1 Topic by Doug_Smith (edited by Doug_Smith 2008-09-06 01:05:12)

  • From: Western Oregon,US
  • Registered: 2008-07-22
  • Posts: 2,498

Topic: Time for a little FLAC ?

Howdy all,

  OK well I've been playing around with other people's music a bit lately and noticed something that may not be too important, but might have impact on those of us that are moving sound files around like a tennis ball at Wimbleton.

  One thing I have noticed is that after a couple of times encoding and decoding MP3 files (which are compressed), the odd bits that are discarded by compression add up to a pretty big loss in quality. The end result kind of gets "muddy".

  There is another codec out there called FLAC (free-lossless-audio-codec) which although it doesn't get the files as small as MP3 (within 6-7%), retains all of the original sound data.

  I have been doing a little research on it and it looks like a pretty good alternative for those already-mixed compilations that are going up for an additional track or two.  I don't see a lot of benefit in not using MP3 for individual instrument and vocal tracks, because there is so little data in those tracks that there is not a lot to toss out in compression.

  For you audacity users, FLAC is supported native to version 1.3.3beta, and the FLAC codec is available as a plug in at www.flac.sourceforge.net   along with documentation supporting the quality of the codec, along with techno-babble.

  What brought it to the forefront was Russell's recent foray into the Traxx studio and the well done final mix result....  yes I grabbed it off your mediafire page!  Darn!  WAV format, the thing is 32Mb HUGE!  Could be a bleeding eternity for our friends across the pond to download if there's a bandwidth bottleneck.  But it would be nice to have a MP3 of the recording you did at home and of the Traxx (wmv compressed) to do an apples/apples comparison.  I'm thinking that there will be a difference because of the studio space and all that high dollar equipment.... but maybe not as much difference as one would expect.

Take Care;  Doug

"what is this quintessence of dust?"  - Shakespeare
  • From: Tennessee
  • Registered: 2007-08-04
  • Posts: 436

Re: Time for a little FLAC ?

Me and fatstrings had a conversation the other day about how the sound was affected when converting from wav to mp3...and our conclusion was yes there seem to be  a "flattening" of the sound when converting...in our opinion...so anything that can help preserve the full sound of the recording would be quite helpful in the final mix...

  • From: Western Oregon,US
  • Registered: 2008-07-22
  • Posts: 2,498

Re: Time for a little FLAC ?

Hey Randy,

  I thought you might take interest.  Supposedly FLAC can compress cd recordings, and then uncompress and re-burn an EXACT duplicate.

  WAV is real clean and REAL big....

  Thinking I'll try it out and see if there is any detectable degradation through 5-6 cycles.  But have to upgrade my Audacity first!

  Take Care;  Doug

"what is this quintessence of dust?"  - Shakespeare
  • From: A black hole in deep space
  • Registered: 2007-10-28
  • Posts: 7,862

Re: Time for a little FLAC ?

I just thought you would like to know I do have a mp3 of the wav file and there really is very little difference in quality it was converted by audacity to a mp3 and its on my website now so  when I leave chordie after typing this I will upload the mp3 copy of the original wav cd I ripped into media player as "MP3 copy of WAV"and you can judge for yourself and thanks again for the comments smile

"Growing old is not for sissies"

Russell_Harding's Website

  • From: Western Oregon,US
  • Registered: 2008-07-22
  • Posts: 2,498

Re: Time for a little FLAC ?

OK we've had a little time to play around with the FLAC file format, and I can see where it is quite good at retaining quality through several compression/decompression cycles.  The disappointing part is that it only compacts mixed files to about 50% of the original WAV file size.  I think it has to do with how much data is contained in each packet.  Like two track recordings compress really well and eight track mixes not so much.

  Useful, but not as much as I had hoped... still nice to save the drivespace and archive partial projects to be revisited at a later time.

  Take Care: Doug

"what is this quintessence of dust?"  - Shakespeare