Alright! I'm impressed. I have to say that I didn't think the improvement would be that great on my system, but here are my results (based on about a 53 minute CD):
original FLAC encoder (-8) = 1 minute, 15 seconds.
and George FP's encoder (-8) = 24 seconds!
i didn't believe it, so I did a bit-compare on the two files:
All tracks decoded fine, no differences found.
Comparing:
"X:\encode1.flac"
"X:\encode2.flac"
No differences in decoded data found.
and then I did a verify on the FLAC files, to make sure they were identical (audio data-wise):
Item: "X:\encode1.flac"
MD5: 66B84449D7A9899065A11FA190C994AC
CRC32: D199E9A2
No problems found.
All items decoded successfully.
Item: "X:\encode2.flac"
MD5: 66B84449D7A9899065A11FA190C994AC
CRC32: D199E9A2
No problems found.
All items decoded successfully.
finally, to prove that it wasn't EXACTLY THE SAME THING, i have noted the file sizes and hashes of both FLAC files... different! both files are unique.
File: encode1.flac
Size: 357MB (374,398,783 bytes)
CRC-32: fa984f9e
MD5: 6eb400219c22f1aa1525d13f5f7f1135
SHA-1: 70aa7e4a65ed635eb78b52ef3d2f1b1b8b435692
File: encode2.flac
Size: 356MB (374,328,806 bytes)
CRC-32: eac29087
MD5: a8d830f2defbe50af368ce60a5a69460
SHA-1: c356080e0e508d26b8d7b625229af0d2ca2dde7b
so George... you have made a believer of me! empirical evidence, right there for me and everyone else to see.... congrats!
I am about to do a second test on a second system, then I will post those results below.
Results from test #2:
original FLAC encoder (-8 compression) = 1 minute, 07 seconds
and George FP's encoder (-8 compression) = 21 seconds
just for kicks I tried flaCUDA...
flaCUDA encoder (-11 compression) = 58 seconds
flaCUDA encoder (-8 compression) = 16 seconds
E:\Temp>CUETools.FlaCuda.exe -11 encode.wav -o encode3.flac
CUETools.FlaCuda, Copyright (C) 2009 Gregory S. Chudov.
Filename : encode.wav
File Info : 44100kHz; 2 channel; 16 bit; 00:52:53.4930000
Results : 53.89x; 373021162 bytes in 00:00:58.8901034 seconds;
E:\Temp>CUETools.FlaCuda.exe -8 encode.wav -o encode4.flac
CUETools.FlaCuda, Copyright (C) 2009 Gregory S. Chudov.
Filename : encode.wav
File Info : 44100kHz; 2 channel; 16 bit; 00:52:53.4930000
Results : 198.27x; 373969399 bytes in 00:00:16.0056281 seconds;
but there is a discrepancy.... flaCUDA's compression scheme goes up to 11, and that is what the 58 second result was based on... when I use compression -8, the encoding time ends up only taking 16 seconds. jeez. I'm not sure how the compression numbers crossover though. all 4 output files are identical to the original and each other (same audio MD5's), the two files produced by FLAC and fpFLAC both have a bitrate of 944, whereas the flaCUDA -11 encode shows a 940 bitrate, and the flaCUDA -8 encode shows a 943 bitrate (in foobar2000) -- all end-product FLAC files are sized between 355MB and 357MB, so negligible difference, size wise. *shrug* i have no idea.... already put waaaay too much thought into this as it is haha
anyways, with differing compression schemes, it's hard to make a solid conclusion.... other than that both of these two are VERY FAST encoders!
oh yeah, and of course, I forgot to include what specs I was using to test:
Intel i7-860 (2.8Ghz stock, 3.47Ghz in turbo mode -- it's a Quad-core with Hyper-Threading, so it sees it as 8 CPU's)
4GB DDR3-1600 RAM
Windows7 x64... I used of course the 64 bit version and the SSE4 instructions as George said in the readme
(and video card is Nvidia GeForce 9600 GSO)