FLAC Level 6 or 8?

[Homebrew101]

Is there any reason when I see lineage and people encode to FLAC level 6 instead of level 8?

Wouldn't level 8 result in smaller files and be preferred over any other levels?

Or is it because people are using an older version or something that only had level 6?

[pmonk]

I remember a long discussion in technobabble by unclehem(?) a few years ago explaining 6 will give you the best results and 8 is just overkill.

[travishayes89]

I have tried level 8, but it never got up to an 8.0 compression ratio.

[Five]

Originally Posted by pmonk66

I remember a long discussion in technobabble by unclehem(?) a few years ago explaining 6 will give you the best results and 8 is just overkill.

6 compresses 99% as tightly as level 8, both decompress at the same rate. level 6 is a good compromise if you're in a rush.

I say get the new version of FLAC which is much faster and compress to level 8. Start it before you go to bed, it'll be done when you wake up no matter how big the fileset is.

[U2Lynne]

I seem to remember this discussion from before also, Monk. I think the end result was that level 6 was almost as compressed as level 8, yet level 8 took so much longer to compress. Both took just as long to decompress.

[diggrd]

Originally Posted by U2Lynne

I seem to remember this discussion from before also, Monk. I think the end result was that level 6 was almost as compressed as level 8, yet level 8 took so much longer to compress. Both took just as long to decompress.

Yes that's how I remember it as well. That leaves the whole upload download time out of the equation. If hundreds of people are saving time grabbing a show that is compressed even slightly more it would balance out the time you "wasted" waiting for it to compress at a higher level. Or more to the point the time you would save getting shows compressed at 8 will balance out the time you spend waiting to compress to 8 before torrenting. just my $.02 YMMV

[pmonk]

Originally Posted by Five

6 compresses 99% as tightly as level 8, both decompress at the same rate. level 6 is a good compromise if you're in a rush.

I say get the new version of FLAC which is much faster and compress to level 8. Start it before you go to bed, it'll be done when you wake up no matter how big the fileset is.

I believe I have version FLAC 1.1.4

Originally Posted by pmonk66

I believe I have version FLAC 1.1.4

I saw this in the changelog for the latest version:
* Improved compression with no change to format or decrease in speed.
* Encoding and decoding speedups for all modes. Encoding at -8 is twice as fast.