flac or CD???

[FLMike]

You might want to consider a Squeezebox

El,
You might want to take a look at a Logitech (Slim Devices) squeezebox or Duet as an alternative. They handle FLAC natively, and offer optical connection to your reciever. They also offer reliable wireless lossless streaming as long as you have decent range to your router, or in the alternative you can connect via Ethernet. You can get more info here: www.slimdevices.com

They also have a great online community, and there are a lot of people exierienced with FLAC and other codec options as well as ripping and library mgmt strategies. You can get some good info there.

Best,

Mike

 

[joebob]

I ripped a new CD in to the HD in WAV. I put the same CD in the changer with the outboard DAC. I started them at the same time and did AB comparisons for about an hour. I could not tell the difference with my B&W 600 on pure direct.

I hope you're not planning to rip the whole collection in WAV. If you use FLAC you'll get the same sound and about 50% compression.

 

[FLMike]

I hope you're not planning to rip the whole collection in WAV. If you use FLAC you'll get the same sound and about 50% compression.

joebob,
Right on point. Ripping to .wav is simply a waste of disk space. Lossless formats--whether flac or some of the other available options-- are exactly that: Lossless. You get more music, in less space, with identical quality to the original recording.

Mike

 

[MDS]

joebob,
Right on point. Ripping to .wav is simply a waste of disk space. Lossless formats--whether flac or some of the other available options-- are exactly that: Lossless. You get more music, in less space, with identical quality to the original recording.

Mike

If it were only so simple. WAV is raw PCM and is the lowest common denominator in digital audio. Devices from now through eternity will always be able to play WAV files. With FLAC you must always have a FLAC decoder available and any media player you want to use must support FLAC (only a handful to date support it) to decode it on the fly before playback unless you want to decode to PCM first in a batch process. So pick your poison - ubiquitous support forever or save a few bytes of disc space.

 

[itschris]

If it were only so simple. WAV is raw PCM and is the lowest common denominator in digital audio. Devices from now through eternity will always be able to play WAV files. With FLAC you must always have a FLAC decoder available and any media player you want to use must support FLAC (only a handful to date support it) to decode it on the fly before playback unless you want to decode to PCM first in a batch process. So pick your poison - ubiquitous support forever or save a few bytes of disc space.

I never even thought of looking at it that way. With storage so cheap, or at least relatively so, who cares about a couple of hundred gigs here or there. Which is faster - burning WAVs or FLAC? Considering a 1500 disc inventory, that plays a big part.

 

[bandphan]

http://flac.sourceforge.net/links.html supported players and equipment.

3 tb storage $599 http://store.memorylabs.net/cfi3tbteusb2.html

 

[Dan Banquer]

FLAC or CD

This article might help.
http://www.audioholics.com/tweaks/do-it-yourself-diy-topics/building-a-pc-as-a-high-performance-digital-stereo-source.html

d.b.

 

[FLMike]

I don't necessarily agree with this

If it were only so simple. WAV is raw PCM and is the lowest common denominator in digital audio. Devices from now through eternity will always be able to play WAV files. With FLAC you must always have a FLAC decoder available and any media player you want to use must support FLAC (only a handful to date support it) to decode it on the fly before playback unless you want to decode to PCM first in a batch process. So pick your poison - ubiquitous support forever or save a few bytes of disc space.

I see your point I guess, but don't really agree with it with respect to playback from a PC because it ignores an important characteristic of the format. Because it is lossless, FLAC can always be converted back in bit perfect form to the original source format--or some other format for that matter--if it becomes unsupportable in the software media players of the day.

Also, it is more than a "few bytes of disk space", especially for a large collection. Lossless compression can make the difference between housing an entire library on one disk with no sacrifice in quality, or dealing with the complexities of spanning your library accross multiple drives. I understand your point about obsolescene, but given that FLAC is a free codec and there are freely available applications to manipulate it fairly easily, I can't see any benefit wasting the disk space to store in .wav format. That said, if someone has an abundance of disk space and a modest collection that they don't feel is going to outgrow its home, there is no reason to compress for compressions sake.

Best,

Mike

 

[Dan Banquer]

Flac or CD

"That said, if someone has an abundance of disk space and a modest collection that they don't feel is going to outgrow its home, there is no reason to compress for compressions sake."
Terabyte SATA drives, the last I knew, were available from Tiger Direct for about $300.00. That's over 1,000 CD's without compression, and plenty of room to spare. My present collection of just over 400 CD's is about 255 gigabytes.
d.b.

 

[FLMike]

Sure, storage has gotten cheaper, but.....

"That said, if someone has an abundance of disk space and a modest collection that they don't feel is going to outgrow its home, there is no reason to compress for compressions sake."
Terabyte SATA drives, the last I knew, were available from Tiger Direct for about $300.00. That's over 1,000 CD's without compression, and plenty of room to spare. My present collection of just over 400 CD's is about 255 gigabytes.
d.b.

Dan,
Sure, if you want to spend $300.00 and have space in your PC for another drive. But if you want to/have to leverage what you already have then my point is that a lossless CODEC can be your friend. Why spend $300, if you can fit what you need on the hardware you already have--for free. Not to mention the fact that the server will use less power, generate less noise, and generate less heat.

Also, there are users out there who's libraries number in the thousands of CDs and tens of thousands of tracks. Again, lossless compression can be their friend with very little downside.

That said, library management--ripping, encoding, tagging--is a topic unto itself. You can see some interesting conversations and opinions on those topics here: http://forums.slimdevices.com/forumdisplay.php?f=8

I'm not saying that FLAC, or any compression for that matter, always has a benefit. That was the point of my previous comment. For some people ripping to raw PCM/.WAV is just fine. If it suits your needs, awesome. But lossless compression, whether FLAC or some of the other options out there, is a useful alternative for many people that does solve/mitigate real world issues.

Regards,

Mike

 

[itschris]

It seems like there's nothing clear cut anymore.. about anything. I'll probably just use FLAC and from what I've read before, Media Monkey seems to be one of the preferred programs to do it. My collection is just over 1500 discs and growing. Hopefully there will be a mainstream source for lossless downloads at some point. I have about 500 songs downloaded from ITunes, but I never download stuff that I really really want. I still go buy the disc.

 

[MDS]

Because it is lossless, FLAC can always be converted back in bit perfect form to the original source format--or some other format for that matter--if it becomes unsupportable in the software media players of the day.

It can be converted back to the original format IFF you have a FLAC decoder. Contrary to popular belief open source software does not necessarily live forever so if you no longer have access to a FLAC decoder because technology has moved on and it is no longer popular and has not been ported to current hardware and operating systems, you are out of luck. I don't mean to sound alarmist because it is not in any imminent danger of becoming obsolete but I know a bit about open source - I have worked and am currently working on open source projects. It's just one thing to think about.

I didn't mean to trivialize the amount of space savings - it's about 50% - but for all but the largest collections it's not much of an issue and will become even less of an issue as storage capacities increase and costs decrease. I have 5200 WAV files and they occupy 210 GB of a 300 GB drive.

 

[FLMike]

I don't think you are an alarmist at all

It can be converted back to the original format IFF you have a FLAC decoder. Contrary to popular belief open source software does not necessarily live forever so if you no longer have access to a FLAC decoder because technology has moved on and it is no longer popular and has not been ported to current hardware and operating systems, you are out of luck. I don't mean to sound alarmist because it is not in any imminent danger of becoming obsolete but I know a bit about open source - I have worked and am currently working on open source projects. It's just one thing to think about.

I didn't mean to trivialize the amount of space savings - it's about 50% - but for all but the largest collections it's not much of an issue and will become even less of an issue as storage capacities increase and costs decrease. I have 5200 WAV files and they occupy 210 GB of a 300 GB drive.

MDS,
Not accusing you of being alarmist. Format obsolescence is certainly something to consider over time and is a risk. It is a risk with any format, open or closed. At least with open source, once it is out there it is out there somewhere, at least for whatever OS you are using now. I'm certainly not making the case that FLAC is forever by any stretch. Just that it may be a practical option today and definitely serves a purpose for some people. If you use it (or any other format), you need to consider that some day you may be faced with converting your library to the "next great codec" (whatever that turns out to be ).

As for the storage issue, I am amazed at how many people have what used to look like humongous storage needs on their PCs. With video, music, and traditional data all competing for the same resources, what used to look unfillable is looking like a tight closet in a small home! Try telling someone they would need a terrabyte of storage on a pc a few years ago. I was reading a post earlier today from an average guy who had 4000 CDs (FLAC) in his collection spread accross 3 external 500GB external storage units trying to figure our how to get it all integrated into one library with a realistic backup strategy. 10 years ago the only people asking a question like that were enterprise business users.

I really don't disagree with you that if you have the space, just rip the file in an unaltered format and be done. But if you don't, you probably need to pick some CODEC to help you out.

Best,

Mike

 

[bandphan]

Try telling someone they would need a terrabyte of storage on a pc a few years ago. I was reading a post earlier today from an average guy who had 4000 CDs (FLAC) in his collection spread accross 3 external 500GB external storage units trying to figure our how to get it all integrated into one library with a realistic backup strategy. 10 years ago the only people asking a question like that were enterprise business users.

And guys that were recording live shows and trading them in .shn before flac or ogg was around. Just an fyi if you check out the 3 tb storage center i linked on the previous page, it will combine the multiple drives to be viewed as one, for easy intergration.

 

[FLMike]

Nas

And guys that were recording live shows and trading them in .shn before flac or ogg was around. Just an fyi if you check out the 3 tb storage center i linked on the previous page, it will combine the multiple drives to be viewed as one, for easy intergration.

Yikes. Forgot about early video. Good pointer on the Storage center. Just an FYI, there are actually some users who have figured out how to shoe-horn music server software (in this case Slimserver) into NAS (Network Attached Storage) boxes and run them as headless servers for their Squeezeboxes. Ingenuity knows no bounds.
Mike

 

[Warpdrv]

For those interested, Modwright has been doing tube mods to the slim devices and it has been getting super rave reviews for SQ, I noticed someone had tubes, although I'm sure they have already seen this unit. http://www.modwright.com/products/index.php?product_id=28

I bought a D-Link DNS-323 which is a dual SATA drive and threw 2 terabyte drives into it for a network storage. I stream music, movies, and its great for just general all around storage. Much faster then a USB attached drives.
It wasn't that expensive, and Seagate drives get a 5 year warrantee, spring for the better IT performance drive. Little bit more, but faster, and better quality build.

Although I use my XBMC for streaming music, I have been very happy with the SQ from it, so I find no need to change as of yet...

 

[niget2002]

Great... so now I'm learning I need to go re-rip all my audio

I did this once a couple of years ago, opting for 256kb mp3's... I guess I can do it again with FLAC now.

 

[bandphan]

Great... so now I'm learning I need to go re-rip all my audio

I did this once a couple of years ago, opting for 256kb mp3's... I guess I can do it again with FLAC now.

your not gonna benfit if you use the mp3 to flac conversion, you would need to re-rip from cd.