Check FLAC compression method
Reply #15 – 2013-03-23 19:52:10
IIRC both FLACCL and Flake can compress stronger than FLAC -8. Also, since FLAC encoding is blazing fast too, you can easily run a conversion script across your whole collection to encode everything again. flac at default -5 really is fast. flac -8 is a lot slower, and flake -12 is glacially slow. I ran flac, flac -8, and flake -12 on the same album. Between each run I flushed my system's vm cache:$ time flac *.wav real 0m40.824s user 0m33.406s sys 0m2.414s $ time flac -8 *.wav real 1m51.575s user 1m47.745s sys 0m2.022s $ time flake -12 *.wav real 4m1.914s user 3m56.816s sys 0m2.090s I also noticed that the difference in file size between flac -5 and flake -12 for the entire album amounts to about 1.2MB. The difference bween flac -8 and flake -12 is only 272 kilobytes in favour of flake. Sometimes flake -12 produces larger files than flac -8 (see tracks 4 and 5).$ du -cs *.flac 33304 01 - Sounsoumba.flac 39812 02 - Sukunyali.flac 31452 03 - Kounadya.flac 40968 04 - Donso.flac 38784 05 - Wele Wele Wintou.flac 29448 06 - Senkele te Sira.flac 31008 07 - Djigui.flac 31912 08 - Seya.flac 47156 09 - Iyo Djeli.flac 37000 10 - Mogo Kele.flac 31900 11 - Koroko.flac 392744 total $ du -cs flac8/* 33236 flac8/01 - Sounsoumba.flac 39700 flac8/02 - Sukunyali.flac 31372 flac8/03 - Kounadya.flac 40864 flac8/04 - Donso.flac 38732 flac8/05 - Wele Wele Wintou.flac 29368 flac8/06 - Senkele te Sira.flac 30892 flac8/07 - Djigui.flac 31840 flac8/08 - Seya.flac 47016 flac8/09 - Iyo Djeli.flac 36912 flac8/10 - Mogo Kele.flac 31816 flac8/11 - Koroko.flac 391748 total $ du -cs flake12/* 33200 flake12/01 - Sounsoumba.flac 39620 flake12/02 - Sukunyali.flac 31356 flake12/03 - Kounadya.flac 40924 flake12/04 - Donso.flac 38776 flake12/05 - Wele Wele Wintou.flac 29280 flake12/06 - Senkele te Sira.flac 30896 flake12/07 - Djigui.flac 31808 flake12/08 - Seya.flac 46956 flake12/09 - Iyo Djeli.flac 36852 flake12/10 - Mogo Kele.flac 31808 flake12/11 - Koroko.flac 391476 total On this album the reduction in file size of flake -12 over flac -5 is less than one third of a percent. I did the same with another CD and did get a better result - slightly over half a percent reduction. It's hard to think of any situation where flake is preferable to flac (I want non-compliant files which might not play, which take longer to make and might be bigger than if I used flac? ) and running a conversion script on 100s of GB of flacs to convert them with flake is nutty as well as flakey. btw can you imagine doing this and then finding your shiny new playback device/appliance chokes on flake encodes and you have to do it all again in reverse....