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[frobnitz]

Hi.  I'm planning to rip all my music into a lossless format and use media center 11 to play them back, and use the UPNP plugin to feed a couple MP101's.  I also run a MythTV system, so I'd like it to be able for MythTV to play music as well, though it's no the primary application for that system.

My question is which lossless codec to use?  FLAC, APE, or WMA lossless?  I need the UPNP plugin to be able to transcode on the fly to support the MP101's, as well as be read by Myth and JRiver.  Do all of these formats work for this purpose?

Thanks,
Frob

[KingSparta]

My question is which lossless codec to use?  FLAC, APE, or WMA lossless?

The J River Company And Matt Will Say "APE" And If You Use MC11 I Would Not Say "FLAC" Since They really Don't Support It.

[dpippel]

I used MC11 and FLAC to rip my entire 400 CD collection. Worked great and it's fast too. Even though MC doesn't support FLAC natively, the excellent 3rd party encoder plugin that's available for it makes that a moot point in my opinion.

However, there's not a thing in the world wrong with using APE either. As long as you're ripping lossless you're good. It really boils down to personal preference.

[Alex B]

My question is which lossless codec to use? FLAC, APE, or WMA lossless? I need the UPNP plugin to be able to transcode on the fly to support the MP101's, as well as be read by Myth and JRiver. Do all of these formats work for this purpose?

In my opinion Monkey's Audio has the best support in MC. I would use the Normal or even the Fast compression level for files that are meant to be played directly and transcoded on the fly. For archives I have used "High" but decoding them consumes more CPU. After all the size differences are not very big so "Fast" could be the best choice if the HD space usage is not a problem.

[jgreen]

8 weeks ago I was aking the same question, and concluded that FLAC had a slight edge over APE.  I did novice-level research and it appears that FLAC has a more thoroughly-verified "lossless" functionalitiy.  As a novice, I was more assured by the open-source development of FLAC, and my impression that FLAC is a faster-growing standard.  This is nothing against APE.

Apparently Matt and/or jriver developed the APE format.  This may or may not explain why they refuse to support FLAC.  But lack of support doesn't mean any lack of functionality, currently.  In fact, I've had one or two instances where the FLAC encoder was less problematic than the APE.

In the future, if Alex B and others can convince jriver, there may be some real advantages to APE.  I'm talking about CUE file and track-specific EQ settings imbedded into APE file tags.  That at least has been one avenue of discussion, although I'd like to see that functionality within the program, available to all formats.

5,000 FLAC conversions later and I haven't had any problems.

[Alex B]

jgreen,

Have you tried FLAC playback and on the fly conversions with UPnP and/or Library Server plug-ins?

I have not tested Libary Server with FLAC yet and I don't have UPnP devices (I use just PCs on the LAN).

[jgreen]

"No" and "no". 
I would reference the word "novice", which appears several times in my post.  If you know of a disfunction related to Upnp and/or library server plugins, it would be well worth mentioning.  I personally haven't had any experience with it.  Stereo playback and pre-amp routed outputs are all the more complex I've gotten.

BTW--how's it going with the imbedded CUE support (and track specific EQ and replay gain)?

[Prognathous]

I chose FLAC. The hardware support and OSI approved license made the difference in my case. You can find an interesting comparative table here.

Prog.

[mikesm]

What about the on fly transcoding support in the UPNP plug in?

Thanks,
Mike

[Mr ChriZ]

APEs Cool 

Been using it for over a year now and I like it.
Entire collections compressed to the max, yet never causes any
processor problems, and thats just an old 1700xp.
Quality is as good as it gets in my opinion :-)