After the anouncement of LPAC becoming the MPEG-4 Lossless choice, I decided to give it a try to compare against FLAC.

I'm right on the edge of doing my 500+ CD collection to lossless DVD-R archives. I've been trying to decide between exactly what format since I will be using write-once media.

Tested with Foobar2000 v0.8 beta 5 and beta6.

Skipping within the same song is very slow in Foobar2000 playback. Using the LPAC command line switch for random access did not seem to help.

-r : Random access (allows fast search within the compressed file)

Here's the file properties for the LPAC file.

bitrate = 941
samplerate = 44100
channels = 2
bitspersample = 16
codec = LPAC
file_format = v6
random_access = yes
blocklength = 2048 samples
fast_mode = no
adaptive_prediction = yes
adaptive_quantization = no
----------
16943808 samples @ 44100Hz

Anyone have any hints/suggestions on how to get the file access faster?
It might not be that important since these will be for archival purposes and I'll be playing the Nero AAC LC files I transcode from these.

You really shouldn't consider LPAC, current available encoders do not produce files that would be compatible with MPEG-4 standards and compression ratio is inferior to other formats. Seeking speed sucks because LPAC codec API does not feature seeking. Only way to reliably seek is to brute-force decode until target is reached.

Gotcha.....wonder how the MPEG-4 group came to decide upon LPAC? This was the first experience I've had with the format, because I used MonKey's and FLAC in the past. Although, WavPak seems very interesting and the dual stream mode seems cool. I still need to check out OptimFROG as well, but I always end up coming back to FLAC after these tests. Not sure why, but it just seems like the best all around.

Thanks for the quick answer Case.