HydrogenAudio

Hydrogenaudio Forum => Polls => Topic started by: Polar on 2004-08-03 16:21:27

Poll
Question: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Option 1: Apple Lossless votes: 36
Option 2: FLAC votes: 377
Option 3: La votes: 4
Option 4: Monkey's Audio votes: 130
Option 5: OptimFROG votes: 7
Option 6: Shorten votes: 0
Option 7: TTA votes: 8
Option 8: WavPack votes: 106
Option 9: WMA Lossless votes: 14
Option 10: other (please specify)/I'm not into lossless at all votes: 33
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: Polar on 2004-08-03 16:21:27
It's been a busy year in lossless audio codec land

So I thought it might be the right time to throw in another favourite codec poll, now that the lossy counterpart is into v2 (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=24678) and the last multi lossless codec poll (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=12050) is just a few days short of one year old. The latter included neither Apple Lossless, which has rapidly gained quite some popularity due to its support in iTunes, nor TTA.

My superficial impression tells me that OptimFROG, TTA, WavPack and WMA Lossless have also been gaining momentum ever since, perhaps at the expense of Bonk, LPAC, RK Audio, and others, which seem to have become obsolete and have therefore been omitted from the poll choices (although the board's 10 answers max has something to do with that as well). Feel free to mention LPAC or whatever you might still be using in a separate post below. Needless to say any other comments are most welcome.

Curious to know what the current balance of power between FLAC and Monkey's might be. Would Shorten still be able to keep a grip on a loyal share of users? How widely are OptimFROG and WavPack's hybrid modes being used? And what about rather obscure RealAudio Lossless (http://www.realnetworks.com/products/codecs/realaudio.html)?

In short: looking forward to your replies

[span style='font-size:8pt;line-height:100%']Edit: grammar.[/span]
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: Polar on 2004-08-03 16:22:09
BTW, I'm using primarily FLAC for playback and occasional transcoding to lossy, because of its wide support and compatibility, cross-platformness, and fast decoding. Its open source character is a plus too. What I don't care about is fast encoding, since that's only done once, so I encode my FLACs @ -8.

I have previously been using Monkey's Audio, but a couple of personal negative experiences with file corruption, along with reports acknowledging this, have led me to lose faith in Monkey's Audio as a format.

I have recently taken up the rather big task of making an extra La (-high -noseek for maximum compression) back-up of all of my FLACs on an external hard disk, which I also apply PAR2 to. The Las are just for archiving - i.e. not for playback or any other use, just for disaster recovery - and for occasional internet transfer (if the receiver is on MS Windows).

[span style='font-size:8pt;line-height:100%']Edit: italics.[/span]
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: Slo Mo Snail on 2004-08-03 16:29:52
I voted the same as last year: FLAC
mainly because of the wide software support, the good compression ratios and the wide range of systems it is supported on
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: krmathis on 2004-08-03 16:30:23
I prefer Apple Lossless!
Because its supported in iTunes on my Powerbook, as well as my iPod mini and AirPort Express.
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: guruboolez on 2004-08-03 16:35:25
Monkey's Audio "normal": more efficient than Flac, and with correct decoding speed; conveniant tagging system for my usage (I can add as much information as I want, without juggling with padding values); MD5 for very fast verification (useful on disk transfer).
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: Sebastian Mares on 2004-08-03 16:36:25
Monkey's Audio Extra High
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: xmixahlx on 2004-08-03 16:37:06
i vote for flac simply because it has greater usability support on linux then the other codecs.

i do use monkey's audio, shorten, optimfrog and recently wavpack for testing.


later
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: jth on 2004-08-03 16:39:05
FLAC  for me ... although Wavpack 4 is also quite nice.

Right now I'm waiting to see if the Squeezebox gets some sort of lossless support in hardware. If so, I'll invariably go with whatever they choose.
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: karmakillernz on 2004-08-03 16:48:02
WavPack for me. I've used it for a while, and now that 4 is released it's even better.
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: Emanuel on 2004-08-03 16:55:15
Flac for its so easy to use, tag and transcode. I have never experienced any corruptions or crc errors.

Although, I miss good compression ratio on flacs using 24 bit 96 khz. I get far better compression in theese rates uing winzip or winrar. Anyone know more about this?
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: evereux on 2004-08-03 17:31:12
Everything I rip gets backed up to Monkeys Audio - Extra High. My main reason's for using Monkeys is the compression ratio's (and the irresistible Monkey).
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: R2D2 on 2004-08-03 17:55:19
FLAC and LPAC.....and when I have bought a 250gb+ harddrive, I will use Monkeys Audio Extra High just as evereux
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: Derge on 2004-08-03 18:00:59
Same as evereaux for ripping, but I'm pretty sure Extra High is a virus eating away at what makes Monkey's Audio any good. The monkey really is irresistable, though. 3.97 High for me, until dBpowerAMP gets support and people stop being angry with me for sending files encoded with 3.99.
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: Polar on 2004-08-03 18:12:47
I'd just like to add (although I should maybe have done this in my opening post in this thread) that, should you choose to post a reply, it'd be nice if you could be as elaborate and specific as possible as to why you prefer whichever codec.

A mere I like this or that because it's the coolest! can hardly be called informative. If there's nothing else you'd specifically like to say beside indicating your preference, well, you can express that sufficiently just by picking one of the options in the poll itself. Apart from an overview of the current balance of power between codecs, to get to know people's specific motivation is what makes this poll and its comments interesting and instructive.

To sum it all up: thanks for taking the time and effort to write more than the proverbial word or two.
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: rutra80 on 2004-08-03 20:18:41
OptimFROG of course. It can be most efficient in terms of compression or transparently fast, it has a dual stream feature, and is under serious development (further nice features incoming). The only bad thing that comes to my mind is that AFAIK it is available only for Windows and Linux at the moment, and isn't supported on portables, but personally I don't care about that at all.
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: bugmenot on 2004-08-03 20:31:03
Monkey's Audio is going cross platform though: there are already plugins for XMMS and GStreamer (the future multimedia platform for GNOME). However, I haven't seen any initiative for MacOSX.
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: Krug_Stillo on 2004-08-03 21:35:47
I use Monkey's Audio and FLAC for specific albums. Sadly, for some unknown reason ASIO and APE don't agree in terms of gaplessness so when going from one track to another there's an almost stuttering effect. If I switch to wave out or ds the gaplessness remains with no stuttering, however, if I use FLAC and ASIO it's completely gapless so that's what I use FLAC for, albums in which gaplessness is imperative. FLAC is a lil faster on the decode time and seeking, but I simply adore the embedded cuesheet feature in Monkey's Audio. It's so clean and simple to have a single file album and if you want an individual track or two real fast out of the image all you need is foo_monkey and a couple seconds. If FLAC had that feature I would use it exlusively and if Monkey's Audio was gapless with ASIO I would use that exclusively. Oh, well you can't win them all I guess. 

BTW, I voted for Monkey simply because I've encoded so many more albums to it, but I still use FLAC a lot.
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: jcoalson on 2004-08-03 22:07:35
Quote
but I simply adore the embedded cuesheet feature in Monkey's Audio. It's so clean and simple to have a single file album and if you want an individual track or two real fast out of the image all you need is foo_monkey and a couple seconds. If FLAC had that feature I would use it exlusively

I thought foo_flac does now; check with case.

Josh
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: Krug_Stillo on 2004-08-03 22:36:58
Quote
I thought foo_flac does now; check with case.

Josh
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=231601"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Thanks for the fast reply. Well, I'm still on foobar 0.8.1 for some reason, mostly due to things being so hectic (and a lil procrastination thrown in for good measure of course) I haven't had a chance to switch so I'm still using foo_flac 1.0.7 and I'm not sure if there's a new one in the latest versions of foobar. Also, I'm not sure if you were referring to the embedded cuesheet feature or quickly encoding a track from within a cuesheet. foo_flac is a decoder whereas foo_monkey is an encoder (foo_ape being the decoder) and I apologize in advance as I'm sure you already knew this I'm just a bit confused as to which problem could potentially be solved with foo_flac and it's also very early for me so I will go wake up before I post anymore.

Thanks again for the reply and thank you very, very much for your work on FLAC, it's appreciated more than you know.
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: jcoalson on 2004-08-03 23:01:53
ah, I see.  I was referring to the decoding/playing of indivdual tracks from a FLAC + cuesheet... sorry for the mixup.

Josh
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: DreamTactix291 on 2004-08-04 00:08:13
FLAC for several reasons

Open source, which was always one reason I liked Vorbis
Fast decode and low CPU on playback
Extremely easy to mass encode FLAC to Vorbis with oggdropXPd and keep my tags for use on my iRiver.
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: picmixer on 2004-08-04 00:14:40
Momentarily I am using Monkey's Audio standard.

Good file size and perfect internal cuesheet support with foobar2000 are what won me over.

Although I am currently thinking about switching to wavpack.  It seems a very nice compromise between compression ratio and decoding speed for me.  Also internal cue sheet support works just as well with foobar2000 thanks to Case.  Furthermore I just somehow apperciate all the work Briant has put into this and was very impressed by the new 4.0 release.
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: R2D2 on 2004-08-04 15:47:00
Ok...why FLAC and LPAC....good decoding time, good encoding time, and good compression ratio. FLAC is good because of the open source too.
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: kjoonlee on 2004-08-04 15:53:59
Quote
foo_flac is a decoder whereas foo_monkey is an encoder (foo_ape being the decoder)[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=231605"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

And while foo_flac is the counterpart of foo_ape the decoder, foo_flaccer is the counterpart of foo_monkey the encoder.
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: kjoonlee on 2004-08-04 15:55:39
I use FLAC too, for its cross-platform support and Freeness (as in freedom.)
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: damaki on 2004-08-04 17:25:38
Wavpack because I also use wavpack as an hybrid compressor and because it is fast enough for me.
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: danchr on 2004-08-04 17:55:51
Apple Lossless since it integrates nicely with iTunes. I don't care about vender lock-in: It's lossless, so if I ever need to switch format, I can just re-burn the DVDs.

Someday, I'm going to do a comparison between Apple Lossless and FLAC. I suspect that Apple Lossless is a lot faster on macs.
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: amn on 2004-08-04 18:14:16
WavPack. Because it offers good compression in 'high' mode at reasonable speed, uses APEv2 Tags (no more padding), has a lovely foobar2000 plugin with CUE sheet support and is cross-platform.
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: CSMR on 2004-08-06 00:44:30
WMA. I feel a bit more secure than with Monkey Audio, although as technology Monkey Audio is the best IMO. Everything works equally well with foobar and I like to use WMP for tagging sometimes. WMA's guaranteed to be easy. I think WMA will be a popular codec once lossless ripping goes mainstream, particularly if WMP ripping improves. And I expect to keep my non-lossless portable player for the next few years (though the Rio Karma with FLAC is attractive).
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: unfortunateson on 2004-08-06 00:58:14
FLAC. 
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: khiloa on 2004-08-06 19:34:36
FLAC because as a few of you have said its open source. I also like vorbis for that reason and am in the process of reripping all of my CD's into FLAC from vorbis.
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: outscape on 2004-08-06 19:52:38
i use flac for the most part but i will probably change to wavpack. it's encodes 15% quicker than flac on my PII 400 and decodes 10% faster. the file size change is minimal although in 90% of samples i tested wavpack files were smaller than flac by 200 to 1000 kb. i play all my lossless files on my computer so extensive hardware support is not so important.
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: LIF on 2004-08-06 21:54:57
I've been using Ape for 3+ years mainly because:
-EAC fully supports macdll.dll to rip and tag on the fly;
-Better compression, in normal/high mode, than FLAC, etc;
-Very fast compression/decompression, even in older machines;
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: Polar on 2004-08-09 07:18:33
Quote
i use flac for the most part but i will probably change to wavpack. it's encodes 15% quicker than flac on my PII 400 and decodes 10% faster.[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=232580"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Have you actually timed this? Which setting do you encode your WavPacks with?
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: .halverhahn on 2004-08-09 08:02:08
FLAC to archive.
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: smack on 2004-08-09 08:11:57
LA - maximum compression for lossless archiving.

(I use Musepack for playback on computer and MP3 for my portable player)
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: Polar on 2004-08-10 11:15:38
Perhaps it's time for some reflection.

What's your lossless codec of choice?



Oh, before I forget: thanks to all who've voted.
[span style='font-size:8pt;line-height:100%']
Edit: grammar.
Edit 2:
- Updated my results image, old one is still available here (http://www.lossless.info/ha/aug2004poll227.png);
- The
Lossy Codecs forum split-up precedent statement turned out to be unverified, or misunderstood on my behalf to say the least, sorry about that!
Edit 3: Another update of the results graph; the 227 votes version is still here (http://www.lossless.info/ha/aug2004poll227.png) and the 264 one here (http://www.lossless.info/ha/aug2004poll264.png). BTW, the 2003 results (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=12050) in my graph are frozen to the 164 votes state in which they were at the beginning of the August 2004 poll.
Edit 4: Update of the results image. Previous one (/312) is here (http://www.lossless.info/ha/aug2004poll312.png). Seems like WavPack's dropped to a single digit now...
[/span]
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: rjamorim on 2004-08-10 16:20:24
Quote
One of the reasons that might explain this poll's winning codecs' (increasing) popularity among members of this forum is their respective developers' visible, though never obtrusive presence here and their enthusiastic, benevolent user support, at the expense of those who rarely show their face here (when was the last time we read something relevant from Michael Bevin (La developer) and Matt Ashland (from Monkey's Audio)?). Consider this a strong plea for active developer-end user interaction. It would be a great pity if excellent compressors like La and Monkey's were to fall behind.


I don't think that particularly reflects in popularity. Monkey's Audio has always been a popular encoder, and Matt posted here precisely once. Ghido, on the other hand, has posted several times, and still his codec is used as much as WMA Lossless, whose developers never showed up around here.

Quote
  • The success of both FLAC and especially Apple Lossless illustrates the importance of hardware support. Neither of them offers particularly strong compression compared to La, Monkey's Audio and OptimFROG, or speedy encoding compared to Monkey's and OF's faster encoding settings. As a consequence however, FLAC and ALAC's brisk decoding is probably one of the major reasons for their employability on hardware devices.


Sorry, I don't buy it. That (hardware support) might be one of the reasons, but there are others to consider. FLAC gained great momentum because for a long time it was the only truly multiplatform lossless codec (other than shorten, but... heh), and also because it decodes very fast, which is an added bonus for people that plan to transcode to MP3 for their hardware players. It was also the only OSI-approved codec, which caters to the countless open source zealots among us.

And I don't agree Apple Lossless is successful. Less than 5% doesn't sound like that to me, at least. I think a good amount of these 11 members that prefer ALAC are using it because they are on Macintosh (which has no decent lossless alternative) and not because of hardware support.

Quote
  • With FLAC retaining the top rank and even reinforcing its lead in popularity and use over the other codecs, getting over half of the votes in both polls and some 2/3 of all posts in this particular forum, perhaps the time has come to consider creating a separate FLAC subforum (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=25679), along with or next to this one (cf some time ago the split-up of the Lossy Codecs forum into the AAC, MP3, MPC and Ogg Vorbis subforums that we know now).


There was never a "Lossy Codecs" forum; AAC, MP3, Vorbis and MPC have always been separated.

And I don't think it's justifiable to split the lossless forum in "Flac" and "Everything else". There simply isn't enough discussion going on about lossless to justify a split, I think. Lossless discussion is naturally limited because there's no point discussing subjects like quality and listening tests, like happens in the lossy forums. And also, because most people are still on lossy.

Regards;

Roberto.
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: jcoalson on 2004-08-10 16:43:39
Quote
  • With FLAC retaining the top rank and even reinforcing its lead in popularity and use over the other codecs, getting over half of the votes in both polls and some 2/3 of all posts in this particular forum, perhaps the time has come to consider creating a separate FLAC subforum (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=25679), along with or next to this one...

that would help me keep up on the FLAC topics for sure!  but it's cool either way, I do the occasional shotgun search to try and keep up.

the results are interesting.  kind of like watching one of those carnival games where everyone's squirting water into a target to make their horse/car go faster.

it would be nice in the next poll to have 'other' and 'don't use lossless' split so we could normalize the percentages against actual lossless users, or better yet have no 'don't use' entry all since that could be covered better by a different poll.

Josh
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: markanini on 2004-08-10 18:05:07
Maby I'm a bit late on giving a comment about the lossless codec I use but here goes.
I use Flac at cause nothing decodes fatser, except shorten, than Flac. And using any other lossless codec that has a better compression will only make file a few percent smaller and a lot slowwer to decode. I use level 5 cause it gives me a decent compression and fast compression. I dont understand why some use level 8, files encode a lot slower and files dont get any smaller. At level 0 it performs quite simmilar to shorten. I'd love to se flac keep on developing.
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: Polar on 2004-08-12 12:30:50
Quote
I dont understand why some use level 8, files encode a lot slower and files dont get any smaller.[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=233404"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Yes, -8 does encode a lot slower than -5 (= default), 4 to 5 times as slow to be more specific, but that doesn't have the slightest effect on decoding speed. That's the beauty of FLAC, no matter what encoding level you pick, decoding won't be influenced.

So that's why I encode at -8. As long as it squeezes out every byte it can (compression ratio difference between -5 and -8 may not be much, but every kB counts) and doesn't affect decoding time, I don't care if encoding takes a proverbial year. Since you only encode once, and encoding is not something I sit and wait for, but is just a background task, how long it takes matters zip to me.
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: Silverbolt on 2004-08-12 12:56:27
Quote
I don't care if encoding takes a proverbial year.
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=233860"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
flac --super-secret-totally-impractical-compression-level 
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: Polar on 2004-08-12 13:04:05
Quote
Quote
I don't care if encoding takes a proverbial year.[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=233860"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
flac --super-secret-totally-impractical-compression-level  [a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=233866"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Alright, I asked for it
Should've known someone was gonna throw that at me
Seriously though, FLAC's --super-secret-totally-impractical-compression-level does affect decoding speed, contrary to all of the other encoding levels.
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: Polar on 2004-08-12 14:29:25
Quote
Monkey's Audio has always been a popular encoder, and Matt posted here precisely once. Ghido, on the other hand, has posted several times, and still his codec is used as much as WMA Lossless, whose developers never showed up around here.[{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a] (http://index.php?act=findpost&pid=233380")
Still, it is my impression that this poll's winning (advancing) codecs' developers are all HA regulars. It can't be claimed that FLAC, OptimFROG, TTA and WavPack are suffering from Josh, Ghido, Alexander and David's presence here, like La and Monkey's can't be said to be benefiting from their respective developers' absence from this board.

Quote
Quote
The success of both FLAC and especially Apple Lossless illustrates the importance of hardware support.
Sorry, I don't buy it. That (hardware support) might be one of the reasons, but there are others to consider.[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=233380"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Oh absolutely. Just because I didn't express myself in conditional clauses, that still doesn't mean that I stated otherwise (that there are other reasons to be taken into account, I mean).

Quote
And I don't agree Apple Lossless is successful. Less than 5% doesn't sound like that to me, at least.[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=233380"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
It does to me. After all, Apple Lossless [a href="http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=21139]wasn't even around some 4 months ago[/url]. Taking the No 4 spot with 5%, coming from scratch in less than 4 months' time looks like quite a performance to me.

Quote
I think a good amount of these 11 members that prefer ALAC are using it because they are on Macintosh (which has no decent lossless alternative) and not because of hardware support.[{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a] (http://index.php?act=findpost&pid=233380")
If I didn't know any better, I'd think you were trying to make it sound like iPod and AirPort Express support is actually a disadvantage.

Quote
Quote
With FLAC retaining the top rank and even reinforcing its lead in popularity and use over the other codecs, getting over half of the votes in both polls and some 2/3 of all posts in this particular forum, perhaps the time has come to consider [a href="http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=25679]creating a separate FLAC subforum[/url], along with or next to this one (cf some time ago the split-up of the Lossy Codecs forum into the AAC, MP3, MPC and Ogg Vorbis subforums that we know now).
There was never a "Lossy Codecs" forum; AAC, MP3, Vorbis and MPC have always been separated.[{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a] (http://index.php?act=findpost&pid=233380")
Right. That's proved to be quite an imprudent claim on my behalf.

Quote
And I don't think it's justifiable to split the lossless forum in "Flac" and "Everything else". There simply isn't enough discussion going on about lossless to justify a split, I think. Lossless discussion is naturally limited because there's no point discussing subjects like quality and listening tests, like happens in the lossy forums. And also, because most people are still on lossy.[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=233380"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
I'll address that in [a href="http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=25679]the Site Related Discussion thread[/url].
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: rjamorim on 2004-08-12 23:42:40
Quote
It can't be claimed that FLAC, OptimFROG, TTA and WavPack are suffering from Josh, Ghido, Alexander and David's presence here, like La and Monkey's can't be said to be benefiting from their respective developers' absence from this board.


Exactly. They aren't suffering nor benefitting. As I see it, developers participating in HA make no difference on their codecs' popularity.

If there was an influence in popularity, people would be migrating from Vorbis and MPC (their developers barely post here anymore) to AAC and Lame.

Quote
It does to me. After all, Apple Lossless wasn't even around some 4 months ago (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=21139). Taking the No 4 spot with 5%, coming from scratch in less than 4 months' time looks like quite a performance to me.


I don't agree, precisely because it had a head-start - the Macintosh user base, that as the situation is now won't use anything else. If it had no previously sympathetic user base, I doubt it would have 5% (5 in each 100, which, for me, is veeery few)

One could extrapolate what you said and claim "with this adoption speed, ALAC will beat FLAC in a few months". Of course, that makes no sense. The codec had a head start, and now it's to be expected that it'll more or less stabilize at a certain market share.

Quote
Quote
I think a good amount of these 11 members that prefer ALAC are using it because they are on Macintosh (which has no decent lossless alternative) and not because of hardware support.[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=233380"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
If I didn't know any better, I'd think you were trying to make it sound like iPod and AirPort Express support is actually a disadvantage.


Nah. I'm just saying that you are giving hardware support more credit than it deserves.
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: Omion on 2004-08-13 05:07:36
Quote
Quote
I dont understand why some use level 8, files encode a lot slower and files dont get any smaller.[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=233404"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Yes, -8 does encode a lot slower than -5 (= default), 4 to 5 times as slow to be more specific, but that doesn't have the slightest effect on decoding speed. That's the beauty of FLAC, no matter what encoding level you pick, decoding won't be influenced.

So that's why I encode at -8. As long as it squeezes out every byte it can (compression ratio difference between -5 and -8 may not be much, but every kB counts) and doesn't affect decoding time, I don't care if encoding takes a proverbial year. Since you only encode once, and encoding is not something I sit and wait for, but is just a background task, how long it takes matters zip to me.
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=233860"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

I'd have to disagree with you here.  The decoding speed does not get affected much, but it is still affected. I did a big ol' test on my computer, and got the following results (the UCSC server seems to be passing a brainstone... be patient):


Also, note that the horizontal scale is greatly magnified. The difference between -0 and -8 is only 5% the original file size.

Based on the results of this test, I'm using -7. -7 decodes at esentially the same speed as 4-6, but has higher compression. If anybody has different results, I'd love to hear them.
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: atici on 2004-08-13 05:49:50
Quote
It does to me. After all, Apple Lossless wasn't even around some 4 months ago (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=21139). Taking the No 4 spot with 5%, coming from scratch in less than 4 months' time looks like quite a performance to me.[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=233895"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Hmm if it's placed at this spot it's not because of its technical merit. It's only because Apple limits the user's choice and there's yet no decent player in Apple platform supporting other lossless codecs.

I don't imagine it could score much higher. People don't care much about lossless, to them 128kbps mp3 is cd quality anyway. And the rest of the users who would be interested in lossless codecs know what they want: they wouldn't want to use an inferior codec unless their choices are limited.
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: blessingx on 2004-08-13 07:03:42
FLAC had been used on the Mac for some time. It was THE lossless choice on the OS X side with MacFlac and Flacer encoding and VLC and (no longer developed, but great) MacAmpLiteX for playback. Then ALAC came out. I certainly switched.

I'd say hardware support is the much bigger reason for its success. With the still very well selling iPod, to some peoples mind, it's not that ALAC is the only viable lossless on the Mac, its that ALAC is the only viable lossless period... for home and away.*  I expect it to get more popular quickly (it's after all for many their first experience with lossless).


* Yes, of course this is missing the Karma and FLAC.
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: Polar on 2004-08-13 08:18:48
Quote
As I see it, developers participating in HA make no difference on their codecs' popularity.[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=233951"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
In my opinion, they do. After all, this is a Hydrogenaudio poll, and every single voter is an HA member. It can therefore be reasonably assumed that they read HA and, more specifically, the lossless forum on a somewhat regular basis, where certain codecs get more exposure time than others, just from (the absence of) their developers' posts.
If I would have been asked for my favourite lossless compressor a year ago, when I hadn't even heard of HA, of course I would've answered Monkey's Audio. I simply didn't know any better, until I started reading HA about FLAC, OptimFROG and WavPack, which have been rising in my hit list ever since

Edit: to sum it all up, I'm not trying to say that developers posting in HA is of major influence on their codecs' popularity, but it can't just be dismissed.

Quote
One could extrapolate what you said and claim "with this adoption speed, ALAC will beat FLAC in a few months".[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=233951"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
I object. I've never hinted at that anywhere. Besides, I'm convinced that any prediction, in matters where so many factors are into play, is entirely senseless.
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: Polar on 2004-08-13 09:13:17
Quote
Quote
Yes, -8 does encode a lot slower than -5 (= default), 4 to 5 times as slow to be more specific, but that doesn't have the slightest effect on decoding speed. That's the beauty of FLAC, no matter what encoding level you pick, decoding won't be influenced.[{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a] (http://index.php?act=findpost&pid=233860")
I'd have to disagree with you here.  The decoding speed does not get affected much, but it is still affected. I did a big ol' test on my computer, and got the following results
(...)
I did this test on 8 different songs, decoded 12 times, then threw out the highest and lowest decoding times. The points, then, are the average of 80 trials.
(...)
"SS" is --super-secret-yada-yada.

The test was done on a P4 1.5ghz with 512MB RAM, using the foobar diskwriter speed test.

BTW, -2 gave consistently higher decoding speeds than either -1 or -0. Not sure why... 
(...)
If anybody has different results, I'd love to hear them.[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=233988"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Intriguing work, Omion. Especially since yours is the very first ratio/speed test of --super-secret-etc-level I've come across. Thanks a bunch  Are you planning on putting it online somewhere (apart from this thread, that is)? I for one would appreciate that.

Regarding those different results you'd love to hear about, well, they're the test results I've been relying on so far: [a href="http://web.inter.nl.net/users/hvdh/lossless/lossless.htm]Hans van der Heijden's test[/url], the one by Wim Speekenbrink (http://members.home.nl/w.speek/comparison.htm) and the one on the official FLAC site (http://flac.sourceforge.net/comparison.html) (even though the latter might stricto sensu not be an independent one). All of them, as you'll be able to read, are quite comprehensive and report nominal difference in decoding speed between the various encoding levels.

Edit:
On second thought, the fact that, especially over a 12 times' decoding average, your -8 and -2 encodings gave such deviant results (well, one's gotta argue about something, right? ), might be attributed to the limited 8 song base. Hans van der Heijden's FLACed some 80 songs for his test, and each of the 8 compression levels he tested (including -8 and -2, but no --super-secret and -0) decoded at an average 51x real-time speed on his 900 MHz Athlon:
(http://web.inter.nl.net/users/hvdh/lossless/All_d.png)
[span style='font-size:8pt;line-height:100%']source: <http://web.inter.nl.net/users/hvdh/lossless/lossless.htm (http://web.inter.nl.net/users/hvdh/lossless/lossless.htm)>

(Edit 2: Grammar.)[/span]
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: Polar on 2004-08-13 15:49:44
Quote
Quote
With FLAC retaining the top rank and even reinforcing its lead in popularity and use over the other codecs, getting over half of the votes in both polls and some 2/3 of all posts in this particular forum, perhaps the time has come to consider creating a separate FLAC subforum (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=25679), along with or next to this one...
that would help me keep up on the FLAC topics for sure!  but it's cool either way, I do the occasional shotgun search to try and keep up.[{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a] (http://index.php?act=findpost&pid=233386")
Replied to that [a href="http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=25679&view=findpost&p=234120]here[/url].

Quote
it would be nice in the next poll to have 'other' and 'don't use lossless' split so we could normalize the percentages against actual lossless users, or better yet have no 'don't use' entry all since that could be covered better by a different poll.[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=233386"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
You're right. There hasn't been much worthy of reading that's come out of that option. Next time, it could be interesting to include WavPack hybrid and OptimFROG DualStream. But then we'd have to leave something out, since there's still that 10 answers' maximum.
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: rjamorim on 2004-08-13 16:12:49
Quote
I object. I've never hinted at that anywhere. Besides, I'm convinced that any prediction, in matters where so many factors are into play, is entirely senseless.[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=234017"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]


You didn't hint. But you said Apple Lossless is an "obvious winner" because it took the "No 4 spot with 5%, coming from scratch in less than 4 months".

Well, you say it's an obvious winner, and you say it's rising fast. I say that interpretation I did of what you wrote is pretty much possible.


And I still say you are reading too much into this poll.
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: RockFan on 2004-08-13 16:15:43
I use (and voted for) Monkey's, for the simple reason that it's built into Plextools as an ripping option.

I use Plextools because it allows control of drive-speed - I have no need to rip entire CDs in 2 or 3 minutes so I use a lower than max CAV (Constant Angular Velocity) setting of 7-16x.

The theory is that this lower speed is easier on the drive, and less error-prone.

Someone mentioned in an earlier post that they'd had probs with ASIO ouput using APE - gapless not working properly, I havn't experienced this with Foobar. However I use kernel-streaming now anyway (by far the best for SPDIF output in my experience),

Rainer.

(edit for typos)
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: Omion on 2004-08-13 19:06:35
Quote
Edit:
On second thought, the fact that, especially over a 12 times' decoding average, your -8 and -2 encodings gave such deviant results (well, one's gotta argue about something, right? ), might be attributed to the limited 8 song base. Hans van der Heijden's FLACed some 80 songs for his test, and each of the 8 compression levels he tested (including -8 and -2, but no --super-secret and -0) decoded at an average 51x real-time speed on his 900 MHz Athlon:

[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=234026"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

I don't think the -8 was really a 'deviant result. I think the results (other than -2) indicate that decoding speed is related to the --max-lpc-order switch (also called -l). My results sort of show five decoding speed "zones": 0,1; 3; 4,5,6,7; 8; SS. (again, forgetting about -2). These zones correspond directly to where the -l switch changes.
-0=  -l 0 -b 1152 -r 2,2
-1=  -l 0 -b 1152 -M -r 2,2
-2=  -l 0 -b 1152 -m -r 3
-3=  -l 6 -b 4608 -r 3,3
-4=  -l 8 -b 4608 -M -r 3,3
-5=  -l 8 -b 4608 -m -r 3,3
-6=  -l 8 -b 4608 -m -r 4
-7=  -l 8 -b 4608 -m -e -r 6
-8=  -l 12 -b 4608 -m -e -r 6
-SS=  --lax -P 4096 -b 4608 -m -l 32 -e -E -p -q 0 -r 0,16

I'm pretty sure Josh Coalson said something about what decoding speed depends on, but I can't find it now.

Keep in mind, though, that the difference in decoding speed from -0 to -8 is only 6X, or 10% slower for -8. I don't think there's any harm in encoding with -8, as it's still a lot faster than any other popular lossless codec (according to the chart you posted).
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: jcoalson on 2004-08-13 21:21:33
that is correct.  all input being equal, the only significant variable in decode time is the LPC order, and when LPC was not used, the polynomial order (which is not a controllable parameter of the reference encoder).

but still this variability is small.  I think these kinds of graphs should always be accompanied by a version that shows the axes at full scale, to put things is the proper perspective.  you will find the points much closer together.

Josh
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: Omion on 2004-08-13 21:38:59
Quote
but still this variability is small.  I think these kinds of graphs should always be accompanied by a version that shows the axes at full scale, to put things is the proper perspective.  you will find the points much closer together.
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=234236"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Here's a full version. The horizontal axis goes to 1 (=orig file size), and the crosshairs are on flac -0.
(http://people.ucsc.edu/~rswilson/other/flac-full.png)
They're all about the same, except --ss.

Just to clarify, I'm not trying to convince anybody that the decoding speed changes significantly, only that it does change.
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: Polar on 2004-08-14 10:21:21
Quote
I don't think the -8 was really a 'deviant result. I think the results (other than -2) indicate that decoding speed is related to the --max-lpc-order switch (also called -l). My results sort of show five decoding speed "zones": 0,1; 3; 4,5,6,7; 8; SS. (again, forgetting about -2). These zones correspond directly to where the -l switch changes.[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=234196"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Quote
that is correct.  all input being equal, the only significant variable in decode time is the LPC order, and when LPC was not used, the polynomial order (which is not a controllable parameter of the reference encoder).[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=234236"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Very interesting, Omion and Josh. Thanks for that.
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: Polar on 2004-08-14 23:06:52
Still curious to know, Josh: any idea as to why Omion's encodings at level -2 decoded on average slightly faster than -1 and -0?
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: Omion on 2004-08-14 23:31:00
I'd like to know, too.

BTW, I'm doing another FLAC test right now on a bunch of my audio (probably ~20 albums, or until I get bored), but I don't have enough space to do them all at once so it could take a while. We'll see if the -2 oddity remains...
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: Polar on 2004-08-14 23:41:56
Are you taking hard disk fragmentation into account, like Hans van der Heijden's mentioned on his comparison site?
Quote
To have the harddisk's performance as constant as possible, I kept it defragged before running each batchfile, and erased the generated lossless- and wav files afterwards, so the files got placed in about the same place on the harddisk.

Apart from that:  Kewl!
Keep us in touch!
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: Omion on 2004-08-15 02:02:24
Quote
Are you taking hard disk fragmentation into account, like Hans van der Heijden's mentioned on his comparison site?
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=234399"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

I actually just thought of that after I posted. I realized that I didn't do that for the last test, which could account for the discrepancy. I encoded all the samples at a particular level at one time, so all the -2 files could have been fragmented more than the others.

Fear not, however! The test that I'm doing right now (just started, really) will have a freshly defragged drive at the beginning of each session.

[edit] And I just figured out how to do confidence intervals in Mathematica! Rejoyce! 

[edit2] Hmm. Weird things are happening with the decoding. I did another 12 tests on an album (~45 minutes) and got the following results:


[edit3] Well, that problem disappeared as quickly as it came. The test is underway...
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: prankstare on 2004-08-15 12:58:47
A bit in doubt between FLAC and Monkey's.
FLAC for its light CPU use while playing, and Monkey's for its great enc/dec speed (consumes lots of processing f/ playing tho).

But I'm currently ripping to FLAC, as this have attended all my needs just neatly!
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: jcoalson on 2004-08-15 21:42:24
Quote
Still curious to know, Josh: any idea as to why Omion's encodings at level -2 decoded on average slightly faster than -1 and -0?

the only reason I can think of is the reduced file size of -2.

Josh
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: Polar on 2004-08-16 18:07:43
Quote
I'm doing another FLAC test right now on a bunch of my audio (probably ~20 albums, or until I get bored), but I don't have enough space to do them all at once so it could take a while.[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=234395"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Any progress?

[span style='font-size:8pt;line-height:100%']Edit: fixed quote.[/span]
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: Omion on 2004-08-17 01:56:36
I've got two albums done. That stupid "2-state" thing I talked about in my last post is still there (or came back, or whatever), but I'm just going to test so many samples that it won't matter. The current results are:
)
A bit different from the last one, although it's still quite incomplete. You can see that -2 is still slightly faster than -1, but not as fast as -0. -8 didn't have the same drop as it did in the last test, so I might have to eat my words about -8 not bieng a 'deviant result' . Oh well, still a lot more albums to go.

BTW: Encoding one album to all the different levels takes almost exactly 10 hours on my computer...  Most of that time is taken up by --super-secret.
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: realmax on 2004-08-17 05:04:04
FlAC format sounds like a good lossess codec.
But in Taiwan,it is not as popular as APE format(monkey's audio).
I hope Flac format will become more and more popular in Taiwan.
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: Polar on 2004-08-17 08:00:49
Quote
I've got two albums done.
(...)
A bit different from the last one, although it's still quite incomplete. You can see that -2 is still slightly faster than -1, but not as fast as -0. -8 didn't have the same drop as it did in the last test, so I might have to eat my words about -8 not bieng a 'deviant result' . Oh well, still a lot more albums to go.[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=234948"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Veeeery interesting to read. All of it, I mean. Are you still giving each of the 10 compression levels per album 12 decodings jobs? Great work! Eagerly awaiting more of your test results.
If you don't mind, I'll repeat my question: are you planning on putting those stats online somewhere? I'm confident that I won't be the only one who'd appreciate that.

Quote
BTW: Encoding one album to all the different levels takes almost exactly 10 hours on my computer...  Most of that time is taken up by --super-secret.[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=234948"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Yeah, it's no coincidence that it's called --super-secret-totally-impractical-compression-level  You've probably considered all that already, but have you thought about compressing all of the albums @ --ssticl overnight? While ripping and encoding @ -0 up till -8 during the day? What's your strategy?
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: Omion on 2004-08-17 17:43:48
Yes, I'm doing 12 decodings per level. It takes around 90 minutes to decode everything. (45 seconds each * 10 compression levels * 12 runs)

I'll probably put it up on my university-provided web page when I get done.

And yes, I do all the compressing overnight. I have everything already ripped from CD, so I just start a bunch of compression sessions before I go to bed, and most of them are done when I wake up. Then I do the test when I have 2 hours that I need to be away from the computer.

[edit] Just finished album #4. Oddly enough, the -0 file was SMALLER than the -1. Re-encoded to confirm, and indeed -0 was 100KiB smaller. -0 was 347,642,238 bytes, -1 was 347,745,628. Weird.
The only difference between -0 and -1 is that -1 uses --adaptive-mid-side. The album has a lot of stereo separation, so the overhead caused by the MS coding might outweigh the benifits. (just a wild guess, though. Not sure what/if there is any overhead in MS files.)

[edit Aug 19]Done with 6...
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: Polar on 2004-08-20 09:01:24
Quote
I'll probably put it up on my university-provided web page when I get done.[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=235107"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Great  Looking forward to that.

Quote
Done with 6...
(snip)
The 6th one was weird... Here's a graph of it alone:
(snip)
Yes, that is right. -3 did almost as well as --ss, which did worse than -7 or -8. The -8 sample averaged 415 kbps! [a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=235107"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Some or other classical symphonic work, I suppose? Pretty neat  Which goes to show that lossless is especially interesting for classical music lovers. Master quality at hardly double the bitrate of high quality lossy.

So I guess it's starting to show more and more that it's safe to say those 8 songs were too narrow a base to be anything of an authoritative graduator. Which still leaves us with that -2 anomaly though. But then again, what's an anomaly if your 6 albums' average graph indicates that the decoding speed difference between -1 and -2 is a less than 0.5%? Same could be said of -4 then, which decodes just that tad slower than -5, -6 and -7, but on par with -8. Shall we label that the poetic justice of statistics?
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: Omion on 2004-08-20 19:20:05
Quote
Some or other classical symphonic work, I suppose? Pretty neat   Which goes to show that lossless is especially interesting for classical music lovers. Master quality at hardly double the bitrate of high quality lossy.

So I guess it's starting to show more and more that it's safe to say those 8 songs were too narrow a base to be anything of an authoritative graduator. Which still leaves us with that -2 anomaly though. But then again, what's an anomaly if your 6 albums' average graph indicates that the decoding speed difference between -1 and -2 is a less than 0.5%? Same could be said of -4 then, which decodes just that tad slower than -5, -6 and -7, but on par with -8. Shall we label that the poetic justice of statistics?
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=235734"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

#6 was "4 Klaviersonaten," which consists of 4 piano works by Beethoven, performed by Maurizio Pollini.

I agree that the last test I did was not extensive enough. So anybody that formed any opinions based on my previous test should re-form them based on this one, when it gets done. (I wonder if anybody else is reading this anymore?  )

Also, I'm beginning to think that the error bars were a bad idea. The problem is that for most of the samples have the same relative rating, but different absolute. For example:
test 1:
-4 - 50x
-7 - 55x
test 2:
-4 - 60x
-7 - 65x

In this case, the error bars would be large and probably overlapping, since the tests were different by 10x. But it would still be safe to say that -7 is faster than -4, even though the error bars overlap. I'm not sure what to do in this case.
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: Omion on 2004-08-23 22:23:57
Just ran three more tests last night, and I think I figured out a way to solve the misleading error bars I mentioned in my last post.

I made a function that will normalize all the speeds based on a "pivot" encoding. So if a test was:
-6 - 40x
-7 - 50x
-8 - 60x

and I normalized to -7, the result would be:
-6 - 0.8
-7 - 1.0
-8 - 1.2

This will prevent the erroniously overlapping error bars, and will give good results for relative speeds.
9 albums:
(http://people.ucsc.edu/~rswilson/other/flac-9alba.png)
From this picture, it looks like -7 and -8 are statistically tied for decoding speed (*). However...

Normalize to -7:
(http://people.ucsc.edu/~rswilson/other/flac-9alba-normalized7.png)
You can see that the error bar of -8 is entirely below 1.0 (where the horiz. axis is), indicating that there's >95% chance that -7 will decode faster than -8.

The only problem with this picture is that it says nothing about the relative speeds of -1 vs -2, just vs. -7. Ten graphs will need to be made in order for everything to be comparable.

(*) Well, I suppose they are statistically tied. It's just that the relative speeds for a given sample are not conveyed with the graph

[span style='font-size:8pt;line-height:100%']I've been thinking that this is pretty off-topic by now. I would not be crushed if a moderator were to split all of this off, if one were wont to do such a thing.[/span]

[span style='font-size:8pt;line-height:100%'][edit Aug 30 2004]I finished the test. It has 14 albums, for a total of 14 hours, 28 minutes, and 13.8 seconds. Find it on this thread (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=26859).[/span]
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: Lee James on 2004-10-24 19:56:02
From the response to this poll it seems like almost everyone here uses some kind of lossless compression. But I thought everyone here was into mp3s, LAME etc. You can't use both, can you? Or do you? If so, why? I'm a bit confused.
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: sehested on 2004-10-24 21:04:25
Many of the people in this forum prefers lossless for archiving and streaming to their stereo.

Some of these people also have portables that do not have the capacity to hold enough lossless songs. Furthermore lossy formats like LAME aps or even 128 kbps AAC or lame -V5 produce files that are 10 times smaller and allow you to enjoy the music without annoying artifacts.

Furthermore as lossy codecs improve there is a desire to reencode the songs as new versions of lossy encoders become avaible.

With the right software an entire music collection stored in lossless can be encoded automatically, without having to re-rip the CDs
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: Lee James on 2004-10-24 21:58:25
Very interesting!

Hmm... I just buy CDs, encode everything at alt-preset-extreme, then give away the CD! Guess the day will come when I wish I'd been keeping a lossless copy on my hard drive!

Or maybe not. I mean, I can't tell the difference between alt-preset-extreme and the original CD, so maybe it's not such a big deal I gave those CDs away.
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: user on 2004-11-25 00:09:31
I switched (and voted for wv) to Wavpack 4.1 high mode -h -m, coming from Flac.
Ca. 3% better compression than flac in -5 default mode.
Wavpack 4.1 in high mode offers still fast speed even on P3 600 - 800 MHz.

Somebody asked, why a lot people use Lossless and lossy.
My reason: a backup ! Too many persons I know, have had HD crashes, loss of data. So, I went the way of storing my music on DVD+R,
My strategy:
1 Lossless version on 1 DVD, the transparent MPC --quality 8 --ms 15 --xlevel version on another DVD.
Both with par2 data. The safety backup MPC version doesn't cost anything, which you could count in "storage space" or "money".
Together with MAC 2.93.1 (Mpeg audio collection), it is a quicky, to pull out the right DVD out of the 312 disc box, and to copy the desired album(s) to laptop, PC or burn a CDDA.
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: Ivegottheskill on 2004-11-27 00:46:57
What does the -SS setting do? I haven't heard of that one in FLAC before 

What's the apparent cut of point of benefits in FLAC (i.e. what's the level at which compression gains become very minimal/non-existent, while decode times seem to rise)

Thought it was around 2-, -3. But the dot points on an earlier graph weren't numbered, so I couldn't tell
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: Omion on 2004-11-27 02:54:32
Quote
What does the -SS setting do? I haven't heard of that one in FLAC before  

What's the apparent cut of point of benefits in FLAC (i.e. what's the level at which compression gains become very minimal/non-existent, while decode times seem to rise)

Thought it was around 2-, -3. But the dot points on an earlier graph weren't numbered, so I couldn't tell
[{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a] (http://index.php?act=findpost&pid=256342")

You can figure out for yourself what the cutoff point is. Look at my previous graphs on this thread, for example, or look at [a href="http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=26859]this thread[/url] for my complete test. All my graphs' x-axis is encoding ratio (less is better) and y-axis is decoding speed (more is better).

As for "-SS", I'm sure you can figure it out too.
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: Ivegottheskill on 2004-11-30 04:17:28
I use FLAC (good support and decompression times, my iAUDIO M3 also supports it now). However I voted La, because in every test (at least the ones I've seen) it has the best compression ratio's over any other lossless codec.

Hence theoretically making it the best for archiving purposes. Since lossless can be relatively easily transcoded I could turn it into a FLAC or lossy file for my DAP.

On the overall scale however, it's hard to disagree that FLAC is one of the best formats around
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: guruboolez on 2004-11-30 08:28:26
Quote
However I voted La, because in every test (at least the ones I've seen) it has the best compression ratio's over any other lossless codec.
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=256854"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

www.foobar2000.net/lossless (http://www.foobar2000.net/lossless)

OptimFROG has a --bestnew mode, which is not always tested (much slower than LA -high). Apparently, this extra mode compress better than LA (at least with most classical CD).
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: adamlau on 2004-12-01 02:28:18
WavPack 4.2 beta 3 using -hxm or -hb320xcm (hybrid). Native plugin support for Nero!
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: Lokutus01 on 2004-12-02 17:16:30
flac..... compression: 6

I like the format because it offers lossless-quality 

seriously: I decided for it, because most people use it and the differences to the 20 other lossless formats are rather small, it de-/encodes fast, offers fair compression and offers all the important features like fingerprinting, good tagging, etc.
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: Ray on 2004-12-13 10:14:34
I use FLAC, Monkey Audio and Wavpack
Monkey Audio is speedy in encoding and has higher compression ratio and is the most popular one.

FLAC is fast in decoding, which i think is more important than encoding speed, especially when you convert lossless files to uncompressed or lossy ones.

Both FLAC and Wavpack are opensource. Wavpack archieves good encoding speed and high compression ratio at the same time, but only available on win32 platform(any Linux version ?) . Input must be raw pcm, it seems...
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: Polar on 2004-12-13 10:51:10
Quote
Monkey Audio is (...) the most popular one.
A questionable opinion, if you look at the results of this very poll.
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: rjamorim on 2004-12-13 12:42:22
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A questionable opinion, if you look at the results of this very poll.[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=259398"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]


It's unwise to extrapolate the results of most polls held at HA.

If the polls here were representative, MPC would be the most popular format by far and nearly noone would be using WMA.
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: adamin on 2004-12-14 01:00:20
FLAC.  For me it's all about hardware compatibility.
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: jcrab66 on 2004-12-15 15:59:05
Flac for me, used to be shn but i definitly like the quick decoding with flac
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: VCSkier on 2005-03-26 02:57:18
Quote
Momentarily I am using Monkey's Audio standard.

Good file size and perfect internal cuesheet support with foobar2000 are what won me over.

Although I am currently thinking about switching to wavpack.  It seems a very nice compromise between compression ratio and decoding speed for me.  Also internal cue sheet support works just as well with foobar2000 thanks to Case.  Furthermore I just somehow apperciate all the work Briant has put into this and was very impressed by the new 4.0 release.
[{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a] (http://index.php?act=findpost&pid=231619")

with his latest [a href="http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=27571&view=findpost&p=251282]beta[/url], you dont even need wapet for wavpack to support internal cue sheet now.  wavpack is great.  definately the best lossless for me.

edit: clarification
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: Gallvs on 2005-03-26 12:02:17
I originally voted Monkey's Audio but now I'm switching to WavPack (the process is quite painless with foobar).

Slightly worse compression but much faster decoding and seeking.
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: unfortunateson on 2005-03-30 04:59:16
At the moment, my lossless codec of choice is WavPack.

I converted 20 gb of my FLACs into WavPack, and I got over a gigabyte of space back. 
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: edekba on 2005-08-23 09:21:28
I've been using APE, becuz of hte compression ratio. On my CPU (3.2Ghz P4) i dont see any differences in APE/FLAC on decode and i think the encode time for both are somewhat the same. APE(high)/FLAC(8) tho FLAC is a lil longer.

However after reading some more, i've come to maybe consider FLAC for its corruption tollerance stuff ...
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: Involarius on 2005-10-09 11:01:57
FLAC. Nothing but FLAC. I've got the Monkey's Audio codec installed on dBpowerAMP, but only for one reason: so that if I acquire any file in Monkey's Audio, I can convert it to FLAC immediately.

Edit: I've just stumbled upon the thread starter's request to state reasons for one's preference. So:

Freedom and features. FLAC is free software, a good thing to propagate. It's the same reason why I use OpenOffice.org and its file formats, PNG rather than GIF, Vorbis and not MP3 etc. Regarding features, FLAC's frame-based encoding and, particularly, the resultant streamability of the files are big wins as far as I'm concerned.
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: Julien on 2005-10-09 11:57:47
Wavpack for me, because it does not remove the RIFF sub-chunk data on the Wav files which makes it pretty convenient for musicians who want to backup the building blocks of their sound files, or samples and loops(which might be the main reason why Riff sub chunk data comes in really handy.)
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: weirving on 2006-02-01 09:56:54
I'm a FLAC-er, all the way. On my iPod, I just can't bring myself to use Apple Lossless; I feel guilty enough getting an iPod in the first place, with all the other sheeple. I'll be switched before I let myself get sucked into Apple any more than I already am, by using their proprietary lossless format.

What's more, the PhatBox by PhatNoise, a removable hard-drive-based car audio player, supports FLAC.

Plus, at some point, I want to get a streaming media server and the best ones support FLAC. Though Sonos, maker of some really cool audiophile-quality media serving products, supports Apple Lossless as well as FLAC. To my knowledge, Sonos offers the only products that, out of the box, support all Apple formats, Windows Media Audio, AND open-source formats FLAC and Vorbis. Sonos is at: http://www.sonos.com/?tref=logohome (http://www.sonos.com/?tref=logohome)

Very, very tempting...
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: Rain on 2006-02-13 22:23:26
Quote
Wavpack for me, because it does not remove the RIFF sub-chunk data on the Wav files which makes it pretty convenient for musicians who want to backup the building blocks of their sound files, or samples and loops(which might be the main reason why Riff sub chunk data comes in really handy.)
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Same here. Though I won't be using RIFF chunks, why not have them instead of removing the data? Hence, my preference of Wavpack > FLAC
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: lossman on 2006-03-08 08:35:10
Flac all the way, Its open-source, incredibly fast, multi platform, supported on hardware devices. What more can you ask for in a codec.
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: Rasqual on 2006-03-10 23:39:16
I chose FLAC, because of the numerous platforms it as ported to, including hardware players. Also because it is free and takes little resources when decoding.

Not WavPack because you can't tell whether it's lossless or hybrid just by looking at the file extension. Others may not bother, but I do. Otherwise, it is a very promising codec packed with features and I guess it would come second for me.
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: shadowking on 2006-03-10 23:46:02
Quote
I chose FLAC, because of the numerous platforms it as ported to, including hardware players. Also because it is free and takes little resources when decoding.

Not WavPack because you can't tell whether it's lossless or hybrid just by looking at the file extension. Others may not bother, but I do. Otherwise, it is a very promising codec packed with features and I guess it would come second for me.
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=370704"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]



Wow that's a poor argument against Wavpack considering that plugins report the compression type. Besides, how on earth do you end up in lossy mode unless you specify a bitrate ?
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: xequence on 2006-03-11 00:56:31
I have to say FLAC. As far as I know there really isnt any one uber dominant lossless codec, so I had might as well support the one that is open source. Others are probably open source, but heh, I prefer FLAC.
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: lextune on 2006-03-15 01:51:06
It used to be FLAC, but I need to be able to embed a cuesheet into an image (including title tags) in one step, so it is WavPack all the way for me now.
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: LANjackal on 2006-03-15 06:42:20
Monkey's Audio @ Insane compression level for me. I use lossless audio for archival purposes, not for playback, so compression percentage performance is paramount to me.
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: Polar on 2006-03-15 09:06:07
Quote
Monkey's Audio @ Insane compression level for me. I use lossless audio for archival purposes, not for playback, so compression percentage performance is paramount to me.[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=371655"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Then why don't you use La or OptimFROG, which yield even better compression?
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: Mangix on 2006-04-12 07:15:53
i use WavPack for storing music in my hd and listening to it on my comp. but i use FLAC on my iRiver.
Title: What's your lossless codec of choice?
Post by: Synthetic Soul on 2006-04-23 21:05:56
Closed.

See the more recent thread (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=43928).