack 4 in Hybrid mode.

[Garf]

Disadvantage of FLAC: buggy seeking.

[®om]

hm, flac has way shorter decoding times / cpu usage than ape.

ape is fast encoding, yes, flac, too.
But the decoding is important for portable devices, industrial support.
and afaik, flac has already commercial support.
if you look at the file size differences in percent %, you will see, it is neglectable.
Lossless files are big, if 1% bigger, who cares ?
and wait a short time and have a look at wavepack 4.0
My personal favourites: flac & WavePack 4 in Hybrid mode.

Hum...

Thanks for your point of vue... interesting...

But, when u compare here, flac compression 5 encoding time is double ape normal, compression 8 is about 4x! OK, I'm agree with you, encoding time isn't important...

Decoding time is about 10~15% faster, and Monkey normal is already very fast (0% in windows task, so 0<%<1!)...

And flac comp 8 filesize is for some files 25% smaller than ape normal...

This post has been edited by ®om: Jan 12 2004, 00:59

[jcoalson]

So why people prefer FLAC, what advantages?

If I forgot anything to compare, or else...

http://flac.sourceforge.net/comparison.html
http://web.inter.nl.net/users/hvdh/lossless/lossless.htm

Disadvantage of FLAC: buggy seeking.

how so? maybe I'm forgetting something...

Josh

[®om]

So, the (only) advantage of FLAC is decoding time, about 20% faster?...

APE decoding time is already very short (while playing 0% precessus time), so I will use Monkey's Audio...

[Amadablam]

So, the (only) advantage of FLAC is decoding time, about 20% faster?...

...and it's supported by several hardware players, and it's open source, and it's very linux-friendly, and it's the new preference of a serious file-trading community...

[rjamorim]

and it's open source

The Monkey's Audio sources are also available.

and it's very linux-friendly

I don't know what you mean by "linux friendly", but there are Monkey's Audio Linux binaries from Frank Klemm's site.

[guruboolez]

Advantage (for me) of Monkey: APEv2 tags are stored at the end.
Fast decoding is useful when transcoding (to lossy format for exemple), and then, Flac is preferable.

[Amadablam]

and it's open source

The Monkey's Audio sources are also available.

and it's very linux-friendly

I don't know what you mean by "linux friendly", but there are Monkey's Audio Linux binaries from Frank Klemm's site.

I apologize for being vague. First, I had forgotten that the Monkey's Audio source was made available, even if it's not as "free" as FLAC. Also, when I said "linux-friendly", I was reflecting on the fact that I can, in Debian, simply do "apt-get install flac xmms-flac" and I'm ready to go. I do greatly appreciate the rarewares debian repository, and I see that Monkey's Audio is available there. I'm not sure if that includes an XMMS plugin, however. Also, by "open-source" and "linux-friendly", I believe that FLAC and it's development model would be found in much greater favor by the open-source and linux community than that of Monkey's Audio.

Of course, if you're a Windows user who has no plans to play lossless on a special hardware player, I'd say go with whatever looks best to you. Under those conditions, I'd have to say that the two choices are nearly equal.

[®om]

Ok thanks very much for your answers

[®om]

Disadvantage of FLAC: buggy seeking.

Ah yes

[spase]

I have myself decided to use FLAC with external cuesheets.

FLAC is MUCH faster on the decode (about 3-4x faster) and that makes a huge difference to me as far as transcoding.

[Garf]

how so?  maybe I'm forgetting something...

Josh

Case reported there were still problems like this: http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....ic=16699&st=0&&

[rjamorim]

Eric Raymond invented the term open source and founded the OSI.

How can he have joined two words together and claimed he invented it?

That's ludicrous at best!

[dev0]

Licensing / OSI discussion (What is open source?) split to Off-Topic

[rjamorim]

Licensing / OSI discussion (What is open source?) split to Off-Topic

Brrrr. The usual mess.

One post was left behind...

[bawjaws]

I realize that the discussion of what defines open source is off-topic, but as you've left your original confusing comment I'll repeat:

APE, despite the availability of it's source code, is *not* open source (as defined by the OSI and, imho, as generally accepted by programmers of all kinds).

Real world effects of this are that certain influential Linux distributions will not include the code (Debian for one) which limits it's acceptance and use in the Linux community as does the fact that no open source (per OSI) programs can build upon the code unless they ask for it to be relicensed (which they have previously, and been turned down).

Also, each business that wishes to use the code will need to negotiate with the author the exact terms of use in advance, rather than deal with a known license that is in common use. This (imho) limits the chance of it being adopted by businesses.

Other miscelleaneous problems include the legal limbo if the original author dies or just becomes difficult to contact etc.

The above is an on-topic comment as far as APE vs. FLAC is concerned as FLAC is under an OSI approved licence (i.e. what I would call "open source") and for some people this is an important distinction and reason for choosing one over the other. And not *all* of these people are zealots or just the general kind of idiots you commonly find cheerleading for Ogg Vorbis.

Some discussion of the issue can be found here on the APE discussion boards:
http://www.monkeysaudio.com/cgi-bin/YaBB/Y...&num=1029850282

and this one is interesting too:

http://www.monkeysaudio.com/cgi-bin/YaBB/Y...&num=1070119776