i set it going last night... and converted some 3000 ape files to flac with dbpoweramp... its all said and done, and i lost something like 8 gigs or so... (going from ape HIGH to flac -5)

my primary reason was because i'm thinking of getting the kenwood keg for my car...

i think your reason, subconsciously, is that you wanted to use the flac xmms playback plugin for linux ...

admit it!

another linux freak! get 'em!

well, part of it was that i wanted something multiplatform... i have friends on linux & OSX...

plus, flac seems like it has a lot of potential...




now i've just got to saveup the cash to get my car system done so i can take advantage of this...

Congrats on your loss- er, I mean gain-, er, I mean lossless...

BTW, did you go for -5 compression to save time encoding? I ask since there might be some ppl unaware the best compression mode does not have slower decompression time.

well, i actually didn't know that... but i noticed a big difference in encode time...

i may go back and change it all to -best if the decompression time is the same...


thanks for the tip....

Check out the time vs. space comparison, there's 0.5% difference between -5 and -8, although it's cool that decompression time doesn't suffer any hit

However, losing 8gigs is harsh. I'm using APE extra high, (an extra 0.5%), and I just don't have the room to lose ~2-3gb just by changing format..

I'm about to go in the opposite direction: higher compression.
Currently I have my complete CD collection archived on hard disk in APE extra-high format. My preliminary tests have shown that I could save about 2 GB if I had archived them using LA. The lower EN- and DEcoding speed doesn't bother me at all, my PC (as the only planned playback device for these files) can still easily play the LA files.
The tiny bat-files for file conversion (ape2la and la2mp3 for my portable player) are ready. I only hesitate to convert my files now because I have no idea if LA might become even better in the next version - whenever that will come.

Is it on a portable or your home computer that space is that tight? WHenever I see someone lamenting 2 gig of HD space I think "2 dollars" and wonder why they spend a lot of time worrying about it. I realize that upgrading the HD on something like an Ipod is somewhat problematic.

Well, your idea of thinking "2 GB = 2 Dollars" is not correct in the real world. You can't simply buy storage space by the GigaByte and attach it to your existing gear.
In my small sized computer box there is only room for one hard disk. Currently I have a 200 GB disk which is more than sufficient at the moment, but when one day that disk is full I will have to get rid of it and replace it with a larger one. To avoid this costly step for as long as possible, I try to use the available storage space efficiently (high compression, for instance).

You can buy space in increments as small as 30 G for $30, though you should certainly
keep an eye on limiting the number of drives you end up with. Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if you could buy a 1 or 2 GB drive for under $1 just because no one wants it.


Aside from laptops and handhelds, computers that only hold 1 drive are certainly the
exception rather than the rule.

i just did a cd from -5 to -8 (or more accurately.. from "medium" to "high" in dbpoweramp, i assume thats the same) and the files are actually getting minorly larger... whats up with this?

Totally off-topic : Joeg, I preferred your avatar when it was badly resized to look large on the forum (~100x100). It added to the craziness

If I remember, it is possible for -8 to end up worse than -5. You would certainly hope it's not a transcoding issue!!

LOL, i'm not sure why it was oversized like that.. i haven't changed anything...


yeah, i just did a test cd... -8 was bigger than -5... is this a dbpoweramp issue or what? theres no options for -7 or anything in dbpower amp...


anyone have any ideas/thoughts on this?

mathmatically, how is it possible that -8 is bigger? i'm confused...

I would guess it's the same as sometimes WinRAR's -high mode is worse than -normal. Whatever extra algorithm -8 includes ends up messing up (problem samples?) and so it ends up larger than without the algorithm included?