Topic: wavpack, flac & others (Read 6685 times)

LisaRCT · « **on:** July 17, 2003, 06:23:27 am »

I wish to play:

wavpack wv files (both the lossless and the 'hybrid-lossey' files) as well as flac files.

Since this is "The one that plays them all", can I assume these formats are forthcoming or will it be necessary to convert these to another format to use MC9?

LisaRCT · « **Reply #1 on:** July 18, 2003, 06:24:59 am »

Apparently nobody here uses these formats

Has anyone looked at the WavPack format?
This can do a nice job on LossLESS yielding a file easily less than 50% the size of the wave file.
It can also do Lossey encoding to save space.

However the big thing is it's 'Hybrid" encoding/compression . . . .
It will make a Lossey file for small size AND a 'correction file' together less than 50% the original size
BUT the bonus being that the lossey file (at about 25% the size of the wave file) can be used alone like an MP3 (simply move the correction file to a seperate location or visa-versa),
OR when combined with the 'correction file' can reproduce the original wave file.
This appears to give the flexibility to have your cake and eat it too . . . no need to choose between lossey and lossless.
As with all multi-purpose devices/programs there is usually some sort of compromise so I expect to discover some fault along the line, yet at this point this appears to be an interesting approach.

you can review WavPack at:
http://www.wavpack.com/

Any feedback?

rocketsauce · « **Reply #2 on:** July 18, 2003, 11:14:39 am »

There have been quite a few requests for FLAC support. IIRC, in the past Matt has said that there aren't plans for plug-ins to come from J River, but feel free to write one or get the dev of the requested format to write one. I don't know if this is still the "official" postition, though. I think one of the people who wanted Shorten support ended up writing the plug-in themselves.

Rob

zevele10 · « **Reply #3 on:** July 18, 2003, 11:20:37 am »

Did you try WanPack?

I read about it ,but still have to give a try.

Now ,look like that the one who play all is DBpowerAmp player ,not MC........

LisaRCT · « **Reply #4 on:** July 18, 2003, 11:21:23 am »

?

:-/

rocketsauce · « **Reply #5 on:** July 18, 2003, 11:36:32 am »

I haven't tried Wavpack yet, either, but have been reading about it over at HA Forums. The hybrid mode sounds interesting.

I've played around with FLAC. I believe Machinehead made some posts over at HA trying to get someone to volunteer to write an MC plug-in, but no takers yet.

For the small amount that I use lossless, APE is fine.

Rob

Listening to: 'Cao Cao (Instrumental)' from 'Hoy Y Ayer' by 'Celia Cruz' on Media Center 9.0

Nikolay · « **Reply #6 on:** July 18, 2003, 11:51:31 am »

MJ has support for 3 lossless formats:

1) APE (the best)
2) Microsoft WMA (lossless version of it)
3) Shorten (thanks to Mark Heubeck)

We can encode into number 1 and 2. That should be more then enough, is it not?

Nikolay

LisaRCT · « **Reply #7 on:** July 18, 2003, 09:45:59 pm »

Does it not say
"The one that plays it ALL"?

An asolute should not need qualification:
"'Thou shalt NOT kill"
"ALL men are created equal"
"The one that plays it ALL"

these do not say 'EXCEPT for:' or 'All BUT:'
they are 'ALL inclusive' statements.

So . . . . .

zevele10 · « **Reply #8 on:** July 19, 2003, 03:04:14 pm »

Nikolay

I do thing you have to try to play the more possible formats - if big $$$$$$$$$$$$ not in the game-

As i say ,play .
No need to code or decode ,just play

KingSparta · « **Reply #9 on:** July 19, 2003, 03:13:30 pm »

Has been stated before by J River

The programer of FLAC and others is more than welcome to make a plug-in for MC9 if they wish to do so.

Quote

Does it not say
"The one that plays it ALL"?

it also states "this is not your little sisters jukebox"

but what about the milions of people out there who don't have little sisters?

should we send them our extra sisters?

JimH · « **Reply #10 on:** July 19, 2003, 03:52:33 pm »

Quote

but what about the milions of people out there who don't have little sisters?

should we send them our extra sisters?

I have one I could make available.

LisaRCT · « **Reply #11 on:** July 19, 2003, 04:34:52 pm »

Quote

Has been stated before by J River

The programer of FLAC and others is more than welcome to make a plug-in for MC9 if they wish to do so.

it also states "this is not your little sisters jukebox"

but what about the milions of people out there who don't have little sisters?

should we send them our extra sisters?

Point taken, however I must ask:
By what logic does one try to justify or validate one mis-truth with another?
But alas this is not philosophy chat.

So let me get this straight, you are suggestig I request a programmer from outside of JRiver, take his time and effort to write a plug-in, so as to help make the statement 'The one that plays it all' ring true.
Hmmm, and why would they want to do that? They didn't make the statement "EncoderXYZ, they one they all can play"

Nor do I think I should be herded into the 'available boxes' by being told that there are already several choices.

I do think a simple honest explaination, something to the effect that:
Work on the new Media Center BETA development is currently the priority. During this time third-party plug-ins are being used as they are made available. JRiver makes the SDK files available to third party programmers for that purpose and encourages such development. We do not expect to be developing these plug-ins but may revisit that in the future should there still remain a need.

This I think would not only most likely satisfy the customer, but show the company in a better light as well.

JimH · « **Reply #12 on:** July 19, 2003, 05:50:24 pm »

Lisa,
I have one word: APE.

If you don't like APE, then try the FLAC author about writing a plug-in. We aren't going to do it anytime soon.

Jim

LisaRCT · « **Reply #13 on:** July 19, 2003, 07:22:13 pm »

Quote

Lisa,
I have one word: APE.

If you don't like APE, then try the FLAC author about writing a plug-in. We aren't going to do it anytime soon.

Jim

Thank you Jim, I can accept that, and as I think my last post showed, all I ask for is a reasonable answer. I appreciate you doing that.

I have need for other formats for file sharing of music which is freely distributed and archived. These often come in non-standard formats, which is why I had expressed a desire to play them in MediaCenter without necessarily convert them first to do so. This could have been alot more convenient for me. So much for that, I will have to make do in another manner.

I am more than willing to consider APE for music which I rip and encode. It has been testing well on my system against the others although WavPack isn't far behind and had the added benefit of the 'Hybrid' which still seems worth examining closer.

zevele10 · « **Reply #14 on:** July 19, 2003, 10:41:21 pm »

FIRST
I have only one sister , so no spare sister to send to anyone.

JimH

Lisa is right.
Some trading AND LEGAL music is coming under different lossless formats.
People wish to play them and keep them in they original format , because of the trading thing.
Convert the files to APE to play them means to keep the other format as well.

I would say that people part of this trading rings are not 'mister average user '...- except me- ..........
And really kind of people using a program like MC and not other regular players.

Because of it ,you will allways get this kind of request.

JimH · « **Reply #15 on:** July 20, 2003, 04:35:59 am »

I may be wrong, but I thought someone tried the Winamp flac plugin and it worked.

KingSparta · « **Reply #16 on:** July 20, 2003, 05:00:52 am »

Quote

I may be wrong, but I thought someone tried the Winamp flac plugin and it worked.

If it worked maybe J River could put it on the plug-in's section and add your name to the Flac website as being a jukebox that supports Flac (If it would take little work).

And the advantage to J River would be

1. Advertisement on the Flac website
2. Possible more sales for users who use only Flac

and the Advantage to JimH would be that you could keep your little sister.

LisaRCT · « **Reply #17 on:** July 20, 2003, 08:29:40 am »

......................... listening to:

Little Sister by Stevie Ray Vaughn
on MC9 . . . of course silly!

KingSparta · « **Reply #18 on:** July 20, 2003, 09:00:30 am »

I have 163 mp3's with the word sister in it (artist & song name)

22 mp3's with sister in the song name

'I Wanna Rock' Charted At 68 In 1984

Listening to: 'I Wanna Rock' from 'Road Trip Sound Track' by 'Twisted Sister' on Media Center 9.1

Marko · « **Reply #19 on:** July 20, 2003, 12:52:02 pm »

The winamp 2 flac plugin works, sort of

It lets mc play flac files, but it can't add tags and presumably (I don't have a pre-tagged flac file) it won't read tags either. It also seems unable to get other info such as duration.

It does play them though.

LisaRCT · « **Reply #20 on:** July 20, 2003, 05:11:02 pm »

well there we go, that's at least a start

thank you Marko

BuiltToSpill · « **Reply #21 on:** July 20, 2003, 06:41:08 pm »

I just spent agood 2 1/2 hours looking for a proper FLAC->WAV converter last night to convert a Phish concert from livephish.com.

I finally found a program from http://flac.sourceforge.net/download.html

Works well, but a bit messy...

If only i would have known the winamp plug-in worked with mc9 :-/

rocketsauce · « **Reply #22 on:** July 20, 2003, 07:10:27 pm »

Go here and download FlacDrop, an easy to use drag and drop encoder/decoder frontend for FLAC:

http://rarewares.hydrogenaudio.org/lossless.html

Rob

zevele10 · « **Reply #23 on:** July 21, 2003, 04:44:29 am »

Have a look at this link.

A very nice and good program.
I rip ,convert with it since years.

http://www.dbpoweramp.net/dmc-support-audio-cd.htm

LisaRCT · « **Reply #24 on:** July 21, 2003, 07:24:29 am »

I really like dbPowerAmp for a handy converter . . with the 'PowerPak' installation it is a simple right-click away from within your windows folders. It also has a great number of formats in both lossey and lossless . . . it may even 'convert them all'

I have grown accustomed to using EAC and have never tried dbPowerAmp for ripping, but in light of Zev's comment about dbPowerAmp I will try it. That would eliminate one more piece of software.

Oh, and yes FlacDrop works rather nicely (a clone of OggDrop I believe)

zevele10 · « **Reply #25 on:** July 21, 2003, 01:34:13 pm »

Well ,they are not the same kind of program.

First ,you cannot ,like in EAC put one cd after one and have convertion running in the back.
With some tweaks you can run more than one convertion operation ,but ,look like you need a REALLY powerfull computer.

I think that ,maybe, you do not have the 'super-supra-mega sophisticated settings ' you can find in EAC- you know ,the ones who make you a brillant person on some forums....-

Beside it ,i use dbPowerAmp since years and ,after a time with EAC , i did go back to it.

If you have the PowerPack , there is A LOT of DSP effects you can use when ripping- trim silence ,ad silence and much much more.
You can set additional tags infos before ripping , or remove some as well.

If you set PowerPack to 'rip to RAM' and 'rip&encode at same time" it is fast.

I get all cds infos before starting to rip-- using all the data possible- and set PowerPack to 'autorip"

I set dbPowerAmp to low priority ,like it my computer stays performant during the rip/encode operation.

dbPowerAmp ,unlike many programs can rip for hours and hours without a problem .

Not to say that it is better than MC. This i do not know.
But the time to put a cd in MC ,update volume ,get infos from YADB ect , is the time that dbPowerAmp needs to rip the cd....

MmmmJoel · « **Reply #26 on:** July 21, 2003, 03:03:22 pm »

I can't help but be disappointed at the lack of lossless format support from JRiver. I also believe that JimH's "One Word" response was a bit unprofessional and may be prematurely conclusive.

There is quite a bit of legal concert trading primarily in FLAC and SHN. As much as I'd like to have all APE (and I have to if I want to keep using MC), it is a bit painful without MC support.

The SHN plug-in does not work properly. Try converting a batch of SHN's to APE's using the MC convert tool, and with any luck, MC will crash hard without an error message. I have yet to convert a significant number of files without a hard crash.

The lack of FLAC support just eliminates that market completely; back to the command-line.

Before adding the kitchen sink to MC, I recommend JRiver goes through a much longer bug fixing period and filling out the existing feature set. It seems to be turning into a runaway train (regarding featureset) with many people close to falling off (because of bugs, lack of support).

JimH · « **Reply #27 on:** July 21, 2003, 03:58:27 pm »

Support of FLAC and SHN is possible. We provide an SDK for anyone who wants to write a plug-in.

LisaRCT · « **Reply #28 on:** July 22, 2003, 08:32:01 am »

Quote

Support of FLAC and SHN is possible. We provide an SDK for anyone who wants to write a plug-in.

I supply rags and cleansers for anyone who wants to clean my home.

::: ducking for cover :::

sorry, I couldn't help it . . . the devil made me do it!

JimH · « **Reply #29 on:** July 22, 2003, 08:38:08 am »

Quote

I supply rags and cleansers for anyone who wants to clean my home.

If they then get to live there, I'm sure you can find a taker.

LisaRCT · « **Reply #30 on:** July 22, 2003, 08:39:08 am »

hmmmmm, what does he look like?

KingSparta · « **Reply #31 on:** July 22, 2003, 08:43:17 am »

Quote

hmmmmm, what does he look like?

JimH looks like that saw horse with a bit of hair

LisaRCT · « **Reply #32 on:** July 22, 2003, 08:48:31 am »

Quote

JimH looks like that saw horse with a bit of hair

well I didn't get the impression he was volunteering personally, but . . .
since he is wearing his buck/stag avitar today, it may be worth considering

JimH · « **Reply #33 on:** July 22, 2003, 09:09:28 am »

Quote

JimH looks like that saw horse with a bit of hair

Now you've really offended my horse.

LisaRCT · « **Reply #34 on:** July 22, 2003, 09:12:28 am »

rofl

sowwy

Ok then I won't mail you the application, background check, and assets disclosure forms.

. . .playtime's over, back to work

INTERACT FORUM

Author Topic: wavpack, flac & others (Read 6685 times)

LisaRCT

LisaRCT

zevele10

LisaRCT

LisaRCT

zevele10

LisaRCT

LisaRCT

zevele10

LisaRCT

Marko

LisaRCT

zevele10

LisaRCT

zevele10

LisaRCT

LisaRCT

LisaRCT

LisaRCT