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[LeeMc]

Perhaps this ? is elsewhere in the forum and I've not found it. I am evaluating upgrading to ver 12 form 11 that rips to MP3 which by the nature of the compression format is not a preserving of the origninal recording. Does 12 or future versions intend on providing the option to rip into a loss-less format so the original remains intact even through genreations of transfers/copies?

Thx

[jmone]

You have plenty of options in MC12 - I've gone with WMA Lossless but I'm sure others will point out other formats.

[marko]

v11 could do lossless ripping to .wma lossless or .ape files natively, and to flac by way of a plugin.
v12 does all three natively.

Go to: Tools > Options > Encoding

At the very top, use the drop-down to choose "Encoding for: cd ripping" and then set your choices below.
Press OK and off you go.

-marko.

[benn600]

My vote is for FLAC because it is open source and seems to have several technical advantages over some other lossless formats.  I have close to 15,000 songs in my library all stored in FLAC.

I also use quality=8 because I find that my computer is able to encode faster than it can rip a disc so I really don't notice the difference.  On my entire collection, my estimated space savings is more than 1GB.  So 1/380 space smaller.

[marko]

...and seems to have several technical advantages over some other lossless formats.

such as?

[Doof]

Like having to re-write the entire file anytime you edit the tags. Unless of course you waste disk space by padding the file to ensure that doesn't happen.

[hit_ny]

..so why not reserve space for padding then ?

with mp3s ID3v2, you dont get a say in how much space to allocate anyway.

and if one has elected to use APE then space isn't really the most critical concern here is it ?

[benn600]

It rewrites the whole file?  I just know that FLAC is very efficient and doesn't take much power to decode at all.  It is very efficient on the decoding end--which is what you'll be doing whenever you're on the computer.

[hit_ny]

so use a lower compression with APE, then.

or

Are you saying that at the lowest compression level for both, FLAC takes up less CPU ?

[Matt]

The beauty of lossless is that format wars and encoder switches are mostly irrelevant.  You can switch formats without losing anything.

I believe APE gives the best compression per time spent (i.e. highest efficiency).

FLAC has more hardware support, although APE has quite a bit too.

WMA scares me, but Microsoft is everywhere so how could you go wrong?  It is the only one of the group without free, available source code.

WavPack is another great codec -- it's had a lot of innovation like lossy+lossless and the author (David Bryant) is a top-shelf guy.

[Doof]

I don't think you'd go wrong no matter which one you picked. I mostly settled on ape when I settled on MC (not that I consider either of them to be "settling"). I figured I really couldn't go wrong picking the format that guy from JRiver wrote.

[johnnyboy]

One thing I noticed - I'm not that clued up on the different formats - when I was looking through them the other day - the only one that was actually labelled as 'lossless' was the wma lossless.

I think it'd really help beginners if all options or formats that were lossless were specified:

mp3 (lossy)
FLAC (lossless)
APE (both)
 - setting 1 (lossy)
 - setting 2 (lossy)
 - setting 3 (lossless)
etc

Would really help beginners or just people who weren't familiar with different formats.

[Matt]

Just to be clear, APE is _always_ bit-for-bit lossless.

The compression levels are like ZIP or RAR levels -- you can trade speed for compression.

[Doof]

And in the case of FLAC, lossless is in the name.

[hit_ny]

you can trade speed for compression.

..and by extension decoding overhead.

High compression, more time to encode, more CPU to decode and vice versa.

Not that this matters  on a desktop but maybe a portable (any that do APE yet ?)

[benn600]

That is very neat that APE allows both lossless and lossy.  Although it could add to the confusion.  Good to clear things up.  I didn't know APE had a lossy option.

Just like: too bad MP3 doesn't have a lossless option!  Imagine the support across the board if it did.


WAIT: so Matt is saying it is always lossless.  Perhaps some confusion.

[JimH]

APE is lossless.  Period.  As far as I know.  Not lossy.