Why is FLAC supposedly so bad?

ssamadhi - I was counting tags, seeking, fingerprints & fb2k support in my 'as good as' category since flac is obviously excellent in those departments. I was lazy and didn't make that very clear though.

As for speed, I was thinking in terms of FLAC level 8 vs. Wavpack -h. Wavpack can produce significantly smaller files much faster than FLAC. I would agree that at FLAC level 4, FLAC is pretty fast though. But for that matter, shorten is pretty fast at what it does

As for decompression speed, it appears from the wavpack documentation that the -x switch will produce files that decompress faster in the same manner as FLAC files (albeit at the cost of much slower compression, rendering the two formats a virtual tie). I have not experimented with that switch, however, so maybe I misread that.

Thanks for the link to the hydrogenaudio wiki - very handy.

Originally Posted by feralicious

Okay... STOP!!! I don't want any new things to learn!!! My brain hurts...

I took a peek at WavPack and I think it looks a bit involved, but then I didn't install it, just looked at the website and a few posts about it.

lol, sorry, feralicious. i've been using WavPack for the last 2 years+... great stuff.

one *possible* advantage, or feature, of WavPack over other formats IMO is the option of being able to create SFX (Self-Extracting Files) of WAV files. this feature alone (aside from the 32-bit float compression) is invaluable to me... after i do a transfer, i create an MD5 or SFV file of the original WAV file, then compress it to SFX format.

this is a good feature because the WAV file is packed into a Self-Extracting file... meaning, even someone who does NOT have WavPack installed can extract the WAV file. it's also good because - heaven forbid - it guarantees future compatibility with any M$ O/S, i.e. any M$ O/S is sure to be able to run an .EXE file (and hence, it would decompress/unpack the WAV file).

so, assuming the media i archive my transfers to has any decent longevity, in 7 years when Windows 2012 is out, i can still extract my transferred archives regardless of whether or not WavPack or FLAC or SHN were compatible with W2012 or not. (i would think FLAC will be, but you never know. i pretty much doubt SHN will be, but perhaps it may... but by having SFX files, i'm not taking any chances.)

btw, another feature i like in WavPack is the hybrid mode... this way, you can get what is equivalent to a "high quality" (320 kbps) MP3 fairly quickly in a download, and then grab the additional file to unpack the *lossless* WAV file (which is identical to the original WAV file pre-compression). very cool stuff.

oh, and feralicious - i thought new programs/techie stuff was up your alley... you being a "geek girl" and all. but seriously, WavPack is easy to use, especially with the Frontend.

word to the WavPack.

[Five]

It's also supported by Monkey's Audio frontend right out of the box. I've got to spend some time playing with this format...

[ssamadhi97]

Originally Posted by uhclem

ssamadhi - I was counting tags, seeking, fingerprints & fb2k support in my 'as good as' category since flac is obviously excellent in those departments. I was lazy and didn't make that very clear though.

Yea I know (and knew) what you were getting at, it's just that when reading that introduction of yours one would think that wv wins a considerable amount of the points you list subsequently. Had to defend poor flac

Originally Posted by uhclem

As for speed, I was thinking in terms of FLAC level 8 vs. Wavpack -h. Wavpack can produce significantly smaller files much faster than FLAC. I would agree that at FLAC level 4, FLAC is pretty fast though. But for that matter, shorten is pretty fast at what it does

Using flac at level 8 is a waste of cpu cycles imo. Compared to 7 or even 6 you only win maybe 1-5(-10?) kbps, at the expense of an insane encoding time.

Check out the lossless codec comparisons linked to from the HA wiki, they have some nice stats and graphs on compression and decompression speed. The WavPack stats might be outdated on several of them, but other than that you can draw some interesting conclusions. For example this page is one indicator for me that using flac at levels above 4 or 5 is not too sensible unless you need to squeeze that last bit onto a medium.

Oh yes, as you can see Shorten is still faster than wv and flac at these levels - and considerably less efficient.

[pmonk]

Certainly a nice format but the commands seem like French to me.

Without the frontend of batchenc I would neve figure it out!

Now I know you can create md5 using the option -m and you can verify as well but is there a way to create an md5 text like you can do with shntool and flac fingerprints?

[jcrab66]

flac is not bad, its good. What is bad are stupid posts from people just trying to stir up shit....

Originally Posted by h_vargas

it's also good because - heaven forbid - it guarantees future compatibility with any M$ O/S, i.e. any M$ O/S is sure to be able to run an .EXE file (and hence, it would decompress/unpack the WAV file).

so, assuming the media i archive my transfers to has any decent longevity, in 7 years when Windows 2012 is out, i can still extract my transferred archives regardless of whether or not WavPack or FLAC or SHN were compatible with W2012 or not.

Although I am in 100% agreement with vargas that wavpack is a great format, I disagree that the SFX feature of wavpack will somehow make it more compatible with future operating systems.

When you create an SFX file, a little bit of executable code is added to the file that, when executed, decompresses the file to PCM Wave format. That's all fine and dandy, and very useful for distributing files to people who don't have any wavpack software and can't be bothered to install any. BUT the code attached to the SFX file is basically the same code as found in the wvunpack Windows binary. If you switch to an OS that can't run the wvunpack Windows binary, it won't be able to run the code in the SFX file either. In short, there is no advantage, with respect to archiving and future OS compatibility, in using the SFX feature versus just using the wvunpack binary. If you archive SFX files you are kidding yourself and just wasting bits.