FLAC question

[yepsa]

I am interested in uploading music to various threads, but have a question about audio formats: If I upload a CD in its original full-quality format, I think the tracks would be in WAV (for the PC) or AIFF (for the Mac). Yet I never see those audio formats here, mostly FLAC, which I believe is the same quality. Why convert to FLAC instead of simply uploading the music as it is, WAV/AIFF?

If there IS a good reason, how do you convert files to FLAC? When I did a test upload to Megaupload I got no file format options at all (although a download link was created and did work!).

Thank you!

[Sarah]

flac is smaller than wav files.

google flac and you can get the encoder. you have to do it yourself, megaupload won't do it for you

[Zoran]

I am interested in uploading music to various threads, but have a question about audio formats: If I upload a CD in its original full-quality format, I think the tracks would be in WAV (for the PC) or AIFF (for the Mac). Yet I never see those audio formats here, mostly FLAC, which I believe is the same quality. Why convert to FLAC instead of simply uploading the music as it is, WAV/AIFF?

If there IS a good reason, how do you convert files to FLAC? When I did a test upload to Megaupload I got no file format options at all (although a download link was created and did work!).

Thank you!

Hi yepsa,

There is no good reason why WAV & AIFF aren't as popular as FLAC...it's just the most popular lossless format but I do on occasion see APE and WAV. Some people though don't collect lossless because it's to big in file size and usually wont play on MP3 players so that's why they prefer MP3 @ 192k - 256k - 320k.

A good free program for converting WAV to FLAC without loosing quality is LamedropXPd.

[joypad]

loads of reasons. wav doesn't do tags, doesn't do image tags either.

[Zeratul13]

for me, wav is ~2x as big as flac. theres only about 6mb/cd difference between ape and flac. flac is more compatible with various programs and players, so thats what i prefer. but thats just me...

i use dbpoweramp as a converter. that way i can just right-click in windows explorer to convert between formats, as well as edit tags.

[cooljacker]

Late reply, but whatever: FLAC compresses WAV files without any quality loss.

Ripping CDs (into FLAC) is best to do with EAC, really good guide here:

Updated Guide for Setting Up & Ripping FLAC in EAC.

[Amanda]

Of course the way I look at it, I just do the wav for upload. The person grabbing it can do whatever they want, flac, convert to mp3, whatever, it's their choice.

[- Vegeta -]

Of course the way I look at it, I just do the wav for upload. The person grabbing it can do whatever they want, flac, convert to mp3, whatever, it's their choice.

To be honest, it doesn't matter which format you upload it in, flac, ape, tta, wav. They are all lossless codecs, but if it were me I would still use flac to upload, since it does shrink the file size a little bit, might same some time on uploading. People can then decode them with frontend and change to whichever codec they want.

[Sparktank 2.0]

WAV is nice and universal, system-wise.

Extra codecs are not needed for those who don't already have them.
FLAC, people tend to ask what programs and what codecs.
It's great for compression and seek time.

APE can compress a tad bit more, but not enough to notice any real difference between APE's highest compression VS FLAC's highest compression.
APE also has a slow response time when you want to jump to a different point in time when playing music.

WAV only has the disadvantage of large file sizes, to most, especially those who are still on dial-up.

I'll take any lossless format I can.

[yepsa]

Thank you for all the replies. I've educated myself a little more on the subject. My goal is to upload music in only one format (time & space reasons) and it seems there are many forum users who don't have the ability to convert FLAC to whatever, so I am actually thinking of uploading with ALAC (Apple Lossless) and letting everyone convert it to what they want in iTunes. I know that iTunes doesn't support FLAC, but surely FLAC Fans know their niche and have their own conversion software? How many of you reading this would send me nasty PMs if I used ALAC? I haven't posted any music yet, but want to soon. THANK YOU!

[Zeratul13]

alac works fine for me. i'm mostly just glad to see people upping in any kind of lossless. its trivial to convert lossless-> lossless.
ive always thought it sad that people give up and just upload mp3, because of the format bickering.

so ya, alac works great, as do any other lossless formats, and i will be very grateful for what you have to offer

[cooljacker]

iTunes? Never installed that app. Ripping CDs is best with free software EAC (Exact Audio Copy) straight to FLAC (FLAC encoder is included with EAC).
Everything you need to know on setting it up is covered in that guide I've given you link to earlier.

Any lossless codec is good, but FLAC should be priority because it's the most popular one at the moment.

[GreatWhite]

FLAC is by far the most popular, but if a song is only available in another lossless format i'll gladly download that instead and just convert it.

[Sparktank 2.0]

Go with Cooljacker and look up EAC guides.
It's a pain to install and setup.
But you only have to set it up once.


Then you can go rip everything you have and never look back.
Although, the main website for EAC is sometimes under malware attack, so grab your copy of EAC from here...

http://anonym.to/?http://www.videohelp.com/tools/Exact-Audio-Copy

[McD]

Yepsa, hope you're able to share the Convertino promo CDs here. I've been wanting to hear these for absolutely ages. Good luck!

[Zoran]

Go with Cooljacker and look up EAC guides.
It's a pain to install and setup.
But you only have to set it up once.


Then you can go rip everything you have and never look back.
Although, the main website for EAC is sometimes under malware attack, so grab your copy of EAC from here...

http://anonym.to/?http://www.videohelp.com/tools/Exact-Audio-Copy

Yes Exact Audio Copy is notoriously difficult to set up correctly for Flac ripping.(A buddy of mine helped me set up mine over the phone and it took about a half hour but we had son technical difficulties so 20 min should do it.)

Those who find the task of setting up EAC daunting might want to just use it for ripping to WAV then converting to FLAC using Traders Little Helper which is like the Swiss army knife of FLAC tools. Of coarse you wont get a LOG or CUE file in the same manner but you can generate a CUE sheet with CUETools.

More on Traders Little Helper...

Description:

Traders of lossless compressed audio files (e.g. ape, flac, mkw, or shn files) have to handle a lot of different applications to decode, encode, create/verify checksums, fix sector boundary errors, or create torrent files. Moreover most of the tools used are command-line programs requiring a deeper knowledge of how to use various parameters. Trader's Little Helper bundles the most important features of those applications in one single easy-to-use frontend.


Features:
- Encoding of wav files to ape, flac, shn and mp3 format
- Re-encoding of flac files
- Decoding of ape, flac, mkw, shn, mp2 and mp3 files to wav format
- Direct conversion of ape, flac, mkw and shn files to flac or mp3 format
- Test of audio files encoded in ape, flac, shn and mkw format
- Verification of cfp, ffp, md5, sfv and st5 checksum files
- Creation of cfp, ffp, md5, sfv and st5 checksum files
- Display of audio file properties (ape, flac, shn, mkw and wav files)
- Fixing of sector boundary errors that come with ape, flac, shn, mkw, wav and mp3 files
- Removal of extra RIFF chunks in audio files
- Rewriting of WAVE headers to canonical format
- Creation of skt files for non-seekable shn files
- Test of wav files for mp3 source
- Creation of torrent files
- Display of the information encoded in torrent files
- Hashing of torrent files against local filesets or files
- Drag & Drop functionality for all supported file types
- Integration into Windows Explorer
- Check for update function


System requirements:
Windows 98/NT/Me/2000/XP/2003/Vista/7

[joypad]

iTunes......

[GreatWhite]

Awesome gif, it expresses what i think of iTunes perfectly.

[Zeratul13]

i agree with the above... lol. not a big fan of itunes.

i would prefer downloading in ALAC over wav though, as it is ~1/2 the file size. i would have to convert either one to flac, but that is a simple change of a drop down list in dbpoweramp converting menu, so not a big deal. smaller filesize + losssless = more downloads

[tangotreats]

Never, ever upload WAV, for God's sake. (It has another disadvantage in addition to pointless bloat; tagging...)

If you upload FLAC and I prefer ALAC, or APE, or TAK, or WavPack, I can convert it. Every system can convert any format to any other format. It's lossless. I can transcode it a thousand times and still have the same quality.

For best all-round compatibility, I would go with FLAC. It has the best out-of-the-box support. Yeah, other formats can reduce the file size a bit more (APE, for example - which comes with its own set of problems) but we literally are talking about a couple of megabytes per album. And its ubiquity means it is the easiest format to transcode to something else. It's ridiculously fast to decode, plays in 99% of players straight off, and has excellent tagging support.

Moaning about file formats when it comes to lossless is a) lazy, and b) ridiculous. Download it, convert it to whatever the hell you like, and be grateful that you have it losslessly.

Just did a little test. I transcoded a complete album (Arthur Christmas by Harry Gregson-Williams) from FLAC to APE (Normal Compression) using Foobar2000. On a Core i5 @ 3.4Ghz, the conversion from start to finish took 11 seconds, for the whole album, all tags intact. OK, so I have a fast processor... but it literally takes longer to complain about having to transcode, than it does to actually transcode...

Incidentally, I just did the same compression job at Extreme Compression. It took twenty seconds, and the final APE files clocked in at 242mb against 258mb for the original FLAC. (Uncompressed WAV is 474mb, just in case anybody wonders.)

[yepsa]

Thank you for all your interest. Candid photos of my manhood will be e-mailed immediately following receipt of your payment to my Cayman account. Paypal and-----oops! Wrong thread!

Thank you for all your interest. I've decided to go with FLAC. It seems to me most dedicated users of these forums prefer it and have the means to convert it to something else if needed. I'm eager to start contributing and have set up a 2-year premium account with Megaupload so the links will be around for a while. But I will upload to Multiupload. If this all works wonderfully, I will not longer be a sad, gay, clown (well, at least 2 of those).

[cooljacker]

Wait man, if you upload it to Multiupload, all your uploads will be treated as anonymous, even for Megaupload. Multiupload can't know you have a premium account for Megaupload!! If I'm wrong that would be better (someone correct me).

Upload everything directly to Megaupload. You could set up a free account at Mediafire too, files stay long (past 3 years or so, almost nothing's been deleted from my, again, free MF account. Or some other mirror, I'm only suggesting.

And please, do not give your compressed files (rar/zip/whatever) obvious names, it will only be deleted quicker that way: so as an example you've uploaded "The Dark Knight Original Soundtrack 2 CD Set - FLAC.rar", that is so obvious, isn't it? Instead do something like "THDRKN_F.rar" - this approach saves over 90% of my files from deletion.

Happy uploadin'

[docrate1]

Wait man, if you upload it to Multiupload, all your uploads will be treated as anonymous, even for Megaupload. Multiupload can't know you have a premium account for Megaupload!! If I'm wrong that would be better.

Upload everything directly to Megaupload. You could set up a free account at Mediafire too, files stay long (almost 3 years nothing's been deleted from my, again, free MF account. Or some other mirror, I'm only suggesting.

And please, do not give your compressed files (rar/zip/whatever) obvious names, it will only be deleted quicker that way: so as an example you've uploaded "The Dark Knight Original Soundtrack 2 CD Set - FLAC.rar", that is so obvious, isn't it? Instead do something like "THDRKN_F.rar" - this approach saves over 90% of my files from deletion.

Happy uploadin'

Or he can upload to multiupload, go to the MU link created by multi, and click on "import to my account". Works like a charm and saves uploading time, and you have ten mirrors in a row. most of them will be dead rather quickly, but the MU links tend to stay alive long enough.

As for Filename, I agree. Go for the solution indicated by Cooljacker, or the one I offered in the over thread in which you asked for info.

[cooljacker]

I think I'm wrong about anonymous uploads to Multi. It appears you can now enter your username and password, so the Multi will up the files to your account. But even if that's the case, docrate1 suggested a better way (MU function "Import files to my account" is available only for premium members, so abuse it!!).

[yepsa]

I think I got it all figured out and have posted my first promo score (not the most sought after in case I screwed it up). Go here for 2 unreleased scores by Joel Goldsmith (Jerry's son) on 1 CD: Little Miss Millions and Hollister...

Little Miss Millions & Brotherhood of the Gun: 2 unreleased scores by Joel Goldsmith