Best Lossless Audio codec for quality and compatability?

You'll probably do better in the PS forum:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/forumdisplay.php?f=142

FLAC is the most common lossless codec. It's open source and has the most support.

I could be wrong but I don't believe the PS3 supports any sort of lossless codec other than WAV. I really wish it could do FLAC. I've listened to music remotely from my iTunes library on my Mac in MP3, AAC, and WAV.

Everything sounds great. In a 2.0 set up, I could not hear a difference at all from streaming WAV vs CD. However, I did find one issue. If I tried to listen to streamed music in a 2.1 mode, the sub was nonexistent and the CD easily sounded better. I think the PS3 is not properly processing the signal. When streaming, my receiver says it is getting "Multichannel". When I play the same 2-channel music from the CD, it says "PCM 2-channel".

Unless I figure out what I'm doing wrong or they fix the issue, I'm not going to mess with streaming to it at this time. I like using a 2.1 set up for music.

I have my collection ripped in FLAC and use foobar2000 on my pc. Optical toslink to the receiver, it sounds incredible - better than my now retired $400 CD player.

In theory, I'd think all lossless codecs would sound the same.

So, if that's true, then the choice boils down to what is most universally supported on the gear you have.

I agree 100%. Another beneft is the ID3 tag info stays with the track so it's easy to move music from computer to computer. I recommend dBpoweramp for ripping to FLAC. It also have a nice batch convertor to convert all your FLAC files to lossy MP3 for portable players.

Just a reminder that the OP prefers something that works with the PS3.

His best bet is the any other device part of his request...
"My preference would be a lossless format compatible with the PS3 and any other device that could stream."

PS3 is WAV only, I would never rip all my music to WAVs. ID3 tags are a nightmare and there is zero compression. I'd do FLAC and pickup a SB3 or Sonos.

I am surprised that no one has mentioned monkey audio's ape format.

I have almost all of my CDs' ripped into ape format.

All lossless compression formats should "sound" the same, as they are just losslessly compressed files of the original CD.

In the old days, hard drive space was at a premium, that's why we had mp3's to save hard drive space. Then the hard drives got bigger, we moved onto lossless compression. Now even a 1TB external hard drive only costs about $200, I think even uncompressed wave files are a viable option.

All true. But the OP said "compatible with the PS3 and any other device that could stream."

I prefer FLAC too but that's not going to help the OP much.

Either the OP will have to do some work to get FLAC support for the PS3--which may be a lot of effort even if it does succeed--or the OP needs a different streaming device (Squeezebox, for instance).

You said this but I just think it needs to be clear.

Fair enough, I think we both agree that the PS3 is not the ideal audio streaming device. If the OP is going to take the effort to rip all his CDs I think the $300 for the SB is a good investment. Hell I have one that I'm only using for it's clock. I might be willing to part with it

When you guys rip to flac what compression level are you using: 0? If not 0 then why?

Even with a PS3, FLAC is probably the way to go. The PS3 cannot decode FLAC but you can use server software such as TVersity or Winamp Remote (Orb) to transcode to WAV.

Yep Tversity is definatly the way to go, my PS3 detected tversity all on its own when I 'searched' for media.