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Topic: What lossless format should I use? I am confused (Read 11739 times) previous topic - next topic
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What lossless format should I use? I am confused

Reply #25 –
Yea, but how often does a file just corrupt itself while sitting on your drive? Don't hard drives have error data built into them?

What lossless format should I use? I am confused

Reply #26 –
Quote
Yea, but how often does a file just corrupt itself while sitting on your drive? Don't hard drives have error data built into them?

The discussion was about storage on optical media such as DVD-/+R and CD-R, where data corruption is always a possibility.

What lossless format should I use? I am confused

Reply #27 –
I am also trying to decide btw the FLAC and APE, to re-encode 500 albums.  I am leaning towards ape for 1 reason.  I have 3 planned uses for my archive. Output to transcoder to current and future formats, Output to CD to get perfect image, and distant third is hardware support in the form of a Digital audio reciever.  Ease of converting entire collection to new formts with tag info is a must

To make a perfect copy of the CD you need gaps. You only get this if you rip a whole album with a cue sheet.  Both FLAC and APE can do this but..

With ape you can make APL so that you can store individual tagging information for use in audioplayers, transcoders and possibly DAR in the future (I think you might be able to do this now with mediacenter and TIVO2 but it requires extensive computer recorces and $200 TIVo, $200 regular tivo service and $200 TIVO computer service!!!!!!.)

FLAC developer says that with its metadata you can save the cue in the same file (nice), but without any tags.  His answer is that with this info in the future someone will develop software that can read this info and get tag info from Freedb, but this does not exist at this time.  If this were available it would sway me to FLAC because I think hardware support is more likly to come sooner. However even if this software were developed, would a hardware DAR or portable support its output - unlikly unless it produces files similar to APL's? Can anyone think of a senario where I would be able to play back individual songs through a DAR from the DAR interface with a whole album and cue? 

I keep hearing murmurs about a FLAC front end, but have seen nothing.  If flac is to hit main stream I think a front end that makes encoding, transcoding with optimal use of its metadata is in need.  This is still in the realm of us techies.

What lossless format should I use? I am confused

Reply #28 –
Quote
I keep hearing murmurs about a FLAC front end, but have seen nothing.  If flac is to hit main stream I think a front end that makes encoding, transcoding with optimal use of its metadata is in need.  This is still in the realm of us techies.

Uhhhh...  Am I missing something.  There is a FLAC front end included in the installer from The FLAC download page!  The same front end is available at Speek's front end site (flac).

There is also a mulitcodec front end at Speek's front end site (multi) that makes easy work of transcoding.

What lossless format should I use? I am confused

Reply #29 –
I am sorry I miss spoke, I have seen the front end, but while simple for you (and have been able to use it myself). I would not as much a user friendly GUI like MA.  here are links to threads on discusions on a possible native GUI from the FLAC developer and the metadata issues.

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....ic=10953&st=50&

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....ac,and,cuesheet

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....ac,and,cuesheet

There was also mention in one of the threads about the posibility of making a hack for FLAC to use APL.  This would be a nice solution.

What lossless format should I use? I am confused

Reply #30 –
FUI is on the shelf until I get some significant free time again.

FLAC + APL works in foobar2000 I think, but there's no way a DAR is going to support APL (unless maybe you count a media center PC as a DAR).

Also, you can get a perfect copy by ripping to multiple files.

Josh

What lossless format should I use? I am confused

Reply #31 –
Writing a front end to do the freedb thing you suggest is almost trivial.  Many libraries exist that make accessing the freedb very easy and likewise, storing the freedb ID or cuesheet (from which the ID can be generated) in a comment tag a the time of encoding is quite simple.  In fact, I may try to whip something up if I ever get time.

Also, FLAC has hardware support right now (Rio Karma), and it's likely to get more in the future (the decoder is both free and very fast).
I am *expanding!*  It is so much *squishy* to *smell* you!  *Campers* are the best!  I have *anticipation* and then what?  Better parties in *the middle* for sure.
http://www.phong.org/

What lossless format should I use? I am confused

Reply #32 –
I'd go with APE or FLAC. 

Those were the two that I considered.  I decided to go with APE because I wanted to use MediaCenter for my organization and playback.

One thing to consider for backup purposes is to just get a duplicate HDs.  Cost/Time wise, it will probably be quite competitive with DVD options.  Say you compress your albums to about 300MB or so per album, you can get 12-13 CDs per DVD.  That gives you 75 or so DVDs.  I've gone with HDs in removable trays that are inserted into an external USB/Firewire enclosure for backup purposes, and then removed completely from the system.

kiwi