.flac? What is this?

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?

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

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

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.

Originally Posted by audiofish

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

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

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!

Originally Posted by audiofish

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).

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.

Originally Posted by Err0r

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

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.

Originally Posted by Job

how big is a very compressed file in flac for say a 4 minute song?

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.

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...

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.

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

MP3 is a lossy codec, as it removes the frequencies that cannot be heard or are replicated to remove superfluous audio information.

When you encode with a low quality preset, you end up removing audio information, also stripping some frequencies that are otherwise unheard. In these instances, the sound quality would not be as good as with FLAC.

However, when you encode something from a lossless source (say, a CD or a Flac file) using the Lame codec set to the variable V0 setting, you are removing only the purely superfluous frequencies and otherwise replicated frequencies.

ABX tests have shown that the waveform information is identical between FLAC files and Lame V0 files.

I explain it very poorly, but I think it's something like that. The Hydrogenaudio forums are good for this type of information.

VO? can you fill me in on that?

ok... but regular Mp3s at say 192 or 256 KB VBR do not sound as good as the original... thats for sure...

Sure. Lame is a codec for encoding MP3s, as you have FLAC for Flac. It used to be that there were various presets, such as alt-preset-standard and alt-preset-extreme. The latter sought to find the perfect balance between compression and quality.

As for the more recent Lame incarnations, there are six quality settings, -V9 to -V0. -V0 uses variable bit rate, so for silence it'll drop down to 0, but to something dense and polyphonic, it'll raise right up to 320kbps.

As for the transparency issue, the idea is, people have compared a .flac rip to a -V0 rip in a blind test and people have been unable to distinguish between the two. For all intents and purposes, what you're hearing is identical. Technically, MP3 will have lost some of the data bits, but it'll be nothing that you can actually hear, either in FLAC or in MP3 form.

That said, I'm not close to anything beyond a somewhat well-informed layman.

ok so basically VO is the new version of what we used to call MP3 VBR(plus a certain bitrate)

but then i am still puzzeled... 320 VBR MP3 on my stereo still doesnt sound nearly as crisp and full as the CD original
Is this cause I am using an older MP3 encoder?

are there any good and free mp3 encoders that support mp3 Vo encoding?

ps: how big is the average MP3 Vo encoded file? based on a 4 minute song ripped from CD

V0 does use a Variable Bit Rate, but essentially is an old version of the high-end version, alt-preset-extreme.

It could very well be that you're using an older mp3 encoder, there are newer ones which have advanced the cause of compression vs. quality. Beyond that though, it's probably because they've been transcoded, i.e. converted from one lossy codec to another.

However, with flac/-V0 files recorded from the same source, they are transparent and there is no difference. As for the actual size, however, it does depend on the song. I have this album by Midoriyama, solo ambienty guitar, the file sizes are small due to the un-adorned single instrument. With higher production stuff, the files are larger.

The lame codec can be downloaded from here (free, good etc.) http://lame.sourceforge.net/download.php

I used the Flac format songs I have for Megaman X 4, 5, 6, and 7, but only of the stage songs I liked, since it took so much space. I can say that, to me, they STILL sound better on my miniplayer than the mp3 variants because of the high-frequency harmonics that aren't lost in mp3 files... but it's true that, if you're in a noisy area, it doesn't do much good. You could still put some on in case you have some quiet time.

You could also load it up with Flac if you reconnect to your PC about every day, like I do, since you can recharge this battery from any level with no bad effects, and transferring files daily won't damage anything either. I have found that playing Flac files does tend to use more juice, though.