Do you use FLAC or WAVPACK?
Reply #8 – 2006-04-23 16:00:34
WavPack - because of better compression and hybrid mode. My voice is for WavPack, but I have converted more than 1000 files into flac the last days (mostly to remove hybrid encodings I had and that don't arrange me anymore). Garf's flac 1.1.2.1 -8 often gives me a better compression ratio than WavPack -fx5. The difference is rarely important, excepted some case: - some mono album (problem corrected with 4.4 which unfortunately break older decoder) - some harpsichord albums - few other ones. This flac setting (-8) is also faster on the encoding side than (-fx5) [I recall that I never found one file that was smaller with -fx6], and offers a identical decoding speed on my Duron 800 (x60) but a significantly higher one on my Mobile Athlon (x120 vs x150). I don't use the normal and the high profile of WavPack, because decoding speed is clearly lower (especially with -high). But what I always hated with flac was the tagging format, which isn't really compatible with massive and constant tagging. With foobar2000 0.9, the problem is gone (at last), and tagging is now as fast as WavPack and all APEv2 based file formats. Nevertheless, the problem is still present with flac/cue files, and adding a new field takes a good minute with this format I'm still a WavPack user, because I still have 1500 hours of music in WavPack format. But EAC is currently set to use flac 1.1.2.1... Both formats are great, but I prefer WavPack over FLAC for several reasons.