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Poll

What lossless format(s) do you use on a *regular* basis?

Apple Lossless (ALAC)
[ 13 ] (5%)
FLAC
[ 161 ] (61.9%)
Monkey's Audio (APE)
[ 9 ] (3.5%)
OptimFROG
[ 2 ] (0.8%)
TAK
[ 13 ] (5%)
WavPack
[ 33 ] (12.7%)
Uncompressed PCM (.wav, .aiff)
[ 19 ] (7.3%)
A different lossless codec (please comment)
[ 1 ] (0.4%)
I don't encode or listen to lossless audio on a regular basis
[ 9 ] (3.5%)

Total Members Voted: 183

Voting closed: 2024-01-01 16:51:53

Topic: 2023 Lossless format poll (Read 15955 times) previous topic - next topic
0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

2023 Lossless format poll

Here's the partner poll to this year's Lossy poll. :)
I don't expect much movement here (there is no lossless codec that had seen a similar rise as Opus since 2018), but, as Hi-Fi has become ubiquitous, I'm curious to see whether this has any effect on the relative numbers.

Bonus feature: You have up to 5 votes. Ha - no need to decide!  :D
audiophile // flac & wavpack, mostly // using too many audio players

Re: 2023 Lossless format poll

Reply #1 –
Voted.
FLAC: 24-bit and below, and files that don't need marker/loop or other special metadata
WavPack: everything else

Re: 2023 Lossless format poll

Reply #2 –
This is definitely a support issue. EVERYTHING supports FLAC (except iOS devices). I like the idea of WavPack, because it does lossy compression, and that lovely placebo delta file to get me lossless.

Re: 2023 Lossless format poll

Reply #3 –
Quote from: tuxman on
Bonus feature: You have up to 5 votes. Ha - no need to decide!  :D
Nice! I've just read @korth 's DM asking me whether this new feature would fit in the lossy poll, and I practically said 'hell yeah!'.

So, as soon as he gives it this long-awaited makeover, whoever deems it necessary, can vote again on their other four most used lossy formats.
Listen to the music, not the media it's on.
União e reconstrução

Re: 2023 Lossless format poll

Reply #4 –
FLAC for home listening and DJing, Opus on my phone.

Re: 2023 Lossless format poll

Reply #5 –
Quote from: apastuszak on
This is definitely a support issue. EVERYTHING supports FLAC (except iOS devices)
I often wonder why FLAC became the format supported most, except for perhaps ALAC. MLP/Dolby TrueHD is supported by more home cinema equipement, but not by DAPs, home media servers and car units.

But why FLAC? I only became acquainted with FLAC after it was already popular, so 'I wasn't there'. Retrospectively, I can conclude the following positive things (most of these things were dug up by @Porcus some time ago, thanks for that)
  • It seems FLAC was, at the time of it's launch, the only open-source lossless audio codec. However, WavPack and Monkey's Audio followed about two years later.
  • FLAC's format has been reasonably well documented, but LPAC/MP4ALS was documented even better. Also, LPAC/MP4ALS had the ISO promoting it.
  • FLAC was cross-platform from the start, but WavPack followed in 2003 it seems.
  • FLAC decoding is pretty fast, but WavPack was faster around the time FLAC became popular
  • FLAC was 'streamable' from the start, but this only really matters in broadcasting, not in home usage, where FLAC files are served, not streams

However,
  • FLAC has never had an official GUI (which to me seems a big deal for Windows users)
  • It doesn't compress nearly as much as Monkey's Audio
  • Encoding was pretty slow when it became popular, with preset 5 being comparable to Monkey's Audio high and WavPack high
  • In fact, WavPack Normal encoded twice as fast, decoding was comparable, but it compressed better
  • It has it's own peculiar way of tagging (no ID3)
  • It didn't support storing RIFF chunks until 2007, and it never worked as good as with WavPack or Monkey's Audio
  • It has no hybrid mode like WavPack has had since 2002
  • Compression of 24-bit PCM loud music (hard rock/metal etc.) was pretty bad until 2007

So why did it became so popular? Apparently there were already a number of devices with FLAC support in 2002, with the first only 9 months after the first stable release. Was it just there at the right time?
Music: sounds arranged such that they construct feelings.

Re: 2023 Lossless format poll

Reply #6 –
Quote from: includemeout on
Quote from: tuxman on
Bonus feature: You have up to 5 votes. Ha - no need to decide!  :D
[...]can vote again on their other four most used lossy formats.

If the number of poll alternatives is big enough, we could spend several on one format. Hypothetical five votes:  
[X] µ-law gets a first vote from me because I use it a lot
[X] µ-law gets a second vote too, because I use it so much more than anything that gets only one vote
[_] µ-law even gets a third vote, because it would be misleading to pretend I use MP3 even half as much as I use µ-law
[X] MP3 gets a first vote from me because I use it regularly
[X] cook gets a first vote from me because I use it a lot
[X] cook gets a second vote too, because I use it so much more than anything that gets only one vote
;)

(Hey this made me discover what x and * in [brackets] do in BBCode, that is easier than using the [ list ].)

Re: 2023 Lossless format poll

Reply #7 –
I already see changes between 2018 and now, so the poll makes sense, at least… and the discussion is already nice too.
audiophile // flac & wavpack, mostly // using too many audio players

Re: 2023 Lossless format poll

Reply #8 –
  • I don't mean to drag up what must have been "fun" debates about FOSS by saying this. Monkey's audio isn't open source in the way that term is typically used, it's source available. Absolutely no offense to Matt Ashland by saying this, with a weird custom license that may have stifled adoption
  • MA was relatively compute-intensive to decode, could the bulk of portable players in the 2000's handle it?
  • Windows users are much more used to third party and AIO solutions like foobar and winamp so really windows had a GUI for flac all along
  • From what I remember from mailing lists, it appeared to me that Josh Coalson went through some personal flagellation to get flac handed over to xiph which helped cement it as a standard

Right place right time probably had a lot to do with it. If wavpack was slightly earlier then the roles would probably have been reversed assuming it would still have been made FOSS.

Re: 2023 Lossless format poll

Reply #9 –
Quote from: cid42 on
From what I remember from mailing lists, it appeared to me that Josh Coalson went through some personal flagellation to get flac handed over to xiph which helped cement it as a standard
FLAC already had some hardware support before it joined Xiph though.

Quote
If wavpack was slightly earlier then the roles would probably have been reversed assuming it would still have been made FOSS.
The fun thing is, WavPack *was* earlier. More than 2 years earlier in fact. It wasn't open source until 2 years after FLAC first became available though.
Music: sounds arranged such that they construct feelings.

Re: 2023 Lossless format poll

Reply #10 –
I regularly use "FLAC" and "WavPack".

Re: 2023 Lossless format poll

Reply #11 –
Quote from: apastuszak on
This is definitely a support issue. EVERYTHING supports FLAC (except iOS devices).
Foobar2000 for iOS, when I stopped bothering with ALAC.

Re: 2023 Lossless format poll

Reply #13 –
TAK at main pc
Opus on phone or an old rockboxed ClipZip.
Same as last year, and the year before, and the one before, and...
I could transcode to flac, as it is supported almost everywhere. But with music player apps, smartphones make for universal players anyways.

Re: 2023 Lossless format poll

Reply #14 –
FLAC as my main since It more universal.

Re: 2023 Lossless format poll

Reply #15 –
Complicated answer.
FLAC for stuff that need to be shared with peers or friends.
OptimFrog for stuff that need to be archived and bandwidth is an issue.
TAK for multichannel audio.
WavPack for DSD and 32-bit Float stuff.

I can't believe that out of all the codes out there only WavPack and a fork of OptimFrog support 32-bit streams. (Correct me if I'm wrong)

I picked FLAC because it fits the type of material I use the most but I noticed throughout the years the ratio between FLAC vs other codes is shrinking, something that I wouldn't think would ever happen.

Re: 2023 Lossless format poll

Reply #16 –
Quote from: Klimis on
only WavPack and a fork of OptimFrog support 32-bit streams. (Correct me if I'm wrong)
FLAC added 32-bit (integer only) support since version 1.4.

APE added 32-bit float and integer support.
https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php/topic,123862.0.html

OptimFROG's "off" fork could be dangerous:
https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php/topic,114816.msg1008774.html#msg1008774
https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php/topic,114816.msg1009053.html#msg1009053

Re: 2023 Lossless format poll

Reply #17 –
Not that I recommend any of them (I stick to FLAC on most and WavPack on the odd stuff), but ALAC also supports 32-bit integer. So does MPEG-4 ALS, which is an ISO-standardized codec ... that nobody uses, and which also supports float.

Quote from: Klimis on
I noticed throughout the years the ratio between FLAC vs other codes is shrinking, something that I wouldn't think would ever happen.
If you have acquired more 24-bit files over the years, you shouldn't be surprised - the last few bits are often noise, where the codecs differ less.
Also, FLAC did change its statistical filters with version 1.3.1, improving -8. A slight improvement was committed to 1.3.2 as well, particularly for classical music. And version 1.4.0 got improvements especially for high resolutions, by doing part of the calculations with higher precision.

Re: 2023 Lossless format poll

Reply #18 –
Quote from: Porcus on
MPEG-4 ALS ... which also supports float.
Have you succeeded in encoding 32-bit float with MP4ALS ? Which parameters have you used ?
And which player is able to play the output MP4 file ?
 

Re: 2023 Lossless format poll

Reply #19 –
Quote from: Brazil2 on
Quote from: Porcus on
MPEG-4 ALS ... which also supports float.
Have you succeeded in encoding 32-bit float with MP4ALS ? Which parameters have you used ?
And which player is able to play the output MP4 file ?
Oops ...  annoyingly good questions ... :-[ 
-R -S1 -W32 on raw input - I actually don't get it to accept WAVE input.
And good luck playing it, since ffmpeg doesn't. (ffmpeg doesn't suport its -z mode either.)

Re: 2023 Lossless format poll

Reply #20 –
Quote from: cid42 on
  • I don't mean to drag up what must have been "fun" debates about FOSS by saying this. Monkey's audio isn't open source in the way that term is typically used, it's source available. Absolutely no offense to Matt Ashland by saying this, with a weird custom license that may have stifled adoption
  • MA was relatively compute-intensive to decode, could the bulk of portable players in the 2000's handle it?
  • Windows users are much more used to third party and AIO solutions like foobar and winamp so really windows had a GUI for flac all along
  • From what I remember from mailing lists, it appeared to me that Josh Coalson went through some personal flagellation to get flac handed over to xiph which helped cement it as a standard

Right place right time probably had a lot to do with it. If wavpack was slightly earlier then the roles would probably have been reversed assuming it would still have been made FOSS.

Warning for the 20-20 of retroactively corrected hindsight coming up:

I suspect right place right time at that time was Sourceforge etc. - this was in an era when Ogg Vorbis had a good tailwind at its development under the fears that Fraunhofer would try to charge an amount per listen on MP3s. The fear that you couldn't access your own files was not at all theoretic in the age of DRM.
FLAC offered an open-from-the-outset, open-source, open-specification (hey I don't think anything else had a specification document ... for years to come) and even for users with a more pragmatic attitude towards FOSS, that was appealing. Ogg Vorbis never made it big, but a lossy encoding is by itself a lock-in, so we will never get rid of MP3.

WavPack:
Browsing the Wayback Machine, it seems that WavPack opened its source at 3.96, between this 2002-11-27 snapshot and this 2003-01-17 snapshot. FLAC already had a momentum in the FOSS community by then.
And also I have no idea how well known WavPack even was at the time FLAC was launched. I think I first read about WavPack from Coalson's comparison chart, and looking back at it, it wasn't particularly WavPack friendly up until when WavPack was FOSS'ed. Closed-source WavPack was only only tested in "high" mode ("high" by then!) - and you see it came out slower and with bigger files than both Monkey's and a suitable flac 1.0 preset. And decoding time wasn't tested at that point. Then WavPack got FOSS'ed up, and when Coalson updated the chart next, http://web.archive.org/web/20030416185832/http://flac.sourceforge.net:80/comparison.html , he did test the normal mode and did speak positive about it: "released under the BSD license. WavPack has a very good tradeoff between compressed size and compression speed", and bumped up past Monkey's in his subjective rating. By that chart, WavPack at "normal" encodes nearly twice as fast as FLAC, to smaller size, and decodes quite quick too. Nothing could beat WavPack's "fast" mode at speed back then.
Not saying that a comparison chart from a competitor did hurt WavPack that much, I mean it did at least make WavPack's existence known to some of us; Monkey's was likely known to some due to player plugins. My point is, what the average HA user "knew by 2009" wasn't outright on the table in 2002.

As hard drive space was expensive (well CPU power was too), Monkey's had a heyday for what it did best. Being a good overall performer choosing reasonable compromises doesn't attract the same attention (was there really any reason LA was notable other than size?!) - and again Monkey's got known for player plugins. Looking back at it this may explain how Monkey's got a following even if being later to the table than WavPack.

Monkey's then:
It wasn't that hard to decode Monkey's as long as you didn't push it into the heavier modes. Look at the latter table above: Coalson measured Monkey's "Normal" to decoding faster than WavPack "High" and half the speed of FLAC. Yes soon there were other tests running, and with the well optimized RockBox port, FLAC was mindboggling light.
As for that license ... here is the currently "maintained" *n*x port (taken over when SuperMMX abandoned it): https://github.com/fernandotcl/monkeys-audio . Quite some scolding. And it could largely have been avoided by one single word (included "with" rather than included "in") - it would have made it more opaque, which was in itself a concern and an objection, but it wouldn't have been read as to outright solicit license violations.


Also I have a hunch that the arrival of ALAC arrived caused more harm to WMAL than to most other competitors. (Corporate codecs suck!)

Re: 2023 Lossless format poll

Reply #21 –
I find the thought of lossy hybrid with wavpack rather wild. I already have seperation anxiety :D

Re: 2023 Lossless format poll

Reply #22 –
FLAC for general PCM-Audio
Wavpack for 32-bit float PCM; DSD audio and multichannel >8 channels
.halverhahn

Re: 2023 Lossless format poll

Reply #23 –
Quote from: Porcus on
I actually don't get it to accept WAVE input.
WAV input worked for me but with this "(int 24 bit)" message. I have no idea what it means in this case.

Code: [Select]
Audio format : float / 32 bit (int 24 bit) / 48000 Hz / 2 ch
Bit rate     : 3072.0 kbit/s
Playing time : 60.6 sec
PCM file size: 23276196 bytes
MP4 file size: 8191637 bytes
Compr. ratio : 2.842 (35.18 %)
Average bps  : 11.259
Average rate : 1080.9 kbit/s

I've tried many settings and also those I've found in this old post:
https://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1405584#post1405584

But VLC is unable to play the MP4 file, same for any other player I've tried, same for any other settings I've tried.
However, it works a treat with standard WAV files (44.1/48 kHz, 16/24 bits), even multichannel ones, and players can play the output MP4 files.

Re: 2023 Lossless format poll

Reply #24 –
Quote from: Porcus on
Quote from: Klimis on
I noticed throughout the years the ratio between FLAC vs other codes is shrinking, something that I wouldn't think would ever happen.
If you have acquired more 24-bit files over the years, you shouldn't be surprised - the last few bits are often noise, where the codecs differ less.
Also, FLAC did change its statistical filters with version 1.3.1, improving -8. A slight improvement was committed to 1.3.2 as well, particularly for classical music. And version 1.4.0 got improvements especially for high resolutions, by doing part of the calculations with higher precision.
No, I meant that I noticed that I start to use less and less FLAC compared to other lossless options, which I thought the opposite would happen.
I guess our lifes and the computing world is changing in ways that we didn't expect them to happen and that has somekind of ripple effect that affects the way that we consume media and for what reasons we make the choices we make.
I know they might be little things and looking at them singularly makes no sense but if you put them all into a bag it's enough to drift away from our predictions 10-15 years ago. Things like inflation, expensive energy, chip shortage, technology growth not happening in markets that were expected to happen, the pandemic, carbon footprint, expensive cloud storage, the smartphone industry and so much more are those little things that may seem insignificant as one but all of them are rather interconnected that seem to affect the way that we consume media and our needs.

I hope this makes sense.