FLAC -0 ... -8, What is your compression level? Options

[ManekiNeko]

Flac -8 makes virtually no difference in compression/filesize over -6, but does take over twice as long to encode. If space saving is your main objective, flac is not the right choice. If very fast decoding and compatibility is, then use flac.

[acetylcholine]

-8 for me.

Using a multi-core processor and it takes so much longer to rip than to encode so there is no issue about encoding duration.

[hero]

The final size doesn't really differ between the compression options. I get about the same speed with -8 than I would with -1. When choosing the compression level, I guess it all depends on your system.

[doccolinni]

I use -8. I really don't have any trouble at all with waiting a bit longer to achieve the best compression possible. Of course, that doesn't mean that I'd use a coder which takes half an hour to encode a song. :-/ I just don't think FLAC is really all that slow when I use compression level of -8. Also, I could never force myself to use FLAC with a lower compression level and use those files for storage when I'd know that I can bring their size down even further, no matter how little difference it would be.

So yeah, -8 all the way.

[collector]

-6, seems to be the best of both worlds. And I'm uing lossywav -q6, so why bother about size or speed.

[jmcguckin]

I've been using -8 for several years now, only because I'd like to get the smallest filesizes possible, and now that I have a dual-core processor at my disposal, it doesn't make sense to use anything less... I use Max for ripping/encoding, and encoding speeds are typically somewhere between 1.5-2x faster than ripping speeds, encode speed is pretty much a non-issue.