Compaired to a 320kbps mp3, how much processing power does it take to decode a flac file compressed at the highest compression setting?

As far as i know the compression level of flac doesn't affect the decoding time.
I tried to test how much faster a flac will be, but my hard disk is too slow.

MP3 has got a decoding speed about 70-80x realtime on my system, and flac above 120x. Flac will be even faster if i would have a better drive.

You can test the decoding speed on your own system by using foobar2000.

The compression level *does* affect decoding time.

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=26859

decoding is not affected, but the encoding is real slow
If time factor is not a problem, you can take your time encode with "8"

Decoding time *is* affected. See link above, please..

OK, OK... it is affected, but the difference is, for pretty much all purposes, negligible.