I think its time for an updated "Which lossless audio codec do you use?" thread!

Place a vote for your prefered lossless audio codec above.
Feel free to post the reason you prefer it over the others as well...

WavPack because of its fast encoding and decoding. The compression ratio is not bad either and my Ubuntu supports it as well.

FLAC due to the very good software support. I don't want to have to re-encode or transfer to another lossless format in the future if it can be avoided. I think FLAC (and ALAC) have the best software support currently. Strength in numbers is the reason I picked FLAC I guess. Plus its free and open unlike ALAC.

Wavpack -hmx1 single file image with embedded cuesheet.

WavPack.

I switched from Monkey's Audio to WavPack in 2005. My main consideration is compression rate, but I was concerned by the lack of error tollerance with Monkey's. On consideration I realised that the difference of a few percent between MAC Extra High and WavPack High was negligable when considering my archive of 100-150 GB.

WavPack seemed to have decent compression rates, error tollerance, multichannel support, and I was just really impressed with the way that David reacted to users' requests.

I've said for a while that I will be interested to see the results of this poll. In the last poll WavPack received a measily 15% of the votes. I believe it will be a lot higher this time: it's basically going to be FLAC or WavPack to come top. FLAC may still take it, but WavPack will sure be close.

I was originally a Monkey's user, which offered (and still offer) excellent ratio at excellent speed. Then I was looking for formats offering a higher decoding speed: opening these files then appeared as a much more confortable process on Cool Edit/Audition (opening time could be 4 time faster between WavPack or FLAC compared to MAC -normal) and faster decoding also mean faster transcoding.

FLAC and WavPack were the fastest ones (with Shorten... unbeatable but outdated); WavPack finally had my preference, because:
- the tagging system is much more conveniant for my purpose (i.e. much faster)
- seeking was even better than FLAC (which is already very good)
- I got better encoding ratios
- I liked the red icon
- David is a very nice guy (it's not a necessary condition: I also used MPC in the past ...)

Today I've voted in one lossless poll, now here's another! My decision hasn't changed though... WavPack.

[edit: typo]

Lots of lossless polls at once

Hasn't changed though. WavPack still for me for the same reasons I posted just minutes ago.

Could you please tell the difference? I don't want to infirm your statement at all, I'm just curious. I've got huge Flac collection and if I could save say 2% (6 GB in my case) of space by reencoding, I will seriously consider to do it. (It must be horrible work anyway)
So: what do you think? Is it worth to reencode (or transcode...) from Flac to WavPack?
Thanks for response.

Heh, the day of lossless polls.

I used to be Monkey's Audio user because of its strong compression. However I became unsatisfied with its low decompression speed when I started regular conversions to lossy formats for my portable flash player. Also growing collection and shrinking HDD space made me think to use lossy formats for some less critical music.

Then I found WavPack. A lot faster with small compression loss (vs Monkey's) and with hybrid option. And this format is still evolving, whereas any news for Monkey are hardly possible.
My spell: -b360cmx

Wait until YALAC final comes out : it's blazing fast, and has great compression ratios (just look at the YALAC threads, and at synthetic soul's posts.

Was that really necessary?

I'm also waiting for YALAC to come out.

Like guruboolez, I used to use Monkey's audio because it first seemed the obvious choice. Good compression speed, and high efficiency. It's probably got the highest compression speed to compression ratio of any codec.

After transcoding my collection several times, however, I decided that I should switch to FLAC because its decompression time is much much faster which outweighs the small size increase. FLAC seems to be one of the most popular and supported codecs which is a big plus (although I don't think it makes a huge amount of difference in my application).

I think that wavpack offers great advantages, like better compression and still good speed, but I don't think anything quite has as good of a balance between decompression speed and efficiency as FLAC does yet. I'd probably use WavPack in lieu of monkey's now if I needed better compression.

YALAC looks really promising too, and when finalized, I'd switch to that in a heartbeat if it doesn't have any huge disadvantages over the other codecs.

FLAC because

1) Extremely thorough testbed. So I can be assured that if my compile passes the tests, then it must be OK.

2) --verify option, which decodes the encoded singnal during the encoding to ensure that no SW or other errors occurred.

3) Inbuilt MD5 signature over the audio content, which is essential to be able to carry out truly reliable integrity check.

4) Vorbis tagging. I love it and since my choice of lossy is vorbis, this makes convesion very trouble free.

5) Good error recovery.

6) Cross-platform. This is an absolute must for me.

7) Good command line interface. This is an absolute must for me.

8) Widespread. Best SW/HW support.

9) Stable. No compatibility breaks. Few but reliable releases.

10) Excellent PC HW tester. If you have a flaky HW FLAC is likely to exhibit corruptions.


Maybe Wavepack or others have these, but in 2003 it did not. I do not like changes. Also 2% size difference does not cut it for me. In fact I always use compression level 5.

I also use FLAC. Too lazy to learn anything else right now, but that may change in the future.

FLAC for faster/stable decoding speed.
Thanks developers & john33's faster encoding compile.

I will switch to YALAC when get matured.

ALAC. I'm on a Mac--'nuff said. Although I guess now with Max it wouldn't be as much of a chore to maintain and transcode from a FLAC library as it used to be.

FLAC for vorbis comments and good command line support.

I wrote shell script for Linux to encode from one .flac with embedded cuesheet to per-track .ogg files copying common and per-track .flac comments (my own scheme compatible with foorbar 0.9 one) to the result files. The ability to decode specified track from such .flac only with command line switch is very handy for me, also common tagging format with ogg vorbis allows easy transfer of metadata.

WavPack, but lookin forward to YALAC

Monkey 3.99 High, because of its good ratios. I'm planning to switch to wavpack one day though.

Wavpack for me.

The first lossless encoder I used is LA because it got the first rank in encoding ratio.
After encoded 2 albums, I quitted, cannot stand its slowness.

I was looking for a new format for archiving my collection.
I read this page on wiki section and choose the one that has more green colour.

Wavpack caught my attention (no orange colour). It has very fast speed in both encoding and decoding. So I tried and love it since.

I used Monkey's Audio [high] for 3 years.

Then I changed 16 months ago to WavPack [-m -x4] because of :

- fast decoding speed,
- still with a very good compression ratio,
- very fast seeking making the payer more responsive (seek can be controlled from remote control)

ReplayGain supported by the Winamp plug-in was also a reason, it can be used by Meedio, my interface of choice.

another interesting thing so far... compared to the last poll, the FLAC percentage is the same (ALAC too) but wavpack has pretty much eaten up everyone else.

...and compared to an earlier poll it seems that Monkey's was replaced by WavPack in the heart (and hard drive) of non-flac HA.org users

ALAC score is pretty low compared to the absolute number of iPod supporting this format.

Me, too. But FLAC's golden-orange one isn't bad either.

FLAC for support and for trading, since it's pretty much standard amongst trading communities (and yes, I'm talking about legal ones!). I used to encode the odd thing I actually ripped for myself (not much, since I have a CD player right next to my computer anyway...) in TTA because it was pretty fast, although YALAC will probably take over that if it's as good as it sounds and gets both Linux and foobar2000 support.

The results are simply astonishing - Flac and WV are leaders...ALAC and APE are far behind...TTA and SHN have no votes...

Here in Russia people are mailny fond of APE...and it is hard to make them think different...
As for me, it is WavPack...because of high decoding speed and embedded cue-sheet...

p.s. And yes, David is a great guy...

Monkeys Audio

1) Good compression at normal and fast speed

2) The excellent Windows front-end.

#1 wavpack (new encodes)
#2 flac (older encodes that i'm not going to convert for reasons of laziness)

i switched because wavpack seems to be more actively and interactively developed


later

I use ALAC because it's the easiest to use with iTunes, and my lossless files are only for personal use.

I still see Monkey's Audio as the majority out there, unfortunately.

Considering only the FLAC and WavPack votes, the "Do you use FLAC or WAVPACK?" poll has a split of 56% to 44% in FLAC's favour, but in this thread the split is 62% to 38%... It would be nice to have enough votes that a more consistent conclusion could be made.

Also, why is Yalac an option, and who chose it?! I hope it was TBeck.


Look, an elephant!

The YALAC choice surprised me as well, but it makes sense, considering the life expectancy of a poll (12...24 months). Who knows... in one month, YALAC may appear as a valid choice (but if people are moving to this encoder, they can't vote for a second time...).


Where's the elephant? Or is it a new name suggestion for yalac (after monkeys and frogs, rats and penguins)?

No, No.

And i didn't pay for this vote!

Thomas

A very good point. It's inclusion may be justified in this poll's lifetime.

Personally I would prefer it if polls were closed after a short period of time, e.g.: one month. I think of a poll as a snapshot at a particular time. With this in mind I would rather see a new poll 1st January each year, that lasted for one month. This gives you an indication of preference at a given point in time.

By leaving polls open for one to two years (the last lossless poll was left open for over twenty months I think), by my limited logic the results get poluted over time, by new members voting.

The Yalac situation is a great example. Right now it has no right to be in the poll, but in six months maybe it will. However a noob looking at the poll in one year will think Yalac is not popular, but it may be as various members who voted in the poll's beginning have switched since that time. At least its exclusion would highlight to the noob that there must be a reason it was excluded (it is in alpha).

Sorry, that was just me being weird. My post was a semi-bump, and the content was semi-diversionary. When I want to divert my kid's attention I always shout "Look, an elephant!" and point in the opposite attention to the one in which they shouldn't be looking...

Is this post an elephant post? Who knows... this poll seems to be fading into the distance all too quickly though.



Edit: The other poll still has a FLAC/WavPack split of 56% to 44%, this one is now 61% to 39%.

You have my vote. I'd also like to something less uncoordinated. A limited electoral time is also preferable in my opinion. One or maybe two polls per year, open for 2 or 4 weeks - with a fixed period. Therefore, comparison between polls would be more pertinent.

I like the idea of having two polls by year to get a better representation of changes. Such solution would be more acceptable for new members frustrated because they can't vote: in worst case they have to wait 5 months and not 11.
I noticed that dual-polls are possible since last IPB update. Why about creating a dual lossy/lossless poll instead of two separates one? It could be experimented.

FLAC. Why? Well, why not...?

As long as it is lossless, I can always easily change to a not-seen-yet-outstanding lossless format to come - it's really not very important wich one I use at the moment...

I like Monkey extreme high for archiving purposes cause it yields a very good compression rate while being fast enough on encoding and decoding. Do this at the moment.

I like wavPack because of it's high quality (at 350+ kbps) productive lossy mode (usable with Rockbox) and the possibility of backing up a correction file to get a lossless archive. Think again about using it in the future for high quality CDs (but probably then without the correction file).

I'm the one who voted YALAC, because I currently have more YALAC archives on my computer than any other lossless format. I'm basically just waiting until the source code gets opened, to take a look (even if it's delphi -- I did some pascal in my youth ), and make a plugin for foobar

That makes a lot of sense. I really don't see it to be a major problem to vote in a poll twice a year. I see it as your duty as a member, almost like a questionnaire a supplier might send out to clients.

With this new version of IPB you can set opening and closing times for a thread. Someone could create the poll one day to open at midnight that night and close 2/4 weeks later. As you say though, this needs to be co-ordinated; there's no point in twenty of us creating such a timed poll. Perhaps a thread a week in advance to alert users a new poll is coming...

That would also make sense.

As I posted in the other thread, I was actually going to start this poll myself, but ran out of time. The reason I ran out of time was that I was messing about with additional questions for the poll. I started off including a poll regarding how people rip (tracks for archive; tracks for playing; image for archive; image for playing; etc.) but decided that it was really irrelevant to the lossless poll. I was then leaning toward questions regarding the reason for the choice (best compression rate; excellent compression with a reasonable speed; good compression and good speed; speed all the way; hardware support; other) and maybe a "What other features do you look for" poll (containing options regarding tagging; multichannel; kudos; error tollerance; etc.).... you might see why I ran out of time! Next time I'll start one when I'm not upstairs on the premise that I am getting ready to go out... it's less stressful for both me and my wife...

Maybe a pre-poll discussion might be opened to collect ideas about what may be a unified structure for all future polls. I didn't thought about ripping habits and it's indeed a good idea to join it in addition to the commonly used audio formats. Maybe different people could add interesting ideas, and maybe could we fix a date for the first poll, choosing people responsible of them (admins or mods only, members, etc...), put a sticky about the voting period, the planning and the conditions for creating a poll, etc...

Amen.

Look, behind you! A three-headed monkey!

/me wonders how many of the HA crowd will recognize this one.

Guybrush

Wavpack for Me
Fast, Perfect Cue-Sheet Support, Cool

I'm using FLAC and WavPack but mainly WavPack now.

Wow... wavpack is really starting to sound like the way to go.

I really do like my fast decompression time in FLAC though, because when I need to decode and lossily encode 400 CDs at once, that can nearly make a day's difference in time.

I think Wavpack has a compression option which makes it even faster to decode than FLAC, no? I just know I've had great experience with Wavpack.

I use Monkey's Audio - speed is not an issue for me, since I have a modern pc (everything used to be quite ok with an old one, though) - it's Extra High mode has a good compression rate and I cannot find any pluses over Monkey by Wavpack or FLAC...
I don't care about an error robustness since I have never ever had any issues with Monkey. It is being developed, BTW... 4 b2 came recently.
I understand that it is fashionable to use Wavpack, but I'm not much into Haute Couture