.flac? What is this?

iamdmc

I've only ever come across .mp3 and some windows media .wma files... so where do you get .flac? Is it any better than .mp3? Does it take up more space than an MP3?

marcelo1251

check this out http://flac.sourceforge.net/
Sound's better than mp3 b/c is lossless but also bigger as well. Quality needs space :D

Job

FLAC gives a great sound quality as its lossless so it sounds just like the original CD or audio source.
However, ist not very suitable for the miniplayer imo as it just comes with 4gb max of memory and with flac that is gone in no time as FLAC files are huge compared to MP3 etc.
Also, flac is not very widely supported by other players(this ofcourse is only a problem is you intend to use your files on other players/computers)

Another reason why imo FLAC isnt very suitable for the miniplayer is thatthe benefit of the better sound quality is largely useless if you use your player on the move. I mean... in a crowded street, public transport, runing atthe gym etc there are so many environment sounds that (even with isolating earphones like Shure's) the higher quality of the audio is largely lost due to the background noise

but ofcourse youshould go for what you prefer...
if yourean "audiophile" go for FLAC.
Do you want a good sounding mp3 player that will hold more then a few cds go for mp3, or OGG..

My personal favorite is OGG due to the better sound quality(over mp3 and wma, not over Flac) but as my previos mp3 players didnt take it i now use Mp3 VBR only. That way i get good sounds and i am sure i can play my files whenever and wherever i want

audiofish

If you get a good encoder with all of the options (The Flac Frontend) you can create a trade off between processing time and file size.

If you set it to VERY high compression it takes roughly half an hour per song to encode, though you save a LOT of space. Personally I use the above normal setting (level 5).

Note that the sound quality doesn't change depending on the compression level - just how much resources it takes to compress it.

__________________
~audiofish~

Err0r

Is it possible to re-compress a preexisting FLAC file using a higher compression level?

Job

cool...i didnt know that

how big is a very compressed file in flac for say a 4 minute song?
am i correct is i say that the more you compress it the harder the meizu has to work to decode it the faster the battary will be empty?

also... this is just a note for any new users. converting mp3 WMA or any other lossy format to Flac ofcourse doesnt make sense!

eriktous

If you use a Pentium 1...
I just encoded a 3.30 minute song, with FLAC frontend at level 8, and it took about a minute.

I don't know if there is any program that does this directly, but FLAC is lossless, so you can always decompress the file, to get the exact same .wav file you started with, which you can then compress again with any setting you like.

The resulting flac's I usually get, can be anything between approximately 60% and 80% of the original, depending on the complexity of the music.

Job

60 to 80% of the original?
so in some cases you just get a 20% smaller file than the original WAV file?

Flac seems interesting for players with a larger memory but 4GB of the M6 is way too limited to fit a decent amount of songs on...

Django

Flac is only useful for archiving purposes, for instance transcoding files from it.

ABX tests have shown that mp3s encoded with Lame (on the V0 setting) are completely transparent with FLAC; they sound exactly the same, and have the same audio information.

Job

how is that possible when mp3 is lossy and Flac lossless?