I mean honestly WHY! It doesnt compress much more than to WAV. It claims to be a better compressor than .zip. Q: why convert music to ZIP? thats retarded to begin with. Q2:Why not straight to MP3? When Ripping Music Why not Rip To MP3 @ 320kbps. You will save much more space and the Quality @ 320 is Excellent and to the human ear you wont notice anything and if you do just play the CD if you dont want reduction. I have do a test with Adobe Audition and a wav file. I reduced to as low as possible w/ mp3 coding w/o losing any major quality and w/o distortion. I got a 4 min song down to 2.5mb. thats @ 92kpbs 1/2 that of CD Quality MP3 encoding; and it sounded great. Not amazing like live instruments but good enough for a standard set of Headphones/Speakers. and @ 320kpbs an MP3 is around 1/3 the size of FLAC.That is 13mb compared to 48mb. Now if I was archiving my music to a digital format on my computer for easy access and enjoyment MP3 is definetly my choice. Also its an MP3 player not a FLAC player For a reason.

Reason for my rant. Simple: First; I have had friends ask me What Flac is, a they download music and are PC iliterate. Second; Searching for an easy converter for them I can across many forums w/ the same problems. Batch converting an archive of FLAC to MP3, cuz they didnt convert to mp3 in the first place. many ppl were using multiple converters and there was nothing Free and easy to use for my friend. I found this Tutorial. Which makes it so much easier.

But WHY CD->FLAC->WAV->MP3 when that would be WAV->FLAC->WAV->MP3. why not just CD->MP3?

Why FLAC? Let me count the ways:

1) Bit perfect backup of the original CD with tags (song name, artist, album, year, genre, replaygain, album cover, etc.) - never have rip the CD again.
2) Can transcode to any number of lossy formats directly and not lose quality with a lossy to lossy transcode - can create 320kbps MP3 for critical listening, 160kbps for portable, 128kbps AAC, etc. and still have a bit perfect master to start from with the FLAC. This also means can take advantage of new formats or improved lossy codecs.
3) It generally takes 50% less storage than WAV - took my collection from 400GB to 200GB - I'd say that is worthwile.
4) Can losslessly normalize gain across all albums with ReplayGain
5) Free

I'm sure I could think of more. If you don't care about any of these things, then don't worry about it, enjoy 320kbps MP3 (which should be quite good) and get on with it...

the same was true in the early days of mp3

1) 172kbps = CD QUALITY 320kbps = Excellent
2) MP3 generally 1/6 that of WAV 750mb CD = 60mb HD Space
3) Use Gain options in Winamp when playing audio(which I guess would be replay gain)
4) Winamp Free works Great
5)Why Backup CD's If you are using them for listening on your pc or stereo just Burn a copy and Store the original.



"the same was true in the early days of mp3"
But MP3 is STILL 1/6 that of WAV. FLAC is only 1/2 at best. I could see if this was an arguement for teh WMA lossless that is native to WMP as a microsoft alt to MP3.

Its true that for most people flac 'quality' isn't better than a well encoded mp3. For this type of person the increase in filesize vs the small universal mp3 isn't justified. For the purpose of ripping a collection for playback is different to ripping for future transcoding and or postprocessing..

To me the advantages are:

- no potential editing / transcoding issues

- no 'quality settings to fuss about (total peace of mind for those who care)

- fast encoding

Disadvantages:

- perceived quality is the same as HQ mp3 is most cases , yet files are x 6 larger

- Filesize is not ideal for DAP use and its also harsh on battery life. This often leads the user to transcode to a smaller lossy file which can be time consuming.

- Very large collections might pose storage issues especially in relation to backups.

So yes its true that with current increases of storage there is no reason NOT to use lossless. On the other hand is from the point of view of mp3 compatibility / quality / size, there might not be any compelling reason to use lossless.

Flac, or more precisely, lossless, is used by people who want no loss from a WAV/CD. No, it doesn't compress as well as mp3, but mp3 doesn't offer the insurance of being exactly the same as the original WAV/CD either, whether you can tell the difference or not. In the end, it's about this insurance.

Personally, I don't deal with lossless at this time either (except for my own original music and vinyl/cassette rips), since I can't tell a difference. But I can understand the reasons to use it. In addition to the backup scenario DigitalMan listed, you would want it for sources that are not commercially available on CD. For example, the tutorial link you provided references etree. Live recordings are commonly distributed in flac (lossless) because there is no CD to buy, so you need to be sure that the files are original. You can't just go buy a CD of that particular show -- you want to make sure that you get files that haven't been encoded to some shitty mp3 that you had no control over.

There are plenty of free and easy ways to convert the files. I think you and your friend need to read a bit about it first. You haven't exactly asked for any specific help in the conversion you know.

How can 192kbps possibly be the equivalent of CD quality? Ignoring psychoacoustics and information for a moment, if 192kbps were CD quality, then 320kbps is far better than CD quality and, by ripping from CD then using a lossy encoder, you would have managed to get something better than the original CD



A 500GB hard drive costs around $140.



A single 3.5" HDD is much more convenient than 500 discs. A single 3.5" HDD installed in a file server with wireless access defies any comparison whatsoever.

I encode everything to FLAC not because I think that I can hear a difference, but because I want perfect copies of my CDs for archival and for instant access to my entire library over 802.11.

Because I can!

Also, storage is cheap, I want a way to create lossless mixed cd's for my car, I want all of my music on my PC at the same time in its original quality, and finally because I like to say the word FLAC. Try saying FLAC out loud without smiling or wondering why you're doing something a random guy on the internet asked you to do.

You say "Why FLAC?". I say "Why Not FLAC?"

Flak cannon! Wait, wrong one...

But seriously, FLAC has its purpose, and disc storage is -very very- cheap nowadays. It's also dropping in price. There's gonna be a 1TB drive from Hitachi for $400 soon, and that will only drop further.

320kbps MP3 is still far, far too large for portable devices like iPods. If you disagree, here's a quarter:

o

Please buy a larger music collection with it.

Because of this, one should always be on the lookout for the best encoding method for one's music player, since the quality at the 128kbps level is still a concern, albeit a very minor one that only really deals with problem samples nowadays. Transcoding to these formats from 320k MP3 is foolish. Transcoding from FLAC is safe and fast.

Honestly: because it is the best way to backup.

I do backup with Apple Lossless, however...

...coz I like iTunes.

The main advantage of lossless is that it is suited for archival - thus, any kind of postprocessing is still feasible.

Lossy advantages: small size, enough quality for listening
Lossy disadvantages: its final - any kind of further postprocessing should be avoided

Lossless advantages: suited for listening AND postprocessing
Lossless disadvantages: requires 3-4 times more space than lossy

Using just mp3 has it's advantages: universally playable, easily achieving equal loudness perception on any player by using mp3gain, and with directmp3cut mp3s are even editable to an extend which is relevant in practice (cutting, fading in and out).

Using ~ 128 kbps mp3 usually gives good quality, and going ~ 250 kbps provides for perfect quality for most people except for pretty rare musical situations. Most people chose a quality setting in the 128 ... 250 kbps range which suits their needs best.

However using a lossless codec like FLAC on the pc has its merits too. Usually it's done for archiving, and it's of special value if your archive reflects your CD collection in a very selective way like I do it (usually just 4 tracks or so of a CD make it into my archive).

Using a lossless archive allows you to reencode in case you should find an issue with your lossy encoding. Even if it will never be necessary it brings peace of mind to people who care about this possible situation.

Another thing is if you look way ahead in time. As for now mp3 is expected to be the most future-safe lossy format for many years ahead. But will it be like that in 30 years? AAC is dominating the music world of mobile phones already (though you can still use mp3). It's also slowly getting more widespread support with mobile DAPs, not just in the Apple world. And qualitywise it's ahead of mp3 at least in the low/moderate bitrate range and when considering musical situations that are hard to encode. So maybe in 30 years everybody will use AAC (or another format, maybe FLAC !), and there won't be player support for mp3.
If you have a lossless archive: no problem. You just transcode (which isn't a good idea when transcoding from mp3 especially low/moderate bitrate mp3).

I personally use a 2-way procedure.
I classify each track which is to make it into my archive as 'great' or 'good but not great'.
Any track makes it into my 'productive archive' consisting (now) of ~ 240 kbps mp3s.
Each of the 'great' tracks makes it additionally into my lossless archive (ape format for me).
Worst case scenario is if I had to reencode those tracks I only have as mp3s. No big probability for me (I'm 57), but even if I have to transcode non-great stuff from 24o kbps mp3 this doesn't bring nightmare to me (okay, my age helps again: I will be pretty deaf then. But I don't think I would care If I were 27).

So why do you ask?

If you do not want to use or do not need lossless archiving at all then do not use it.

Simple as that.

I don't get the point of this thread.

1.- You prefer "butchered music" --> MP3 ---> Go ahead, use it Definitely the way to go for portable players if memory is short.

2.- If you don't like "music as is" ---> Lossless codecs ---> Don't use them; that simple.

3.- Listen to an Audio Cd made from mp3s in a Hi-Fi equipment -headphones preferred-. Then listen to the original CD. If you can't tell the difference, well, you are a lucky man.

Greetings.

Why 320kbps MP3? V2 saves half the space, and many listening tests have shown it to be at least very nearly as transparent. And if in a year's time V2 improves yet more (i.e. saves more space on your portable), then anyone with a FLAC copy can simply transcode again, whereas anyone with MP3s is stuck wasting space.

For portable devices I would agree to WHY!!!!

I use FLAC for storage.
I have many CD's to rip (apx 800) and I want to rip them once and for all.
Then the FLAC-file will be my source file for mp3's for my portable mp3 player or car-stereo.

Why use lossless? This is my reason:

I just spent the past several days feeding CDs into the computer with EAC and FLAC. I don't want to have to do this again, and I probably won't ever be fortunate to have the free time to spend doing this again. They're mostly all stored now, categorized according to album, and tagged with extraction logs and cue sheets.

The last time I did this was in 2003, and I used Musepack. It was the best thing to do at the time with regards to quality vs. size, and I did not have the disk space for lossless at the time. Unfortunately Musepack kind of fizzled. My iRiver portable player doesn't work with Musepack, so this time I'm using Ogg with FLAC master copies.

If there's an iPod in the future or if Ogg dies, then all I have to do is go back and start a batch-encode to mp3, aac, or whatever with the FLAC master copies, and walk away without having to babysit the computer to deal with CD extraction errors and tagging.

And if FLAC dies, then the files can be converted to lossless whatever or back into WAV while maintaining the original CD quality bit-for-bit. It's also helpful if the original CD gets damaged; a full-quality replacement can be burned.

I don't see mp3 going away anytime soon. If you prefer to store your collection as high-quality mp3, that's fine with me, but it's not a future-proof solution (it can probably be argued that what I've been doing isn't totally future-proof either...)

(tweaked for grammar)

I use lossless simply because I can afford 600 kbps encodings instead of 320 kbps ones. Since I switched to lossless I'm not scared anymore when I have to think about the best/ideal/efficient format-encoder-switch-version which is supposed to be more transparent\less buggy\more robust, etc... I still do care about quality but re-encoding everything from a lossless library is so easy and painless that there's no reason anymore to worry about the choice of an encoder/setting, etc...
And since my entire library is losslessly encoded I'm using mp3 in a much more confortable way: ~130 kbps which save both space and battery life and doesn't offer less quality on my portable.

Cheers.

I think the topic title is not reflective of author's issue. The OP seems to be concerned with general question of "Why Lossless?", rather than why FLAC specifically. That's why arguments for FLAC don't impress him much, since they argue for "Why FLAC as opposed to other lossless", which is not what he's interested in.

And if you ask "Why Lossless?", I'd have to say that the answer may be the the same as for "Why type 'WHY' in all caps?"

Has anyone tried to transcode the same songs from FLAC and mp3 @320kbps to some lower bitrate lossy files and then ABX them? If yes, what were the results?
My searching skills didn't help me much.

Guruboolez tested -V0 (and other lossy formats at similar bitrates), that's the only test I know of.

I use FLAC and CD-R only. I don't use MP3.
CD-R plays in just about anything. I don't need a portable with 1000 songs. I barely can stand a whole 45 minute album, what would I do with 500, 800, 1000 songs? If I need more music for the occasion, I just change the CD. It's that simple, and it's that lossless.

You gotta understand some principles here... the High-End Stereo or Home Theatre principle, the 5.1 principle, the ABX principle, the Trained Ears principle, the why-MP3-sometimes-sucks principle. So I guess after all this, we're in a good position to stick with FLAC or any other lossless format.

How do you think it's gonna be when they release the 500GB iPod?
How do you think it's gonna be when your connection download an entire DVD in 10 minutes?

Let's talk about future here....

Why FLAC...hummmmm,

I go to the store and drop down $15 or so down on a new CD. Get it home and rip it to a lossy format (say MP3) for my car... put the CD back in it's case and store it away. Then my wife ask me to rip it to another lossy format (ACC/M4A) for her iPod.... again, out of the case, in to my PC and rip... put the CD back in it's case and store it away. Now I want to make a backup copy to listen to at work.... again, out of the case, in to my PC and rip... doh, drop and a scratch... put the CD back in it's case and store it away. Now I want to make a mix CD and there are 2 or 3 song from that disc I want.... again, out of the case, in to my PC and rip... put the CD back in it's case and store it away.


...Or, rip once to FLAC, WavPack, APE, TAK, OptimFrog, Shorten...or whatever new or update lossless perfect bit for bit copy format I pick. Now point and click...DONE.

This whole thing just sounds like a FLAME war from the start or someone who just doesn't get it.

EDIT: Spelling

The already mentioned reasons for creating a lossless archive are valid in my case as well, the main one is the fact that I often transcode certain FLAC tracks to different lossy formats, without having to re-rip and tag the whole stuff over and over. For instance, I created a complete -q2 Vorbis backup outta the FLACs on a separate internal drive which I also use for PC playback, due to the FLAC tracks being stored on an external drive which I keep turned off most of the time to lengthen its lifetime and to spare my power bill. I also periodically transcode small parts of the archive to either -q0 or -q1 Vorbis for my portable player as well as -q 0.25 Nero AAC for the mobile phone, all of these with album ReplayGain +3db applied directly to the audio data using foobar's converter.

Needless to mention that such an archive is a highly comfortable thing, allowing you to constantly keep your audio collection updated with the latest versions of today's codecs while preserving most if not all metadata, dependant on the target format's tagging support. Even switching to alternative lossless & lossy formats is a simple and quick job this way.

And no, I'm not able to differ between 320 kbps MP3 and FLAC, not even between aoTuV Beta 5 at -q2 and FLAC. Transparency terms for choosing lossless are of no concern in my case, it's only about archiving and its resulting comfort.

Lossless allows for bit-perfect audio backup and playback of the original audio at a fraction of the original size. It is impossible to achieve this with lossy compression.

I stopped reading here - WAV is not compressed.

For reasons on using lossless, all of the ones I have are already listed in the topic.

some MOD remove this topic, coz it really sounds like trolling

This post clearly is a troll and it's called "Digital Audio Player" not an "MP3 player" you can blame the marketing teams for mishandling the jargon to the common public. That's incorrect as we all know

Trolled on his very first post, which coincidently was this one.

It is to say that ZIP is lossless, so is FLAC.



Because people who use lossless like the sound of an exact copy of the original instead of a chopped up version.



I don't understand how 92Kbps could sound great to anyone.

(In my opinion, not definitively)

^ As to not brake that rule about not saying anything about quality without having some big study...



Most people here, including me, would disagree with you on that.



I don't like winamp.



Storing a backup on a CD isnt that reliable.



Because MP3 players play MP3s.

Am I supposed to base my file format choices on the name of a product?

And lossless is good for when a new version of an encoder comes out. You can use it when encoding to an mp3 player instead of staying with an old version.

I think this subject (Why use lossless?) is worth discussing more seriously. I believe that using mp3@320, or ogg -q7 (~220 kbps) is worth concidering as archiving format for most people. By "most people" I mean for everyone that only want a backup of all their music, and additionally want to transcode to other/smaller bitrate formats later (thereby excluding people who e.g. does post-processing of backed-up CDs). As lossy archiving format, Ogg -q7 is theoretically better than mp3@320. I don't thnk any listening test exists that can confirm that this is also the case in practice because both sounds transparent to practically everyone. So,

• mp3 320/ogg -q7 is transparent for virtually everyone for playback usage.
• mp3 and ogg may die as popular formats at one point in time, but they will be decodable in the foseeable future.
• Transcoding:
  1) Lossless --> LossyA --> LossyB
  2) Lossless --> LossyB
  Lets say LossyA = ogg -q7. Note: ogg -q4 is already considered transparent by most people. I would be surprised if it is possible to ABX the result of 1) and 2), nearly indepently of what was chosen as LossyB. For typical targets, like LossyB = lame -V5, or AAC@128 kbits, I am pretty sure noone can ABX between 1) and 2). Please, prove me wrong! Note that theoretically it is an advantage that LossyA and LossyB are of different formats and not only different quality to avoid "doubling up" artifacts that are specific for one format.

The only test I know:
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=32440

Why use lossless?

Because your requirements include "Be able to reproduce the original CD's audio content *exactly*, in order to future-proof yourself against changes in codec technology."

A good example:

1. You are a radio station that requires all music to be stored in a large database and do not want to be tied to one particularly lossy codec if your equipment is upgraded in the future to use more artifact-resistant codecs.

2. You are the Library of Congress, located in Washington D.C., and have been tasked with keeping an identical, but nuke-proof, archive of your entire audio collection off-site.

3. You are a typical "geek" or "power" user and you are OK with using lossy technology for your gym headphones, but insist on the original audio for home theater room use.

4. You are a scientist, or perhaps a product reviewer, and wish to test eight different lossless codecs at around five settings each against eachother. Rather than be forced to re-rip each and every CD you test with forty times, you instead rip it to FLAC once, and then use the FLAC source as the input to the lossy codecs...

...I could go on...

-brendan

If you really need to save space and need transcoding, WavPack Lossy will work for you, much better than ogg -q7 ever could.

just curious, what could possibly kill the mp3 format?

I know I shouldn't feed the trolls by replying, but I couldn't resist postings some logical comments:



1) 172kps of what codec? MP3? Vorbis? AAC? I assume you mean mp3, in which case you are completely wrong. 172kpbs doesn't even come close to CD quality. If you have to ask why 172kpbs mp3 does not equal cd quality sound, then our telling you would not help you. Seriously.

2) Actually MP3's are closer to 1/8 to 1/16 the size of cd spec wavs. Also, 60mg HD space down from 750 is closer to 1/12 than 1/6. And 74 min audio cds are actually 650mb of data. But 74 minutes of cd audio when ripped from a cd results in more than 650mb on the hd drive because of file system overhead. What exactly is your point? I don't think that anyone disagrees with that the notion that uncompressed wav files are highly inefficient for storing/backing up cds on your harddrive. But if your really so bent out of shape over this point, then your assertion in "5)" makes no sense because burning a copy of the original cd is making back up of a cd by creating a 650mb wave file. That's what an audio cd is, a gaint wave file (sans header) except the audio data is byte reversed.

3) Using gain in winamp doesn't solve the gain issue with mp3s, it just works with other mp3s that either you or someone else has adjusted in winamp and not somewhere else. When it comes to gain in audio files, a single, universally recognized open standard for gain adjustment in playlists does have some compelling advantages. What is present is mp3 is close to mass anarchy...

Flac runs about .37 to .58 compression for cd quality wav files. You really can' t do that much better and still be lossless. Their is a lossless codec that is being tossed around on this forum that people claim has significantly better compression. However, the very best test results I've seen show that this codec can make lossless audio files that are no more then 10% smaller than what flack can do at maximum(compared to the size of the original wav file). However this codec took two days to compress a ten minute audio file, and had incredibly high cpu usage for playback. In addition, built in error correction was essentially untested and not really documented.
Backing up cd with flac is not only practical, it probably does a better job that "deep freezing" the original pressed cd. I fit on avarage 12 full length cds in flac format on a single 29cent dvd+R that I burn on a dvd burner I bought brand new for $35. The software I use to burn cost a grand total of 0$ (I use imageburn or CDRTFE). With a tough of button I can take any archived cd and either A)restore a bit perfect copy of the full cd B) turn the cd into 290kps ogg vorbis files for my mps player or 3) pipe the flacs directly to my hi amp upstairs (acurus amp with a very good pair of speakers). Why do I do this? Because it's flexible, easy, and cheap. Makes sense now?

I wonder if badger got his question answered...

Off topic, but "cheap" is a subjective term. We have to have 3 pesos for each dollar, so, if that hitachi HD costed 1200 dollars, would you say is cheap?



Really? 128kbps was rated 4.6 of 5 on Sebastian's listening test ... i'm pretty sure 172 kbps would be closer to five.

Well, this is a 1TB drive. 500 and less are much cheaper per GB. And you may have 3 pesos to the dollar, but that doesn't mean much if you don't factor in the strength of the currency.



Perhaps he's not referring to CD quality in the "transparent" sense, but in the untouched 44KHz, 16-bit PCM sense.

And I think he meant 192, not 172, because I doubt there's very many people using --alt-preset 172.

No because then he wouldn't have differentiated between AAC, MP3 or Vorbis.

I agree with Kwanbis...128 kbps has reached "CD quality" levels for the mass majority.

I totally agree, and it's the reason that I personally haven't closed this topic.

I think the question is worth an ask now and then: why do we use lossless when ~128kbps is near-transparent to most people?

I know why I use lossless, even though I am one of those people. I shant bore you with the reasons, as we have 101 answers in this thread already.

This topic has got me thinking again about WavPack -b320 or -b400, possibly with a correction file, so I could archive both a lossless and lossy version.

The main issue I do have with such topics is simply the amount of noise generated.

Ain't it always the way...

Perhaps no killers - at least not at the moment - but competitors to be respected well:

- AAC
May be the candidate as a killer that is expected to do it with highest probability.
Better quality for the bitrate, close to universal usability with current music enabled mobile phones,
increasing player support for DAPs.
- wavPack lossy
At 300 ... 500 kbps qualitywise extremely close to lossless while saving about half the file size.
A good solution even for archiving for the practically minded.
With 8 GB flash players out we're close to being able to use this great format on flash players.
Hopefully rockbox support for many players or maybe even native support.
- FLAC
With flash memory going higher and higher in capacity lossless encoding can become more popular.
FLAC is already widely supported by players and for this reason may be the best candidate as a lossless killer.

Assuming a good source, lossless gets you the best possible quality. Never have to worry about that again.
Lossy codecs are subject hidden flaws, and unsuitable for storage imo. That's my reason.

I'm sure it is a good price. What i mean, is that for a lot of non euro/dollar countries, is not always the same situation. From my experience, what it is 1 dollar for you, is probably 1 peso for us, so again, for us, that drive costs 1200 "peso-dollars". When i bought my nano, for example, it costed me 600 pesos, the same way that if to an american costed 600 dollars.

I don't quite understand what you're trying to say. There really is no way of knowing exactly how much a hard drive will cost in your country by simply using the currency exchange rate. It comes down to what prices things are selling at in your country.

Mind, if you tell the name of that codec.

Guess he's talking about OptimFrog Experimental.
I interpret his post as saying 'all the lossless codecs yield a similar compression ratio'.
He's right.

This thread is on the edge already; let's stay on track, or it will be closed down.

Personally, I would love to see some more ABX tests where users have transcoded from 320-400kbps lossy files. It would be great to know that there was a decent compromise between lossless and ~128kbps. Unfortunately I do not have the ears for such a test. Many thanks to guruboolez and shadowking for their previous tests BTW - very interesting.

That said, even if the tests proved conclusively that a 400kbps file was perfectly adequate, I'm not sure that I would ever stop using lossless.

Edit: If people have not already grasped the fact, we are discussing lossless here, not FLAC. I assume the OP used FLAC as that is the lossless codec that he is aware of, but we do not need to start another lossless comparison here. Just consider why you use lossless rather than high bitrate lossy, and whether you really need all those extra bytes...

I personally will transcode 320kbps MP3s to LAME -V5, and have little qualms doing so. There, I said it. This practise doesn't sit completely with me - I would always prefer a lossless source if possible - but I am confident that any deficiency will be negligible or at least marginal*. That's not to say that I would be happy to have my CDs archived only as 320kbps files - as the potential for degradation still niggles me.

* I do not have the resources (ears or time) to perform strict tests and state categorically that I cannot tell the difference. In truth most of my listening is done with background noise (kids, traffic) so a little drop in quality is very difficult to highlight.

I would as well, with one caveat: that I understood that the person or persons who created the initial 320kbps CBR MP3 files did so using otherwise default parameters with a contemporary MP3 codec. They weren't some sort of cargo worshiping anti-JS zealot, for example.

-brendan