Uncompressed FLAC in dbpoweramp Options

[thesurfingalien]

Hi All,

I am wondering if anyone can tell me some more about the uncompressed FLAC format that has popped up in the latest version (béta?) of dbpoweramp. Since I can not find any information about this on the FLAC website, I am curious if this is just a straight WAV packed in a FLAC wrapping.

Are there, besides tagging, other advantages I have missed?

Thnks,
Peter

[JJZolx]

> I am curious if this is just a straight WAV packed in a FLAC wrapping.

I wouldn't think so, since FLAC files are made up of audio frames, each with a header and footer. Perhaps if you stripped those as well as the metadata you'd have something resembling the raw PCM.

http://flac.sourceforge.net/documentation_...t_overview.html

[JJZolx]

A question, though, for anyone who knows....

When encoding with no compression, as with:

--disable-constant-subframes --disable-fixed-subframes --max-lpc-order=0

Would the FLAC file have a lot fewer frames, or even just a single audio frame?

This post has been edited by JJZolx: Nov 30 2011, 19:28

[Kohlrabi]

Are there, besides tagging, other advantages I have missed?

Which other advantages. Is there a single advantage over regular FLAC?

EDIT: Did some decoding tests on my hardware, FLAC uncompressed decoded at about 570x realtime, FLAC -0 at 565x realtime. Compression speed was the same for both uncompressed and compressed at 380x realtime.

This post has been edited by Kohlrabi: Nov 30 2011, 21:37

[Wombat]

These speeds may be already the maximum your systems I/O system can handle so you won´t measure much differences. Here on my machine with FlacCL the only limiting factor is some memory and SSD limitations.

Uncompressed Flac most likely is only made available for the audiophiles that already use wav for soundwise advantages. For them all compressed PCM sounds worse as AIF or WAV already. Can´t await when they report how much better uncompressed Flac sounds now over AIF and worst of all WAV
I guess spoon only wants to satisfy these audiophile customers to have a more a comfortable, taggging capable format. Since spoon is active here he may answer this and the technical aspects behind. It must be some flac with all kinds of format specific features disabled.

This post has been edited by db1989: Dec 3 2011, 15:42

Reason for edit: removing unnecessary full quote of above post

[JJZolx]

It must be some flac with all kinds of format specific features disabled.

Pretty sure it's the same as encoding using flac.exe with the options that I listed above.

[Wombat]

Add a blocksize of 4608 and you are right

This post has been edited by db1989: Dec 3 2011, 15:42

Reason for edit: as above

[tuffy]

A question, though, for anyone who knows....

When encoding with no compression, as with:

--disable-constant-subframes --disable-fixed-subframes --max-lpc-order=0

Would the FLAC file have a lot fewer frames, or even just a single audio frame?

The reference encoder will put the same number of channel-independent samples in each frame, typically 4096, unless you tell it otherwise. So the total number will be the same as a compressed file.

[Porcus]

Probably a useful thing if you want to rip a lot of DTS CDs on a computer with an old and slow CPU?

[saratoga]

It must be some flac with all kinds of format specific features disabled.

Pretty sure it's the same as encoding using flac.exe with the options that I listed above.

What are you actually trying to do with those settings?

[Kohlrabi]

These speeds may be already the maximum your systems I/O system can handle so you won´t measure much differences. Here on my machine with FlacCL the only limiting factor is some memory and SSD limitations.

Probably a useful thing if you want to rip a lot of DTS CDs on a computer with an old and slow CPU?

From the valid point by Wombat I assume that this could only be true if you are not I/O limited on your system. I'm very well tempted to test the files again on my Sansa Clip+, but even that is probably too fast to show any meaningful difference.

[Porcus]

Probably a useful thing if you want to rip a lot of DTS CDs on a computer with an old and slow CPU?

From the valid point by Wombat I assume that this could only be true if you are not I/O limited on your system.

That's decoding, not encoding.