Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[jolo]

I am using the current latest version of MC ---> 13.0.101.
I also am using Vista Ultimate 64 (ultimate what ?? :-).

I like to use FLAC on my PC as my archive as well as to listen to audio on my PC.
I also will have a duplicate of my audio in Ogg, which I use on my Cowon D2 portable multimedia player.

I don't totally really understand the FLAC options, so please help and please be patient with my ignorance.  ?

• On the MC 13 FLAC encoder, there is a "selected quality" option. Am I correct in assuming that for FLAC, this entry has nothing to do with quality and is about the amount of FLAC compression ?? That all FLAC is losless thererfore there are NO FLAC settings that have to do with quality ?
• Am I correct to assume that "selected quality" 8 has only to do with compression and if the processing time of the FLAC encoding is not important, then is there a reason NOT to select 8 ?
• What does "Add seek table mean ??
• What does "Use Ogg as Transport Layer mean

Thank you in advance for sharing your time and expertise.

Jon 

[chaznet]

I'm also confused about the FLAC options, as I'd read that it was lossless.  Are there varying levels of lossless?

[mark_h]

The Quality option is the amount of compression, and consequently the amount of time taken to do the compression.  All versions unpack to the same lossless file.

No idea what the other two do.

Mark

[xen-uno]

http://flac.sourceforge.net/documentation_tools_flac.html

... There is no quality setting ... quality = compression in MC's case. MC is probably using a generic front end for all the encoders. There might be something like a 5% difference (I'm guessing) in the resulting file size between high( 8 )/low( 0 ) comp settings. Speed of compression, however, drops. Looking at the flac page, the setting --fast = comp level 0 and --best = comp level 8. So there is no difference in quality ... just compression & compression speed. Looking through the options, I don't see any that could negatively affect quality (except outrageously high replay gain numbers ... which could cause clipping ... somewhere).


http://flac.sourceforge.net/format.html#format_overview ... see SEEKTABLE

... I don't know how seekpoints are defined by the user in a flac file. I've never used them. If I understand the function correctly, then you should be able to take a CD and rip it as a single track, then place seekpoints at individual track boundaries.


Ogg as transport layer ... in a flac context? See http://flac.sourceforge.net/ogg_mapping.html

[jolo]

http://flac.sourceforge.net/documentation_tools_flac.html

... There is no quality setting ... quality = compression in MC's case. MC is probably using a generic front end for all the encoders. There might be something like a 5% difference (I'm guessing) in the resulting file size between high( 8 )/low( 0 ) comp settings. Speed of compression, however, drops. Looking at the flac page, the setting --fast = comp level 0 and --best = comp level 8. So there is no difference in quality ... just compression & compression speed. Looking through the options, I don't see any that could negatively affect quality (except outrageously high replay gain numbers ... which could cause clipping ... somewhere).


http://flac.sourceforge.net/format.html#format_overview ... see SEEKTABLE

... I don't know how seekpoints are defined by the user in a flac file. I've never used them. If I understand the function correctly, then you should be able to take a CD and rip it as a single track, then place seekpoints at individual track boundaries.


Ogg as transport layer ... in a flac context? See http://flac.sourceforge.net/ogg_mapping.html

That is very interesting information about how the compression settings don't make very much of a difference in the size of a FLAC file.
I used to use APE as my losless codec of choice, as it does a better job of compression than FLAC does, but .......there is a lot more
support for FLAC and there is a native FLAC decoder on my Cowon portable player and FLAC plays great on MC13, etc.
I believe that some music artists are finally taking matters away from the record companies and are offering their music in FLAC format. Either downloaded or
by CD. No licensing fees and none of the DRM virus stuff.

Well .....I read the sourceforge explanation about the Ogg mapping.
AND ..... ?
I really don't understand what the heck they are talking about.

I need to understand things from a functional level, not a "engineering level".

Could anyone explain the choice of Ogg mapping from a "functional level".
I don't understand if the selection is good or bad or indifferent.

I do use Ogg as my lossy audio codec of choice and play ogg all of the time on my Cowon D2 portable multi-player.
I find it gives a very noticeable fuller sound than MP3 and besides, its open source.

Thanks,

Jon