Is FLAC really lossless? / Do compression settings make a difference?, [Was “Question Regarding Conversion of WAV/AIFF to FLAC”—TOS#6—Ask it] Options

[db1989]

Some people don’t want, or care, to use a non-default setting to gain what might be a negligible saving of space but also a sizeable increase in the processing power and time required. It’s a game of juggling numbers.

Have a look at the tests others have previously done, or—better—test a few files for yourself, assessing whether the additional time is worth the reduction in space.

It’s no more complex than that, certainly not a case of there being some shady reason for the choice. (Analogy: the option to read audio CDs at different speeds was recently invoked by a woo-wizard as evidence of this having some bearing on quality [in non-exceptional cases].)

[Nessuno]

Is xact a comparable program? im downloading that right now.

XLD is a CD ripper, AFAIK the only one on Mac that uses AccurateRip verify, and a format transcoder.
xACT is a collection of utilities, a sort of Swiss Army knife to manage audio files, maybe in a less straightforward way.
They both support some batch operations.
They both use internally the same Core Audio routines (for AAC, ALAC, AIFF etc...), FLAC reference distribution, Lame mp3 etc… so when doing the same operations their results are exactly the same. (edit: except ripping, for the reason above).

To use one or the other depends actually on your needs.

This post has been edited by Nessuno: Apr 22 2012, 21:06

[xdesirex22]

i appreciate all the help. I've learned a lot from this thread.

This post has been edited by xdesirex22: Apr 22 2012, 23:45