audio formats ... again

[steve-bbb]

just a quickie - been having a browse and didnt want to resurrect some of the lengthy old threads - the general consensus on them says go for FLAC

i always used to think that mp3 at 320 was ok-ish but ive just done a quick audio comparison against APE and it is a no brainer for ape - it is quite impressive imo

does anybody have any specific experience of comparisons of ape against flac??

the rip software i have does everything except FLAC - any recommendations for FLAC rippers/players??

i basically want to move away from mp3 format and iTunes which always seems to want to grind my system to a standstill

thanks

Edited May 5, 2012 by steve-bbb

[Balcro]

G' morning steve-bbb,

I can't tell you anything about ape, but Ashampoo Music Studio 3 will rip and convert to FLAC. If that does it, then I suspect Ashampoo Burning Studio 11 will do the same. --- [url="http://www.ashampoo.de"]www.ashampoo.de[/url]

You can download trial full-working versions for nothing or buy for £10 off the web-site. I don't think any of this month's PC magazines have the ashampoo programs on a cover disc.

Balcro.

Edited May 5, 2012 by Balcro

[Doctor J]

I've ripped everything to apple lossless, m4a, does the job nicely.

[discreet]

[quote name='steve-bbb' timestamp='1336208144' post='1642419']
...just done a quick audio comparison against APE and it is a no brainer for ape...
[/quote]

Thanks for posting, I was not aware of the existence of APE.
[url="http://www.coolutils.com/TotalAudioConverter"]http://www.coolutils.com/TotalAudioConverter[/url]

[51m0n]

Foobar2000 rips FLAC (and just about anything else too IIRC.

Top music playing device for the windows platform IME.

[steve-bbb]

[quote name='51m0n' timestamp='1336215860' post='1642576']
Foobar2000 rips FLAC (and just about anything else too IIRC.

Top music playing device for the windows platform IME.
[/quote]

thanks - just going to give it a whirl - i just downloaded freeRIP and that seems to make a decent enough job of ripping direct to flac

with my ears there doesnt seem to be a noticeable difference between the APE and the FLAC (just ripped a sample track and the resepctive file sizes are 28,347kb and 29,726kb for 4min29secs original size 45mb)

think i will go with the flac as there seems to be a lot more resources and stuff available generally - the APE is good imo but doesnt look quite as well supported

Edited May 5, 2012 by steve-bbb

[lowdown]

Another one for Foobar2000, does everything and most formats.[Ape i am not sure about]
Gapless playback as well [no padding or Encoder delay - not a major problem, or indeed needed by most, but if you need it, its there]



Garry

Edited May 5, 2012 by lowdown

[Silvia Bluejay]

Thank you all for this info - Saves me searching around in Google. Lossless all the way, death to iTunes and pretentious Mac sh*t

Edited May 5, 2012 by bluejay

[steve-bbb]

[quote name='bluejay' timestamp='1336219864' post='1642655']
Thank you all for this info - Saves me searching around in Google. Lossless all the way, death to iTunes and pretentious Mac sh*t
[/quote]

yay gruesome horrible death to the bloated itunes ffs that genius thing is just plain creepy

i like foobar for playback however im going with freeRIP for ease of use interface to do all the ripping edit - and freeRIP is pretty quick too even on my old slow machine

im glad ive changed from the mp3 to flac becasue with an emu pro soundcard and a reasonable pair of speakers+swoofer there is a noticeable improvement

Edited May 5, 2012 by steve-bbb

[heminder]

i only ever encode to Ogg Vorbis for lossy and FLAC for lossless since both of those codecs are open source.
MP3 is a big no-no: it's patent encumbered and proprietary. not to mention 19 years old and inferior.

there's also Musepack which has a better algorithm for high-bitrate files.

anyway, for players i use Banshee to play my music. it plays everything i throw at it. [url="http://banshee.fm/"]http://banshee.fm/[/url]
it has a build-in ripper too (i think) but i use Sound Juicer to rip CDs.

Edited May 5, 2012 by heminder

[steve-bbb]

ok so am going through archiving the collection to flac and im wondering where certain discs are

things that i know ive bought and didnt dream or imagine it but there they are missing AGAIN!!!

to best of my recollection ive now owned three (four if you include cassette version) of Hounds of Love and Two copies of Electric Warrior but none of them are anywhere to be seen

does anybody else experience this where certain titles just dont want to stay in your collection for some unearthly reason???

[thepurpleblob]

What's the best audio format for what?

FLAC is lossless, so to compare it to MP3 (or Vorbis for that matter) is not really comparing like with like. Any lossless format should, by definition, sound pretty much like the original and it then comes down to which has the best compression (a bit of an oversimplification, however....)

Any lossy format, like MP3 is a tradeoff of quality v. space. Of course, with plummeting storage prices it all becomes much less of an issue. As has been identified, the support for FLAC is a bit hit and miss at the moment.

Edited May 6, 2012 by thepurpleblob

[spinynorman]

Can you link Foobar to an mp3 player? I tried in the past and couldn't see a way.

[steve-bbb]

ok own up !! who's got my cd's???

just been ripping the collection and there seem to be about 12-15 titles have gone AWOL

[simwells]

I would recommend Exact Audio Copy for ripping to FLAC, I spent a while comparing and was a fan of this over the others due to the exact accuracy of it and it's ability to cope with damaged and scratched CDs though it's certainly not fast with them!

[Hagar]

CDex is freeware, handles FLAC very well and has worked flawlessly for me. It's a bit old though, I can't seem to find a help file, and to rip my CDs without annoying gaps between tracks I've had to save each album as one single file. That's fine for me as I listen to albums from start to finish, but wouldn't be so good if you like selecting single tracks.

[51m0n]

[quote name='simwells' timestamp='1336504359' post='1646626']
I would recommend Exact Audio Copy for ripping to FLAC, I spent a while comparing and was a fan of this over the others due to the exact accuracy of it and it's ability to cope with damaged and scratched CDs though it's certainly not fast with them!
[/quote]

+1 this is a good tool for just that job

[fatback]

Ape is lossless but not many apps will play it. Very useful for sending master files around but not a day to day format like flac imo.

Edited May 9, 2012 by fatback

[steve-bbb]

thnaks will give exact audio copy a try

was using an app called FreeRIP which seemed to be workign fine then checked a couple of tracks and thought they sounded a bit strange and i could hear parts of the sound field and arrangements that id not noticed before then realised something was definitely amiss as certain things seemed to drop out completely liek the effect when both channels arent working and you get on ly a vague echo of the missing channel in the background???

will give EAC a try with the same track and see what it does

unless its a dodgy connection somehwere!!

edit dodgy connection lol - FreeRip is good!

Edited May 11, 2012 by steve-bbb

[4 Strings]

I'm a pleb to all this, but very pleased at increasing popularity to MP3 alternatives. (Was beginning to believe a whole generation will be brought up on crappy quality playback and this end up reducing the quality of recordings)

What do you play FLAC and/or APE files, a laptop? Any portable players play these formats?

[steve-bbb]

[quote name='4 Strings' timestamp='1336732842' post='1650086']
I'm a pleb to all this, but very pleased at increasing popularity to MP3 alternatives. (Was beginning to believe a whole generation will be brought up on crappy quality playback and this end up reducing the quality of recordings)

What do you play FLAC and/or APE files, a laptop? Any portable players play these formats?
[/quote]
There is an iPhone app called capricio for playing flac . I would recommend FreeRIP for ease of use for ripping converting and tagging

Edited May 11, 2012 by steve-bbb

[simwells]

[quote name='4 Strings' timestamp='1336732842' post='1650086']
I'm a pleb to all this, but very pleased at increasing popularity to MP3 alternatives. (Was beginning to believe a whole generation will be brought up on crappy quality playback and this end up reducing the quality of recordings)

What do you play FLAC and/or APE files, a laptop? Any portable players play these formats?
[/quote]

There are a fair number of portable FLAC players depends on the capacity or specs you'd be after really though. The Sansa units are very popular, personally I use a rockboxed iPod though.

[4 Strings]

Just googled Rockbox. You find that's noticeably better than MP3?

Mines an old Creative Zen. 30Gb so loads of space but not sure this or anything else will run on it.

[spinynorman]

I had a Sansa e260
[quote name='4 Strings' timestamp='1336741423' post='1650281']
Just googled Rockbox. You find that's noticeably better than MP3?

Mines an old Creative Zen. 30Gb so loads of space but not sure this or anything else will run on it.
[/quote]

I had a Sansa e260, which I was never very happy with. On a whim I dug out my old 20mb Creative Zen Touch, took it to bits and resoldered the headphone jack, which was all that was wrong with it, loaded it up with mp3s and plugged it into the car stereo. It was like someone took a blanket off the speakers, suddenly there was clarity, stereo separation, detail I'd not heard for ages. They really are gold.

Creative Zen isn't in the list of supported units on the Rockbox site, but I doubt it would improve the sound quality anyway, and there's nothing you could do with the user interface, which is pretty awful, but totally a function of the hardware. It might save my Sansa however, there's a thought.

The other thing Creative got right was the MediaSource Organiser, which is the only music organiser I've ever liked. But it only syncs with Creative hardware.

[simwells]

Rockbox itself won't noticably improve the sound quality, but it will let you listen to higher quality lossless files easier. Which to me definitely improves the quality, more noticably when amped than you would ever be likely to through headphones on the street though.