Help - Search - Members - Calendar
Full Version: LA audio compression
Hydrogenaudio Forums > Lossless Audio Compression > Lossless / Other Codecs
Soren
Is LA a good choice to start archiving rare albums i burrow from friends, i very like the compression ration but i'm a bit worried about tagging system and future of the codec (freeware but closed source, format can change anytime,...)

What you think about this lossless format ?

Soren
Annuka
Lossless codes are great - you can always convert your files into another format - provided you have the decoder. Burn a few copies of the La decoder and store them in a safe place, if you intend to use this format. That said, I do not think it is a good starting choice. Let it mature first - wait for 1.0 release.
silver_cpu
If you're interested in lossless compression, try APE (Monkey's Audio). I think you'll be impressed, and it looks like APE's going to be around for a good while to come. Try it out @ www.monkeysaudio.com (maybe .org), and tell us what you think.
anthrax
FLAC. Doesn't compress quite as much as Monkey's, but I personally think it's a better choice.
Feature list:
QUOTE
[...]
*  Fast: FLAC is asymmetric in favor of decode speed. Decoding requires only integer arithmetic, and is much less compute-intensive than for most perceptual codecs. Real-time decode performance is easily achievable on even modest hardware.

* Hardware support: Because of FLAC's free reference implementation and low decoding complexity, FLAC is currently the only lossless codec that has any kind of hardware support.

* Streamable: Each FLAC frame contains enough data to decode that frame. FLAC does not even rely on previous or following frames. FLAC uses sync codes and CRCs (similar to MPEG and other formats), which, along with framing, allow decoders to pick up in the middle of a stream with a minimum of delay.

* Seekable: FLAC supports fast sample-accurate seeking. Not only is this useful for playback, it makes FLAC files suitable for use in editing applications.

* Flexible metadata: New metadata blocks can be defined and implemented in future versions of FLAC without breaking older streams or decoders. Currently there are metadata types for tags, cue sheets, and seek tables. Applications can write their own APPLICATION metadata once they register an ID

* Suitable for archiving: FLAC is an open format, and there is no generation loss if you need to convert your data to another format in the future. In addition to the frame CRCs and MD5 signature, flac has a verify option that decodes the encoded stream in parallel with the encoding process and compares the result to the original, aborting with an error if there is a mismatch.

* Convenient CD archiving: FLAC has a "cue sheet" metadata block for storing a CD table of contents and all track and index points. For instance, you can rip a CD to a single file, then import the CD's extracted cue sheet while encoding to yield a single file representation of the entire CD. If your original CD is damaged, the cue sheet can be exported later in order to burn an exact copy.

* Error resistant: Because of FLAC's framing, stream errors limit the damage to the frame in which the error occurred, typically a small fraction of a second worth of data. Contrast this with some other lossless codecs, in which a single error destroys the remainder of the stream.
sramov
QUOTE(Soren @ Jun 13 2003 - 04:13 PM)
Is LA a good choice to start archiving rare albums i burrow from friends...


No. Use WavPack, FLAC or Monkey's Audio
Skymmer
Shortly speaking It's not time for LA now. It has a wicked compression ration, Winamp, Foobar and Xmms
plugins but only 2 compression levels (which are very slow) and ID3 v1.1 tagging support only. So if you
have powerfull PC and gonna use LA for archiving purposes - Use it. Otherwise there are lot of other compressors to choose from.
This is a "lo-fi" version of our main content. To view the full version with more information, formatting and images, please click here.
Invision Power Board © 2001-2008 Invision Power Services, Inc.