A double-barrel FLAC attack
If you want to hear every detail in your music--every breath, every strum, every rattle--lossless music formats are the only way to go. But if you hate the idea of your precious music files being tied up in some corporation's proprietary format (i.e. Apple Lossless and Windows Media Audio Lossless), the most popular choice out there is FLAC.
The Iriver SPINN can deliver a pocket full of pristine, lossless music encoded in the open-source FLAC format.
(Credit: Corinne Schulze/CBS Interactive)You can find free programs for Mac, Windows, and Linux that will play and rip FLAC files, but finding a FLAC-compatible MP3 player isn't quite as easy.
I've rounded-up my favorite FLAC-compatible players into two groups: MP3 players with FLAC and Portable Video Players with FLAC. The distinction is really just a formality to keep our comparison charts from busting apart, so definitely give both roundups a look.
It's also worth mentioning that if you own an older iPod and you don't mind tinkering with it, the open-source Rockbox firmware lets you add FLAC audio playback, custom EQ, games, and tons of little surprises.
Have some wisdom to share on why you think people should make the switch to FLAC? Share your experience in the comments section.
Donald Bell is CNET Reviews' senior editor for MP3 players and portable audio, and one half of the MP3 Insider blog and weekly podcast. He also likes getting his hands dirty with digital audio tools for musicians and DJs.
Donald Bell is an electronic musician, a veteran record store employee, and a fearless hardware hacker. He's also CNET's Senior Editor for MP3 and digital audio.
Jasmine France is CNET's resident digital audio doyenne, writing and editing product reviews, crave blogs, and feature stories on all things MP3. And if you need advice on headphones, she's your girl.
In other words, it's FREE, so how could anyone "pull the plug"? Furthermore, why would they? If anyone wants to add lossless playback to their new players, they can add FLAC and pay no royalty fees, but to add ALAC, they must bow to the Apple God (and pay an Un-Godly licensing fee).
As for having to convert someday, in your case, as long as Apple continues to survive, you'll not have to convert...but if Apple dies - well then you MIGHT have to convert your ALAC files to ... are you ready ... FLAC, in order to play them on future players! ALAC is perfect for the Apple lovers, but for the rest of the world, FLAC RULES!!
>But if you hate the idea of your precious music files being tied up in some corporation's proprietary format (i.e. Apple Lossless and Windows Media Audio Lossless), the most popular choice out there is FLAC.
The most popular lossless music format PERIOD is FLAC. It sounds like you are saying ALAC/WAV are more popular for lossless music, however if you ever visited a bit torrent site you would notice that 90%+ of the lossless music up is in FLAC.
I repeat this often: I really wish CNET editors would make this characteristic of lossless files more clear to readers.
Read for yourself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Audio_Coding
FLAC and OGG I do like though, since neither are patent-encumbered in any shape or form.
Let say, there is the perfect device out there for Lossless formats, huge capacity, produce a terrific sound, great in everything, and comes with great ear-phones too. But still, if we use it inside the subway, or while paddling the bicycle in the city, how are we suppose to enjoy "the breath, the strum, the rattle"? when we're surrounded with horns from the "extremely understanding" driver, and of course, the "well mannered" gentleman with his phone call sitting next to us in the subway. Crank the sound volume to the top? then say goodbye to your ear drums. Yeah sure, there's noise cancellation ear-phones and headphones, but using it while you're on the road? i don't think so. Hear it while you're on the house? well, what's portable about that?
I mean, i'm not an anti-portable player guy, i do have portable player, i love listening to my fav music with it, and updating myself with the latest podcast, but can we really enjoy lossless audio format on the road?
If we can tolerate with a certain degree of "quality-loss" due to listening lossless audio in the middle of a noisy environment, why not tolerate lossy audio format in portable device?
Portable headphone listening to me would mean anytime you are not listening to music in the same room as your nice audio system.
Possible places could be: at a lake as the sun rises, in the backyard watching the leaves fall off the trees in the fall, at someone's house who doesn?t have the same music or quality of audio system, laying down in your bed if your best audio system is not in your bedroom, on a park bench in the spring etc.
I have nothing against making required travel more bearable by listening to a portable music player, but portable can also mean not tethered to the living room stereo.
How the hell do you paddle a bicycle?!
When in doubt, preserve the highest quality possible. You can always go down if/when necessary, but you can never go back up.
I'm not stating that I or anyone else should desire to select quantity over quality, but I believe the vast majority of MP3 player users are looking for a reasonable mix of both quantity and quality, but with most leaning towards quantity.
I would postulate that most users are listening casually and will not notice the loss of certain musical nuances, subtleties, etc. that come with using a compression-based codec. I know that I very much enjoy the sound quality of my MP3 stored music because I elect to utilize WMA VBR set at it's highest bit rate setting.
One should also consider the practicality of transferring to one's computer an entire collection of CDs, encoded loseless. One would need some serious storage space if one's collection exceeded anything near 200 or more CDs.
If you need evidence of the lack of concern about sound quality just look at how successful are music download services, who often utilize mediocre bit rates in the first place.
I personally would love to use a loseless codec, but I simply don't find the computer storage needs reasonable and I'm not certain I would ever notice the improved quality of sound while sitting onboard an airplane listening to Human Disease from Skinny Puppy.
Mainstream consumers who can notice the difference between lossless and highly encoded mp3 are serious listeners or audiophiles only. And those people don't listen to music "seriously" while moving anyway. They do mostly with their high-end home system or at least with an amp and headphone while on the way.
Is FLAC a true lossless format as well? 100% equal to what's comes from a CD ?
And finally, if FLAC is not the answer, is there a way to copy your CD directly to a harddrive in whatever format a CD encodes? If there is, i'm guessing the only thing holding a Zune or equivalent back from recording a CD directly is the limitations of accepted formats?
Thanks
http://forum.sounddomain.com/ubbthreads.php/ubb/showflat/Number/1496540/page/1#Post1496540
Storage should no longer be an issue for the format given technological developments. This format helps deliver ability to make accurate music reproduction while compressing music by almost 50%. It's almost sad that the last "accepted" improvement in recording quality was WAV format in the late 1980's... There's potential, it's educating enough people to stop this "dumbing down" of consumer America.
http://www.stereophile.com/features/308mp3cd/index.html
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by Howbecome
January 27, 2009 2:35 PM PST
- FLACs are incredible for playback at home through a PC using an outboard DAC. Sound is terrific. Storage is efficient. Convenience is awesome.
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Showing 1 of 2 pages (55 Comments)I use media monkey to play my FLAC files and also to copy them to mp3s at 192 (to a separate directory so they don't muck up my FLAC library - cool media monkey feature) for portable use. Two reasons for this dual format use. 1) MP3s use up less battery life than playback of lossless files. 2) As noted by others, the mobile playback environment (air, motorcycle, train, bus) doesn't really lend itself to appreciation of the lossless files. Using MP3s at 192 on my portable gives me lots of tunes, good battery life and satisfactory audio playback.