FLAC 1.3.0 Released

by Tsiolkovsky • 13 years ago

125 44 13 years ago

bdz3• 13 years ago

"libFLAC encoder was defaulting to level 0 compression instead of 5"

Level 5 is better imho, as I guess most of us want smaller files not faster encoding. Computers today are fast enough to do this without a significant wait.

Also this: Created: 2007-10-19 Closed-fixed: 2009-01-02 Released: 2013-05-26

Jgrubb• 13 years ago

Yeah, any idea why development slowed on this so much? Did they get the codec so perfect that there was nothing left to do? It's kind of interesting that something that has seen so little development over the past several years still dominates this market, or whatever you call it.

grimman• 13 years ago

The same holds for MP3, does it not? Come to think of it, the only CODEC stuff you really hear about after its launch is video related.

sunseb• 13 years ago

Level 0 uses less CPU (and improves battery life).

Shish2k2• 13 years ago

I would imagine that it's reached the point of diminishing returns -- it would take months of hard work to squeeze another 1% compression out of the format, in which time hard drive space per dollar has gone up by 10% with no effort (on the part of the software developer) at all.

(There are probably still compression technologies waiting to be invented; but applying them within the constraints of an existing format is hard or impossible, and creating a new format means you need a /massive/ improvement to make switching attractive for the consumer)

pronoiac• 13 years ago

I think they wanted hardware support, which means that much of it is set in stone.

bbx• 13 years ago

Flac is a great format.

I've been making music for years and I often work with samples. Luckily, Ableton Live accepts .flac files. It's important to have high quality samples considering manipulating the sound (especially time-stretching) can easily alter its quality.

Unfortunately, it's still hard to obtain music in Flac format. Few online music stores offer tracks in that format. [1] It's maybe a marketing issue. Everybody knows what an Mp3 is. It also took me some time to learn that such a format as Flac existed. But it's also a size issue. Although the compressing algorithm is incredible, people prefer to download (legally or illegally) a 80 MB album rather than a 500 MB one, regardless of its quality, because they either won't hear the difference or just don't care. And considering iTunes doesn't support Flac (only their own Alac format that is even less known), Flac isn't meant to be widely adopted yet.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_online_music_stor...

thirdsun• 13 years ago

I think these days it's pretty easy to buy lossless audio - if you just look a little bit further than iTunes & Co. you'll find Qobuz, Boomkat, HDTracks, Bandcamp and similar stores.

I pretty much find everything I need, including rather obscure music.

bdz3• 13 years ago

Bleep! They also offer 24bit wav versions.

samolang• 13 years ago

I know you're probably looking for a legal solution, but private torrent sites like what.cd offer a very large selection of .flac files. If only the music industry would do the same.

e12e• 13 years ago

A few artists on soundcloud.com also make their music available as flac (and as lossless wav).

conradfr• 13 years ago

That's why I like buying from bands in Bandcamp.

mpyne2• 13 years ago

I'm in the camp of people who literally can't perceive the difference, so why would I download the much larger audio?

In fact I can't even tell the difference between 128kbps MP3 and the CD it's encoded from, let alone superior formats like Opus or AAC or higher-bitrate MP3.

hadem• 13 years ago

What are you listening with/on when you perform these comparisons? You probably won't hear any difference when listening with set of standard ear buds that come with your smart phone or laptop speakers. If you have a nice pair of headphones/speakers, the difference is easier to hear.

Who knows, maybe any differences I think I hear are just placebo effects :-)

kinleyd• 13 years ago

I was too. Now I find the superior formats sound better, but more importantly I find they hurt my ears less. I found mp3 and lower formats really hurt my ears, frequently causing uncomfortable numbness.

dmm2• 13 years ago

Flac is future proof. You can always take losslessly compressed audio and convert it to another lossless or lossy format.

You can convert lossy formats but there is no way to tell how the artifacts will interact.

nitrogen• 13 years ago

I've only ever heard a difference for sure in one song: Who Said (Stuck in the UK) by Planet Funk. At one point there's a synthesized high frequency warble that MP3 at any bitrate is apparently unable to encode properly.

Goosey• 13 years ago

For the consumer listener, I agree with you. On the vast majority of consumer sound systems and consumer ears, as you point out, compressing that further into a 128kbs MP3 isn't noticeable. For me it personally is, but on most music say 192VBR MP3 isn't.

Currently at the end of the line all audio is going to be squished, at best, to 44k 16bit sampling. Most audio production and engineering is going to be taking place at quality levels than what the final CD master is, however. /During/ production working with higher quality sources such as a higher sample rate, higher bit rate FLAC sample means that you can 'do more' with it before you start running into the walls of unintended artifacts and distortions. Think of all audio processing as a destructive process - the more you have to begin with the more you can do before the destruction becomes noticeable.

Intentionally ignoring all debates on aesthetics, obviously in many artistic circumstances the artifacts and distortions are desired - but when they are you can easily achieve them in an /intentional/ way. Avoiding them is the challenge.

And there are certain contexts in which it is more noticeable: high quality club sound-systems, custom home and car audio systems, etc. My vehicle's sound system has a very easily audible difference between a 128KBS MP3 and an uncompressed 44k 16bit CD for most music, and in that context you are damn sure I want the uncompressed experience. So having an /option/ for high quality lossless formats such as FLAC available universally helps to serve such niche markets.

tldr; if you are in camp that can't tell the difference, you shouldn't download the higher quality larger files. They aren't for you. Other camps do exist, however.

edit edit: And this all ignores the annoying 'loudness war' trend in modern audio engineering to use compressors to flatten out all dynamic range anyway. Le sigh

dangravell• 13 years ago

7digital have a few too, I made a list here: http://www.blisshq.com/music-library-management-blog/2012/02...

desireco42• 13 years ago

Flac is genuinely great, but I don't see the problem with people using mp3. I use Flac for my meditation sounds because of binaural tones encoded into them, otherwise for music mp3 is just fine, I am just enjoying it, not producing.

darylfritz• 13 years ago

I love FLAC, I just wish it had more mainstream support: I'm looking at you iTunes Player & 160GB iPod Classic.

mikeash• 13 years ago

At least you can re-encode to ALAC without loss of quality, just loss of time and perhaps sanity.

unsignedint3• 13 years ago

Agreed... It was an interesting discovery that Google Music allows you to upload FLAC, though. While I'm pretty sure actual playback is something lossy, at least it prevents them transcoding lossy format into another lossy format for streaming... (or so I heard...)

dcg• 13 years ago

The Google Music Manager program just transcodes FLAC to 320kbps MP3 before uploading.

https://support.google.com/googleplay/answer/1100462?hl=en

macalicious2• 13 years ago

Besides having a lossless compressed audio file, I often wonder, if one can actually hear the difference between a well compressed mp3 (say, converted from a flac) and the actual original flac? Is there a real benefit for the average consumer? The problem I see is the quite large file size.

throwaway2048• 13 years ago

FLAC is intended for music archival storage, so its not really about perceptual loses, but preventing things like generational loss if you are using music for stuff like mixing/re-encoding etc.

mitchi• 13 years ago

I have invested a lot of money into good headphones and good speakers and I can't tell the difference between good lame mp3s and flac...

pja2• 13 years ago

Blind test? HydrogenAudio forums will tell you that if it's not a blind A/B test you can fool yourself very easily.

You might also like to try AAC (or ogg) at a similar bitrate: MP3 has a couple of encoding peculiarities that are an unavoidable function of the format & if you know what to listen out for they're fairly obvious even at higher bitrates. (I'd still be surprised if you could tell the difference between flac and 320kps mp3 in a blind test though.)

jlarocco• 13 years ago

Even if I could hear a difference, I'm certain it would be drowned out in "real life" situations where I'm listening to music.

Riding my bike or walking down the street, I'm not going to notice tiny artifacts in an mp3...

leeoniya• 13 years ago

if anyone wants different compiles for windows of a whole lot of various encoders, including FLAC 1.3.0, check out http://www.rarewares.org been using it for years

bdz3• 13 years ago

The official announcement http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/flac-dev/2013-June/004223.ht...

FLAC 1.3.0 Released

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