I've always used APE, but I've heard great things about FLAC. I've even seen a couple portable MP3 players that support the FLAC format so I'd give the edge to that. Not to be biased but... WMA... ugh.
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Lossless Audio: FLAC, APE or WMA?
1) I want to rip my 400-500 CDs to digital format
2) I want to use a lossless "archive" format
3) I will play the archive format around the house on nice HW and transcode the archive format to MP3, MP4 or lossy WMA for portable players.
4) Space isn't really that much of an issue...
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What format would you recommend? Seems APE and FLAC are both popular but I was also considering lossless WMA. Since these formats are supposed to be "lossless" then one could argue the sound quality should be equivalent to WAV so the deciding factors might be encoding time and final compression ratios, plus compatibility right?
Let's hear the votes!
2) I want to use a lossless "archive" format
3) I will play the archive format around the house on nice HW and transcode the archive format to MP3, MP4 or lossy WMA for portable players.
4) Space isn't really that much of an issue...
--------------------------------
What format would you recommend? Seems APE and FLAC are both popular but I was also considering lossless WMA. Since these formats are supposed to be "lossless" then one could argue the sound quality should be equivalent to WAV so the deciding factors might be encoding time and final compression ratios, plus compatibility right?
Let's hear the votes!
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I went thru this only a couple weeks ago, to re-rip a couple hundred CD's I previously ripped to MP3 at lower bit rates back when disk space was expensive.
I settled on FLAC even though APE probably compresses a bit better. But FLAC seemed to have a bit more support, was more open source, and had slightly less CPU requirements to decode.
But it looked to me like any of the 3 mentioned above would have been fine for the job.
- Tom
I settled on FLAC even though APE probably compresses a bit better. But FLAC seemed to have a bit more support, was more open source, and had slightly less CPU requirements to decode.
But it looked to me like any of the 3 mentioned above would have been fine for the job.
- Tom
Also note that the apple lossless encoding is proprietary, and noone seem to have reverse engineered the format just yet. So be cautious if you want to use something else than itunes later.
Just figure out what you want to do with your music, what software you want to use, and pick the format that's the best match.
For instance, FLAC would be my first choice (open source, linux support, some hardware support), but JRMC only has native APE support and since I don't linux or have any of said hardware, I went with APE. If I were using MCE I'd probably go with WMA lossless.
For instance, FLAC would be my first choice (open source, linux support, some hardware support), but JRMC only has native APE support and since I don't linux or have any of said hardware, I went with APE. If I were using MCE I'd probably go with WMA lossless.
So two for FLAC and one for APE at this point. The polls don't have enough data yet for a statistically meaningful difference. 
Keep the feedback coming!
Keep the feedback coming!
I've been using lossless WMA with J. River's Media Center. I currently rip to lossless WMA and transcode to lossy WMA for my portable player. All the other lossless formats are probably fine, but chose WMA because before switching to Media Center I used Windows Media Player and WMA was the only lossless format supported. I haven't compared the encode/decode performance or the different tagging functionality of these different codecs. It would be interesting to see the results of this type of comparison.
Lossless WMA works great - great taste, less filling...
I feel confident that it will be supported for a very long time and possibly more future hardware will directly support WMA.
Lossless WMA works great - great taste, less filling...
I feel confident that it will be supported for a very long time and possibly more future hardware will directly support WMA.
I like GM better than Ford....
same thing here....
BTW, I use WMA lossless so my 2 daughters machines can use media player to access my server... I have to reinstal over their spam and virus ridden machines too often to bother with more codecs....
same thing here....
BTW, I use WMA lossless so my 2 daughters machines can use media player to access my server... I have to reinstal over their spam and virus ridden machines too often to bother with more codecs....
Jim - I just rebuilt my 10 yr old son's PC this weekend. I know EXACTLY what you mean.
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Now you've done it
Back on the codec choice, it's not really that big of a deal. I mean, they're all lossless, you can go back and forth between them without loosing anything, so just pick the one that works best for you now. You can always change later.
| Originally posted by jimwhite I like GM better than Ford.... |
Back on the codec choice, it's not really that big of a deal. I mean, they're all lossless, you can go back and forth between them without loosing anything, so just pick the one that works best for you now. You can always change later.
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I certainly agree. I think with WMA lossless there is one thing you have to set to be sure not to normalize volume but if that's taken care you should be able to easily and losslessly convert back and forth between any of the above or even any newer lossless codecs that come down the pike.
- Tom
| Back on the codec choice, it's not really that big of a deal. I mean, they're all lossless, you can go back and forth between them without loosing anything, so just pick the one that works best for you now. You can always change later. |
- Tom
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But what about tagging issues? I've heard that tags may get truncated or messed up when moving between formats. This has me worried since it would be a big issue for me. Has anyone experienced tagging issues, or is this more of an issue when converting from lossless > lossy?
| Originally posted by stanger89 Back on the codec choice, it's not really that big of a deal. I mean, they're all lossless, you can go back and forth between them without loosing anything, so just pick the one that works best for you now. You can always change later. |
I am re-ripping everything to WMA lossless at the moment. itunes can convert that to their lossless format if needed and there are plenty of tools available to convert to other formats while keeping the metadata.
I used to use ape, but moved over to flac as it's got better hardware/platform support. I've got no experience of WMA, but the reason I've got no experience is that I didn't want to risk being locked into some DRM protection in the future. Microsoft may have some good software/qualities, but the risk of being locked in is too high for my liking.
Flac (and ape to a lesser extent) being open source are more likely to be robust formats in the future, and worst case I can always decode back to wav using an old pc that isn't hobbled by some form of DRM.
I guess which format you choose is slightly dependent on how you will access the music. I use foobar (when I'm at home), and an ipod (on the move). Flac transcodes easily to mp3 for portable use.
Probably hasn't helped you much (as you'll find an equivalent number of people using other formats), but hopefully you can think about how you want to access the music and your personal thoughts on somebody else controlling what you are allowed to listen to.
- AV Spyder
Flac (and ape to a lesser extent) being open source are more likely to be robust formats in the future, and worst case I can always decode back to wav using an old pc that isn't hobbled by some form of DRM.
I guess which format you choose is slightly dependent on how you will access the music. I use foobar (when I'm at home), and an ipod (on the move). Flac transcodes easily to mp3 for portable use.
Probably hasn't helped you much (as you'll find an equivalent number of people using other formats), but hopefully you can think about how you want to access the music and your personal thoughts on somebody else controlling what you are allowed to listen to.
- AV Spyder
I put all mine into ape and use dbPowerAmp to convert it when I need to feed the data to another device. Someone mentioned the need to let Windows Media Player play the files as a reason to use wma. There are filters available that allow you to play the ape files (and I presume flac as well) in WMP without any problems, tagging with WMP is another issue. ;-)
I use WMA lossless, mainly because I like the flexibility of using the many applications that "just work" with it. For instance I don't have to transcode to .wav if I want to use a song as a soundtrack in Vegas Video - it just works. So it may not have the cross-platform support that flac does, but within a Windows environment it's pretty flexible.
-Doug
-Doug
I started using ape but eventually switched to flac. I won't use WMA as I don't want to get into the M$ proprietary stuff and I've found that M$ always tries to weasel in some sort of DMA on you.
Ape files are smaller than flac, but I switched to flac as I wanted to be able to play lossless files on a linux workstation and I couldn't find and .ape plugin. So my vote is for flac.
Ape files are smaller than flac, but I switched to flac as I wanted to be able to play lossless files on a linux workstation and I couldn't find and .ape plugin. So my vote is for flac.
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That's exactly why I selected WMA over FLAC (Vegas is great). I've had no problems.
| Originally posted by DougHamm For instance I don't have to transcode to .wav if I want to use a song as a soundtrack in Vegas Video - it just works. |
Can someone explain your big fear behind DRM and WMA? I personally don't see it myself.
My big reason for using WMA Lossless it that WMP will transcode to your device for you, nothing you have to do (Assuming your device is supported in WMP). Plus, it's really the only Lossless format that will display correctly in MCE.
My big reason for using WMA Lossless it that WMP will transcode to your device for you, nothing you have to do (Assuming your device is supported in WMP). Plus, it's really the only Lossless format that will display correctly in MCE.
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