Skip to main content ↑ ↓

Notice

Please note that most of the software linked on this forum is likely to be safe to use. If you are unsure, feel free to ask in the relevant topics, or send a private message to an administrator or moderator. To help curb the problems of false positives, or in the event that you do find actual malware, you can contribute through the article linked here.
Topic: Quality APE Encoder and Decoder (Read 35006 times) previous topic - next topic
0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Quality APE Encoder and Decoder

Reply #25 –
I smell a troll rather than an idiot here.

Quality APE Encoder and Decoder

Reply #26 –
Excelsius XS,

Check it out, I'll lead you to the water, but it's up to you if you want to take a drink.

If you don't want to use Monkey's Audio because it can't recover as much data as flac or Wav Pack and because you are paranoid, that's your business.  But don't think you're going to get away with trashing a perfectly good piece of software just because you are ignorant.

Quality APE Encoder and Decoder

Reply #27 –
Quote from: greynol on
Excelsius XS,

... Monkey's Audio ... can't recover as much data as flac or Wav Pack ... don't think you're going to get away with trashing a perfectly good piece of software just because you are ignorant.



You're right, I'm the ignorant one. MAC can't recover the data, but it's "PERFECTLY GOOD." That about says it. By the way, you just violated TOS#2.

Quality APE Encoder and Decoder

Reply #28 –
...nor can flac or Wav Pack recover corrupted data.  I guess by your reasoning they aren't perfectly good either?

I suggest you read over this thread a little bit harder.

Perhaps instead of saying that you are ignorant I should have said that you don't know what you're talking about; it is painfully obvious.

Quality APE Encoder and Decoder

Reply #29 –
Again, there are no lossless format which (currently) offers any possibility to restore the corrupted datas.
I'm not an expert but I guess that such feature would necessary take some space and therefore decrease the compressing ratio.

If you're so anxious about corruption (which should only appear on rare situation) I suggest you to go with dedicated solution such as PAR2.


edit> greynol was faster.

Quality APE Encoder and Decoder

Reply #30 –
Maybe we should make a thread or a poll to ask some of the people who are really good at programming to develop or perfect the lossless front. Are there any programmers in here? I am sure that many people would sacrifice compression to have a more error-free file quality. Since storage becomes cheaper and cheaper, maybe it would be best to just store the files in wav format. I know that currently the industry is trying hard to popularize SACD and DVD-audio, which will have a much better quality that current CDs. Just the fact that a vinyl has a much higher quality than any CD or DVD-audio says a lot about how far back we're in terms of audio technology.
 

Quality APE Encoder and Decoder

Reply #31 –
How would you insure that your waves don't get corrupted?

I still don't think you're grasping the concept here.
EDIT: Now I *know* you still aren't grasping the concept here.

Quote from: Excelsius XS on
Just the fact that a vinyl has a much higher quality than any CD or DVD-audio says a lot about how far back we're in terms of audio technology.
Uh-oh!  Now he's just violated TOS #8.

seanyseansean, I'm beginning to think you're right.

Quality APE Encoder and Decoder

Reply #32 –
Quote from: seanyseansean on
I smell a troll rather than an idiot here.

Well, i wasn't sure but...

Quote from: Excelsius XS on
maybe it would be best to just store the files in wav format. I know that currently the industry is trying hard to popularize SACD and DVD-audio, which will have a much better quality that current CDs. Just the fact that a vinyl has a much higher quality than any CD or DVD-audio says a lot about how far back we're in terms of audio technology.

"MAC can't handle errors well" has been a good topic for trolling and here is another one.

If he is a troll, he isn't very good or entertaining.

Quality APE Encoder and Decoder

Reply #33 –
greynol, enough is enough. If you make one more post that is similar to what you've been saying I will see that the moderators put you back where you belong, since it seems they have been quick to respond to me.

I'll answer you this time: you cannot be 100% that any file remains pristine, but at least if you save the file in wav and lose a fraction, you won't lose as much as you would if you had an APE. APE is compressed and you would loss more data for the equivalent sized loss.
By quoting TOS#8 you just slandered me because you have no idea what i am talking about. It is perhaps beyond your comprehension, but vinyl indeed has a better quality. In simple terms, the reason is that digital audio approximates the waves in a quantized manner, whereas vinyl is engraved with the exact waveform of the music (it is not approximated).

Quality APE Encoder and Decoder

Reply #34 –
Wrong, wrong, wrong. That waveform claim has been refuted so many times it's not even funny anymore.

Quality APE Encoder and Decoder

Reply #35 –
Store your online files on a RAID-5 array, and your offline files on optical media enhanced with PAR2 files or dvddisaster correction, and then use whichever lossless codec you want.  And stop worrying about the codecs.

-brendan

Quality APE Encoder and Decoder

Reply #36 –
The easiest way to avoid errors is to stop using files. 
lossyFLAC (lossyWAV -q 0; FLAC -b 512 -e)

Quality APE Encoder and Decoder

Reply #37 –
From your posts it seems that there is no simple solution. Oh well. I'll try to come back and address this issue in a forum next year. By that time perhaps we'll all be using SACDs or DVD-audios and audio file storage will be perfected. I'll see if using PAR2 will not be time consuming because this is the first time I am hearing about it.

And Firon, I'm not going to repeat this again. I don't care what you have heard or what you have thought you have heard (or read what some kid has posted). CDs throw out a lot of the data that vinyls have. I have seen the data and the graphs myself. I have a friend who has been making home stereo and amplifiers for 37 years and he knows that too. There was also an editorial in New York Times about this. I don't what your opinion is, but do not misinform the people who come to get some information from this forum.

Quality APE Encoder and Decoder

Reply #38 –
Many, many audio engineers (such as the creator of MP3 and AAC) who know far more than most of us have proven that your previous claim is essentially junk. If you don't want to believe that, suit yourself.
YOU are the one misinforming people here.

Oh, and if you want to test accuracy on a vinyl, try recording a sine wave on it and look at the output with an oscilloscope. Then do the same with a CD.
Let's not forget the harmonic distortions and the fact that there is an analog noise floor (which is not very low) with limits the "resolution" on vinyl.

Back to keeping your files safe, creation of PAR2 files is slow, but it is very reliable and very useful. With good quality media and taking care of your discs (ie keep them in dark places and in cases), the PAR2s should be more than sufficient for making sure your data is fine in the long term (sans fire or destruction)

Quality APE Encoder and Decoder

Reply #39 –
Quote from: Excelsius XS on
I am sure that many people would sacrifice compression to have a more error-free file quality.
You are still seriously missing the point.  Lossless codecs do compress WAVE files and create no errors.  However, post-encoding errors can occur (Edit: I refer to disc scratchs and bad sectors on hard drives here - corruption that can happen to any file type and are unrelated to the encoding process).  Some formats, such as WavPack and FLAC, may be better at decoding through those errors (people's views seem to vary).  No codec can recover those errors.

As I, and someone else, have already suggested, I would look at PAR2 parity data if you want some help recovering corrupt data completely.

You need to start listening, and doing some reading.  This thread is close to being closed for trolling.
I'm on a horse.

Quality APE Encoder and Decoder

Reply #40 –
Quote from: Synthetic Soul on
You need to start listening, and doing some reading.  This thread is close to being closed for trolling.

I know I've pretty much given up on it, but not before supplying a link:
http://www.quickpar.org.uk/

Quality APE Encoder and Decoder

Reply #41 –
Synthetic, when I said that I indeed did not understand at what point the errors were introduced. I already know what you said. And storing my files on 35 DVDs is not my idea of a safe back up. I have been trying hard to keep my CDs scratch free, but I haven't been able to do that. If I accidentally drop the DVDs or if there is an earthquake,the label side will get damaged and I'll have a pile of plastic garbage. Raid-5 is a temporary and expensive solution for now that I might try.
I don't know what do you mean by trolling, but this thread is over anyway. Thanks to everyone who gave me some useful information or leads.

Firon, if you don't mind please provide the links to the proof that you have found. I am open minded as long as there is scientific evidence to back it up. MP3 was invented by about 5 guys at the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany. If you have a link that shows that the institute says  that CDs have better quality than vinyls I will be surprised.

Quality APE Encoder and Decoder

Reply #42 –
Lets recap:

Monkeys has 2 levels of error detection, a CRC for the smaller 'frames' and an MD5 which can be compared against the whole decoded audio data (very few programs will do this, probabbly because the crc32 will catch 99.9999999% of errors).

When compared to FLAC and wv Monkeys will sometimes (depending on compression mode) recover less data than the others, if the file has become corrupted.

No current audio codec, lossless or wav will recover and stay lossless if there are errors in the datastream.

Invest in a firesafe, removable hard disk and DVD-Rs (ie two types of backup) and you will be safe from earthquakes, fire and user missuse. Better still upload your audio to one of hte online datastorage backup places.

Quality APE Encoder and Decoder

Reply #43 –
Quote from: Excelsius XS on
And Firon, I'm not going to repeat this again. I don't care what you have heard or what you have thought you have heard (or read what some kid has posted).

For someone without serious knowledge you sound very arrogant.

Quote
CDs throw out a lot of the data that vinyls have. I have seen the data and the graphs myself. I have a friend who has been making home stereo and amplifiers for 37 years and he knows that too. There was also an editorial in New York Times about this. I don't what your opinion is, but do not misinform the people who come to get some information from this forum.

  what data did you see there? was ist the difference between CD and vinyl?
Of course they are not equal because vinyl players introduce some wow&flutter, harmonic distortions, non harmonic distortions, groove noise, tracking angle errors, crackles, pops and so on.
CD throws them all away, that's right

Quality APE Encoder and Decoder

Reply #44 –
Argh, I can't believe I'm even posting in this rediculous thread of misinformations!!!

As said before, it's not up to a *file format* to provide *error correction*. Although most filesystems DO have error correction/detection, and it would be very rare that files gets corrupted without an internal CRC error shows up.

Have you never heard of backup? There are many ways you can securely backup the data. Say, CD/DVD's doesn't last forever, but they last long enough if you keep them safe! But keeping them on such a media, I would definately use some kind of error correction data - I've seen projects before, that stores x% recovery data on media, or you could just duplicate every backed up DVD.

A combination of both an offline harddrive and backed up DVD's could be the best solution though.

AND FOR CHRIST SAKE STOP YELLING ABOUT INTEGRITY ON SPECIFIC FORMATS! IT'S POINT/USELESS IN THIS CASE!!!

...and vinyl is crap
Can't wait for a HD-AAC encoder :P

Quality APE Encoder and Decoder

Reply #45 –
http://www.skepticforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=85
Reading into that thread, there's references to books on basic sampling theory and so on that will explain everything (if you don't believe what Mr. Johnston says). And he is one of the co-inventors of MP3 and MPEG-2 AAC.
There's more I could probably dig up, but I'm not really going to bother at 6am.

Quality APE Encoder and Decoder

Reply #46 –
Quote from: Firon on
http://www.skepticforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=85
Reading into that thread, there's references to books on basic sampling theory and so on that will explain everything (if you don't believe what Mr. Johnston says). And he is one of the co-inventors of MP3 and MPEG-2 AAC.
There's more I could probably dig up, but I'm not really going to bother at 6am.

I'm afraid no amount of links can help in this case... 

Quality APE Encoder and Decoder

Reply #47 –
Quote from: Excelsius XS on
By quoting TOS#8 you just slandered me because you have no idea what i am talking about. It is perhaps beyond your comprehension, but vinyl indeed has a better quality. In simple terms, the reason is that digital audio approximates the waves in a quantized manner, whereas vinyl is engraved with the exact waveform of the music (it is not approximated).


Sorry but you don't have the faintest idea of what you are talking about. Your waveformat claim is a very common misconception of people who are not familiar with digital sampling theory and the nyquist-shannon sampling theorem.

You can reconstruct the original wave if sampled at least twice the highest frequency. The typical hearing range for humans goes from 20Hz to 20kHz. CDs are sampled at 44kHz which makes possible to reconstruct waves up to 22kHz above the hearing threshold so you do not lose anything from the waveformat. 
Please don't argue against this because otherwise everyone will be sure you are a troll.

Quality APE Encoder and Decoder

Reply #48 –
Quote from: odyssey on
As said before, it's not up to a *file format* to provide *error correction*. Although most filesystems DO have error correction/detection, and it would be very rare that files gets corrupted without an internal CRC error shows up.


Are you really sure?
Double checking with wikipedia, GPFS and ZFS only provide Error Correction.

Never seen someone so paranoid about data integrity that he would question the format of the data, and I thought A removeable hard drive in a cupboard would be enough for the average joe.

Quality APE Encoder and Decoder

Reply #49 –
Quote from: TREX6662k6 on
Quote from: odyssey on

As said before, it's not up to a *file format* to provide *error correction*. Although most filesystems DO have error correction/detection, and it would be very rare that files gets corrupted without an internal CRC error shows up.


Are you really sure?
Double checking with wikipedia, GPFS and ZFS only provide Error Correction.

Never seen someone so paranoid about data integrity that he would question the format of the data, and I thought A removeable hard drive in a cupboard would be enough for the average joe.


Few filesystems actually provide error correction, because we are again looking at the wrong place. Error correction should be media dependent to be able to correct typical errors for that media, so in reality (on all drives you could remotely call modern) error correction for hard-disks is handled by the disk/controller internally, independent of the file system.

If a sector is read with wrong checksum, the drive uses ECC data to try to correct it and the sector is "reallocated" so that all further requests to it are redirected to a spare "healthy" sector. All this generally happens without any intervention or knowlege from the operating system, but you can use a SMART monitor to find out how many sectors your drive has already reallocated.

Unfortunately there is not much you can do to get better protection on that layer, so adding an ECC feature to filesystems does make sense.