Comparison : 24bit/192KHz/stereo FLAC vs. APE, How can it be ? Options

[foorious]

Hi everybody,

I've just made a small comparison between Monkey's Audio 3.99 (Extra High Compression) and FLAC 1.21 (Compression level 8 ), using 24bit/192KHz/stereo files (the files were generated from a vinyl rip).

Of course I expected APE to perform slightly better than FLAC, like it usually does for 16bit/44KHz/stereo files (2-3%, maybe even 5%)... but I didn't really expect this !



Take a look at all the file sizes : we're talking about 20% difference here ! The total file size is 1,53 Go for APE vs. 1,88 Go for FLAC.

So I don't understand. I'm a genuine FLAC enthusiast (all my files are FLAC), but... how can it be ? Is there something wrong here ? Can we do something to improve all the FLAC file sizes ?

Thanks in advance for your explanation.

[foorious]

Just a simple question : do TAK, APE and Optimfrog support multichannel ?
I'm asking this because otherwise they would be quite useless for most 24/192 files : the files for my initial example were stereo, but most 24bit files are also multichannel AFAIK (e.g. DVD-A)...

This reference wiki article says TAK, APE and Optimfrog do not support multichannel (maybe it needs to be updated ?), which would make WavPack the only serious alternative to FLAC for multichannel files : http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?ti...less_comparison

BTW I'd really love if Josh Coalson would come across this thread. Hey, if TBeck has been able to fine-tune TAK and gain 10% in only a few hours time, maybe Josh could do something similar with FLAC ?

EDIT : PM sent to Josh to inform him about this topic.

This post has been edited by foorious: Jul 31 2008, 17:55