Excuse my ignorance and enlighten me, please... An folder containing 1.4GB of audio files in MP3 format becomes a whopping 10.1GB Flac-o-saurus? A bit of knowledge (a dangerous thing it is said )on Flac- gleaned from the internet- tells me the following:- FLAC is specifically designed for efficient packing of audio data, unlike general lossless algorithms such as ZIP and gzip. While ZIP may compress a CD-quality audio file by 10–20%, FLAC achieves compression rates of 30–50% for most music, with significantly greater compression for voice recordings. Lossy codecs can achieve ratios of 80% or more by discarding data from the original stream. FLAC reduces bandwidth and storage requirements without sacrificing the integrity of the audio source. A digital audio recording (such as a CD track) encoded to FLAC can be decompressed into an identical copy of the audio data. Audio sources encoded to FLAC are typically reduced in size 40 to 50 percent (46% according to their own comparison).[2] A further reference was made to the fact that a 3MB song (MP3)can become an 18MB song (.flac) ( 3MB becomes 18MB of disc/disk storge space). Well using those percentages relative to MP3 and Flac that are given above, what damn size are the original uncompressed files?? Biggest gripe, and probably the basis of said gripe, is that in order to obtain in 1 to 2 hours the entire compilation totaling 1.4GB(MP3), becomes a 20+ hour stretch and uses 10.1GB (excluding upload) of broadband. I guess the answer really is quite a simple one: shuddup! go get the MP3 versions and either forget about the rarities that are in the Flac compilation, or get the rarities in Flac. Simple really eh. : (
You see a lot of comments on the internet about flac vs mp3, and the thing to remember is if you compare flac with mp3 you are not comparing like with like. Flac is lossless compression, for use in situations where the most important consideration is to preserve all the original data. MP3 is lossy compression where the most important consideration is file size. Although you can use flac files as an audio listening source you should think of them more as an audio archival media, a way to archive exact copies of the original audio in a smaller file size than the original wave file without sacrificing any data. This could be extremely important in scientific applications where the audio data contains sounds that the human ear cannot detect, such as recordings of bats for instance, in such a case you would not want to store those files in mp3 format as the mp3 encoding process removes almost all sounds that are out of the range of normal human hearing. Or in a situation where you might want to archive an original recording in its perfect original state for use later as an editing source or such like. For general listening purposes mp3 is the better choice for several reasons, although the encoding process does remove some of the audio data the resulting mp3 file (if encoded at a high enough bitrate, I reccomend 192kbs or higher) is indistiguishable from the original to the human ear, is a vastly reduced file size from the original wave source, and is compatable with a wide range of devices and applications. That is not to say you shouldn't use flac files for general listening purposes if you want to, just that, you would be using much more space on your device without gaining any extra perceivable listening experience, while also reducing your options as to where you can play your music files.
Cheers zonedout, you have explained to me the differences between MP3 and Flac perfectly. I was just flying off the handle about the size of the .torrent because I have a DSL Internet connection capable of 4+MB/s, but there were only 4 seeds feeding out and the ETA was 1week 3days. Hell, I can get a Tera+ of mp3(320kb/s) in that time A couple of year or so ago I was loathe to download anything that wasn't the usual 128kb/s of mp3, especially because I was using 56kb/s dial-up connection to the internet and only getting about 10MB/hr....on a good day. I'm sure that the .flac format has it's uses and does produce an almost exact rendition of the original source. Good scientifically, but for the average Joe bloggs listening to sound through a modern enough beefy stereo or 5:1 surround sound, the lossy format of mp3 is music to the ears. Earlier today I was having a browse about and compared the sizes of two .torrents that are the same item, basically. One of them was 68MB (mp3), the other 620MB (.flac). That's life Interesting that you should mention the playing back of the music files that are .flac format. I had thought about this one and wondered if .flac plays back on an ordinary stand alone sound system. I will look onto that shortly. I did get Flac Frontend 1.2.1b with codecs and read through the information about .flac archiving at the site here- http://www.flac.org/ I have yet not attempted to use the software package, best I first familiarise myself with its differences to mp3. I have VLC 0.9.4 and WinAmp Pro 5.541, both of which address .flac files. All new to me even though Flac has been about for some time. Same can be said about .wav files, alien to me.I tried converting a folder of mp3's to .wav and all I got to listen to was a folder of hissing sounds. Obviously, I missed the plot somehow. Tried it because I have a mate who doesn't create anything other than .wav music files and he swears by it.Oh well, still room for improvement. As for the 10+GB torrent, I did get the entire thing, albeit by accident / mistake; prior to giving it the go ahead to start d-loading I had unticked some of the boxes because I already had those items, but when it started to d-load, I set the torrent to 'High Priority' bandwidth and for some reason I can't figure out, this set the entire torrent to d-load the parts that were marked 'skip'. Went to bed thinking it would be finished by morning but alas, ETA was still 2days away.I let it run. I still have the d-load on my computer and have copied it to 3 DVD5's in a Data format, as data discs. Figured I'd have defeated the purpose of having the .flac format if I had created mp3 DVD backup discs. Anyway, enough of that and thanks for your reply. gbroman
As an experiment I have used the Flac frontend to transcode (decode?) one of the folders of .flac files and note that 361MB .flac format opens out to 517MB .wav. (average 25MB a file), yeah, that's about 8 x a 3MB mp3. Now I may just convert/transcode/encode both of these .flac & .wav folders into mp3 format, to observe the differences. ciao
edit messed that up, the actual size of one of the tracks is as follows:- 31.499MB .flac, 43.2MB .wav so i would hazard a guess and say that the same file will compress to 4 to 5 MB .mp3. Now I begin to understand this a little. Ok, now for the acid test.
Hard drives are cheap now days and you can get them upto 1.5 Tera Bytes per drive so I don't think space is really an issue. If you are serious about your listening experience then go with FLAC. There is a very big difference between FLAC an MP3 especially when the volume is cranked up. But if your not serious and you plan to listen to music through your factory car stereo or portable music player you should use MP3.
zonedout is 100% correct. I is terrifying is that it sounded like you took mp3s and converted them to flacs maybe to improve quality. That is insaine! This is a common sickness. I find radio shows created at 70 BR upped to lossless almost 1300 BR. That is insaine! DON'T DO THAT! Most adult humans can't hear much above 190 BR. Where was that quality supposed to come from? Magic? The 10.1 gb will sound idential to the 1.4 GB. An hour of silence recorded to a wave file is the same size as an hour of complex music. Just because there is data does not mean the data is valuable. 320 CBRs and extreme VBRs hold more data than your ears and brain can resolve. There are good uses for lossless but careful listening is not one of them.
HDD space isn't and never was/is the tissue. As for cranking up the volume, gimme an off the shelf CD and I can wind the Volley-Dolly past 11 and walk away with the 100Mohm pot in me back burner for safe keeping and be the MC ReeeMotA_Man. Cranking up the volume on ones tranny or iPod does wonders for all them kids that can't afford, or even know what a fuckin' 36" Tweeter is. Theys gotta a beauty set of 1/4" headphones and a wee box that would shit itself if it were given a bit of .flac. The pom-pom guns 're firing and the muzzle's getting hot
Space is only a non issue if you dont have much music. Lets say you have 2 TB of lossy music. That would be 40 TBG of lossless. My OS doesn't support 40 TB and where would I put all the drives? Plus why would you want to? That is kind of like carrying a 150 pound back pack around all day every day just because you can do it. HOW STUPID IS THAT? diabolos crack a book! I suspect you are compairing low bit rate MP3s with loseless. The mp3s you buy at itunes are 128s. They are made to be inferior as not to compete with CDs. Most everyone knows that. Apple has complained to the labels about the poor quality. The 128s lack all the high tones that you can't hear very well unless you crank up the sound. Google Fletcher-Munson curves for more info. They figured that out in 1933. High end mp3s have over double that amount of data, 320. If you can bairly tell the difference at 128 you can't expect to tell the difference between 320s and real. No one can. Your ears physically can't hear the difference and your brain can't process the difference if your ears could pick it up. Most serious listeners can't hear any improvement over 190 BR. Still, it is common practice to create extream mp3s 320s or vbr mp3s at the extream setting. The VBRs are still 1/20th the size of loseless but sound the same.
Sound is beautiful. It comes in many shapes and forms. Sitting around the campfire and someone is thrumming a guitar, or plying any instrument for that matter....say, the human voice, the greatest instrument of all, singing, speaking,yelling,weeping,laughing....solo or in unison, it is all beautiful. When natural soundwaves are captured via electronic means and are saved to a storage device (excluding ones brain or mind) from where they can be accessed and 'processed', the world then becomes a labyrinth of choices. Bring in the Producers:the ones with the ad infinitum band eq, please. Flac is a supurb format in which to store an almost exact replica of an electronically captured sound. It isn't perfect, because it is not natural: natural is imperfect so we humans come along and enhance it, to our liking. Its all good. I now know what .flac is. Cheers gbroman
Mez, ha ha,,,no I didn't try to convert .mp3 to .flac and I most certainly wouldn't convert .flac to .mp3 to save space on my HDD or to create a CD to play on a CD player. I had to create some space on HDD's so I created a 3 DVD5 of the .flac files in order to keep the .flac files just that, .flac files. I only hope that having sent them to CD in data format that the original .flac format is retained. I can then send the .flac files back to HDD, convert/transcode them to .wav and create a CD that is uncompressed--just like it would have been had I imported to HDD, the data on the original commercial CD package. I did not have an Original CD from which to do the backup. I DL'd all the files from P2P.. As I initially stated in this thread, I did not know what Flax was / is. I do now and the amount of Flac files I am getting is steadily increasing. A bigger hard drive may be necessary, or a newer computer, as I don't think the Compaq Presario S3010 PC that I have will find a 1TB HDD. Maybe a 500MB, I am buying a 500MB external HDD to get more room to move. Today I was browsing for more info on flac and as usual found a number of opinions that contradicted one and other but, info in this webpage link http://www.videohelp.com/forum/archive/flac-should-i-use-this-t334109.html was most helpful. As has been all of the comments and advice that I have received here. I'm still a little in the dark but I am enlightened. Thanks to all of you.
I had to have a dabble and gain some more knowledge. Once or twice I have imported a commercial CD into my computer either through iTunes 6 or 7 and WMP 11. iTunes imports the CD as mp3 format and I'm not sure what format WMP11 creates as there are a few, probably WMA as I never chose from the options at all, didn't know they were there, just imported/ripped the CD and that was that.Only used it once to rip a CD. Anyway, I have a few format changing tools installed and a week ago when I was beginning to fathom out Flac, I read about the db powerAmp Music Converter, was impressed by the praises the program was getting so I got itdMC-R13.1. plus the complete Codec / Encoder / Decoder / Utility pack) and installed it.I Have just applied the little knowledge that have and tried it out; and now I see even more clearly. I loaded a commercial CD into the optic drive and opened the dbpowerAmp CD Ripper and created 3 folders of the CD contents. This is what I noticed The CD contained 485.2MB of data ( I presume this is in .wav format) Imported to separate folders in computer HDD FLAC format ( Compression Level 5 [default]): 318.35MB MP3(Lame)VBR: Quality: -V4 -vbr-new (estimated bit rate): 160kbps: 55.01MB MP3(Helix) VBR: Quality 90 (estimated 160kbps) 55.01MB MP3(Fraunhofer IIS): CBR 160kbps [sample rates 32, 44.1 & 48KHz] 55.01MB There's loads of other encoder options available for me to dabble with and increase the gist of it. As I said, importing or archiving from Original packages is new to me. Now I know how to archive an original and recreate a perfect clone. More stem cells needed. Advice still welcomed
