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Poll

Which lossless audio codec do you use?

ALAC
[ 15 ] (3.4%)
FLAC
[ 229 ] (52.6%)
WavPack
[ 141 ] (32.4%)
YALAC
[ 2 ] (0.5%)
Monkey's Audio
[ 36 ] (8.3%)
Shorten
[ 0 ] (0%)
WMA Lossless
[ 6 ] (1.4%)
TTA
[ 0 ] (0%)
OptimFROG
[ 5 ] (1.1%)
Other (post details below)
[ 1 ] (0.2%)

Total Members Voted: 536

Topic: Which lossless audio codec do you use? (Read 76517 times) previous topic - next topic
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Which lossless audio codec do you use?

Reply #50
i'm using flac & wavpack but i've voted flac cause the last cd was flacced, and my lossless collection is more flacced than wavpacked


more, flac is easy to say [flak] while wavpack is not easy to write nor pronounce [weivpak] or [wa:vpak] since there is no E after V

Hey Bryant, why there's not e? how many spelling errors on the internet with "wavepack"?


Which lossless audio codec do you use?

Reply #52
I use FLAC  Dunno why really, Squeezebox has native support which is helpful for when I eventually get one


Which lossless audio codec do you use?

Reply #54
I use flac because I still think it was designed right from the beginning to have the best forward-compatibility with future software and hardware. Like I said before (not that it matters to anyone), having an extra 4% compression is not going to help much anyway, especially with the relatively low cost of hard drive space nowadays.

Quote
I understand that it is fashionable to use Wavpack, but I'm not much into Haute Couture

Me neither 

Which lossless audio codec do you use?

Reply #55
Hey Bryant, why there's not e?

maybe because there was already a wavepak format?

Actually, I never saw that program before! It's funny though because that's missing the 'c'. People just don't want 8 letters! 


flac is easy to say [flak] while wavpack is not easy to write nor pronounce [weivpak] or [wa:vpak] since there is no E after V

Hey Bryant, why there's not e? how many spelling errors on the internet with "wavepack"?

Yeah, people include the 'e' all the time. Fortunately the search engines still find me first when people type "wavepack".

The genesis was that originally all I had was the extension .wv, which basically was .wav with the fat squeezed out. The programs were called wav2wv and wv2wav. Those obviously had to go, so a friend suggested "wavpack". Well, I should have changed the extension to .wpk right then, but I didn't.

BTW, it's pronounced "wave-pack", except for my Romanian mother-in-law who says "wauve-pock".

When I released 4.0 I briefly thought of changing name and extension to PAF for "People's Audio Format", but fortunately I came to my senses in time. My mother-in-law probably would have approved though. 

Which lossless audio codec do you use?

Reply #56
I voted for WAVPACK because it seems to be the best lossless format when you take a look at the comparison table in HA-WIKI.

Which lossless audio codec do you use?

Reply #57
i'm down with the wpk file extension, bryant.

*goes to rename all his files*

seriously though, that might be a good idea...

Which lossless audio codec do you use?

Reply #58
[Monkey's Audio] is being developed, BTW... 4 b2 came recently.


According to the development history at monkey's audio, the changes in the newer versions seem only relevant to the GUI, which probably doesn't mean much to most of the people here.

I generally am using EAC or foobar, and not the Monkey GUI when I encode, so it's irrelevant to me.

Does anyone know if there are changes to the compression or speed in the newest versions of MAC?

Which lossless audio codec do you use?

Reply #59
Quote
Does anyone know if there are changes to the compression or speed in the newest versions of MAC?

No, not yet. However, it is promised soon... Whatever the future will be, it produses the smallest files with reasonable CPU use, for me the choiсe is obvious.

Which lossless audio codec do you use?

Reply #60
i use FLAC, since wavpack page annoys me (i blame roberto for that), and yes the logo sucks as well

p.s. that was a joke
PANIC: CPU 1: Cache Error (unrecoverable - dcache data) Eframe = 0x90000000208cf3b8
NOTICE - cpu 0 didn't dump TLB, may be hung

Which lossless audio codec do you use?

Reply #61
FLAC for me (though Wavpack is a very attractive alternative).

- various open-sourced distros include flac, so it is widespread and therefore easy to decode as codec is already in the system.
- synonym to lossless: when someone says he has flac files you know for sure it is lossless. Yes, I think that value of hybrid mode is really overestimated: lossy part of the encoding that is not supported by hardware/portable players has a little sense.
- almost ideal cuesheet support - since I stopped caring about cd-text to be necessarily restored onto the restored audio cd. I just add cuesheet into vorbis unicode tag for transcoding purpose (with fb2k), and then embed the flac-metadata cuesheet which is to be used to recreate disc from an image.
- cuepoints is a good idea, one can even create set of mp3s from flac image with only flac.exe and mp3encoder.exe! (but without tags)

I wish flac could have more options to manage and embed cuesheets (e.g., import to vorbis tag as well).

Which lossless audio codec do you use?

Reply #62
i use monkey's audio since a couple of years

wavpack is a good alternative solution but i don't like flac
because cue-sheets get crippled and there's no? possibility to
restore the original one. wave-extended files don't get read
and additional riff-headers don't get stored. the only reason
why someone could use flac is because of hw-support.
i hope that wavpack improves on compression (maybe some high-order predictors?)
than i would switch

Which lossless audio codec do you use?

Reply #63
Hi audio geeks,

I prefer flac. because EAC(my preferable ripper) supports it as well as my Foobar player.
Only disadvantage are the large filesizes on your harddisk.
Further it's free and open source.
As for a lossy codec (now we're at it) I prefer mp3 V0 VBR. Good soundquality, and it only takes the size it needs. So, low bitrates when replaying silent parts in your tracks and vice versa.

Venezici

Which lossless audio codec do you use?

Reply #64
RealAudio Lossless; I'm getting encoding speeds from 25-33X.

Which lossless audio codec do you use?

Reply #65
Well, I guess it is time to have my say..)))

First of all, I should say that personally I am used to using Wavpack:

1. high decoding speed
2. quite an impressive compression rate
3. embedded cue

However, today I found out something that is definitely going to shake my values and believes...
It is about Flac...

1. high decoding speed - 188x at -5
2. Flac now also supports embedded cue via Fb2k

So, now it basically comes to compression rate...
I have ripped A-ha album "Headlines and Deadlines" and that is what I get:

Flac - 448.543 Kb
Wvpack - 430.537 Kb

As you see, the difference is ~18Mb which is...umh, and that is what I want you to ask

Would you go for Flac or choose Wvpack considering that the size difference is quite impressive?..Is encoding speed so important to you and are you willing to sacrifice space for this?..

Edit: forgot to state the space of these files

Which lossless audio codec do you use?

Reply #66
Would you go for Flac or choose Wvpack considering that the size difference is quite impressive?

You talk like WavPack only had the -h option

If you want fast decoding speed, then just use WavPack's -f switch, which is about 0.6% faster than FLAC -5, while encoding about twice as fast as FLAC -5 and having the same compression ratio as FLAC -8. FLAC is indeed a very good lossless format, but unless you have a FLAC supported hardware player that you want to use, then i would stick with WavPack anytime as it's simply a more feature-full, efficient and flexible codec, which depending on mode used can outperform FLAC in either decoding speed, encoding speed or compression ratio or several of them at once.

Which lossless audio codec do you use?

Reply #67
I'm trying out OptimFROG.

Which lossless audio codec do you use?

Reply #68
I switched from FLAC to WavPack in August of 2005. It's encoding, decoding, and tagging are fast, and it's compression is better than FLAC. I've tried and rejected Monkey's, OptimFrog, LA, TTA and Shorten for various reasons.

I'll try YALAC at some point, but it'll need to be awfully good to unseat WavPack as my lossless codec of choice.

Jim

Which lossless audio codec do you use?

Reply #69
I'm currently transcoding my files to OptimFROG because my external HD just filled up, and I'm planning to get a new desktop in a few months or so, so I need high compression ratios.  I would use Monkey's Audio (typically better compression within sane encoding timeframes), exept that it takes a few seconds every time playback starts and every time I use the seek bar.  When I get my new desktop, however, I'll probably use FLAC just because it gets the most support and is best known outside of the audiophile niche.

Which lossless audio codec do you use?

Reply #70
Flac.  Simple, easy to understand command line.  Plays gapless in Foobar.

EAC + Mareo (Flac for lossless, WMA 2pass VBR for lossy)

 

Which lossless audio codec do you use?

Reply #71
Poll closed.  Please take a look at the latest poll.
I'm on a horse.