Why We Should Buy Music In FLAC

soodoo writes "We have plenty of HDD space and broadband internet. Why don't we demand full CD quality audio in an accessible format from online music stores? The advantage of lossless compression is not only the small audio quality improvement, but better future-proofing and converting capabilities. FLAC is a good, free and open format, well suited for this job."

Comments

If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[kevinmenzel]

Seriously, I'm not sure what's so complicated about this. It's not like CDs are that much more expensive than buying stuff electronically. Plus, you have a backup copy that's going to outlast whatever media you rip it onto anyway as long as you keep it physically safe. Plus you have the booklet that goes with it.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[stardaemon]

Even if you only want one song from the entire CD?

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[loufoque]

But then you have to physically move the CD from some place to your place, which requires a distribution network and takes time. It's also costly to produce CDs.
By simply requiring CDs, you restrict yourself to artists that have strong deals with distributors and enough money to produce them.

Also, what the hell are you going to do with a CD once you have it but rip it? I don't even have a CD reader anymore. I don't have the room to store thousands of CDs either, and it wouldn't be a practical way to manage my music library.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[kevinmenzel]

In the unlikelyhood that you really want only one song on a CD that isn't offered as a CD single at some point over the active promotion life of that CD, because that one track is really that good, and your musical tastes never change, and you'll never appreciate the fact that you have all those other tracks... then I guess you're screwed. Darn. Yes, I know that in North America, the CD single doesn't seem to have been a hugely popular concept. I have several CD singles from artists I like that originate in Europe however, and as a bonus, you get all that B-side material that comes with the CD single whether that be remixes, or even tracks that will never be on an album. Or you could just I dunno, skip the starbucks for a couple of days and buy the full album anyway.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[beelsebob]

More so, but yet another format switch is utterly pointless, especially when high-bit-rate AAC is generally inaudibly different from CD quality, and in fact, the 96kHz ones apple has started selling for some artists surpass CD quality, despite the compression.

Basically, there's no reason to use FLAC – "lossily" compressed audio is plenty good enough.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[definate]

You can find your CD's?

I can't find a single one of my CDs these days. The only stuff I can find is on my hard drive. Nicely categorized. Backed up. Taking a small amount of room.

Do your CDs out last your hard drives? What brands are you buying, because that shit sounds fucking terrible. Else, why are you spending so much time and effort keeping track of your CDs?

I'm not abdicating getting rid of CDs, but FLAC is a perfectly good format, which could be easily supported.

So thank you for diverting the conversation.

Side Note: I buy heaps of FLAC music, when its available, and I never buy CDs, I don't even have a CD player, and they will get lost, meaning they don't last long for me.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[ThunderBird89]

CDs are more costly, and they won't last longer than say, flash memory, except for special circumstances. For example, some CDs will degrade in as little as 18 months in humid conditions, or there's a fungus that will colonize and eat your discs. Flash memory is practically unaffected by storage conditions, as long as you don't throw it into the oven and switch it on: it can take basically any value for humidity, even a straight-up dump into water, survive freezing and tropical heat, fungi, etc.

So really, instead of CDs, music publishers should just migrate to read-only memory chips for storing music: more can be shipped in a single shipment, cheaper, and more durable.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[Lonewolf666]

The first conversion is generally inaudibly different from CD quality. But if a new codec shows up 10 years from now you want to/need to use for some reason, re-converting from AAC to .wav to $NEW_CODEC, the compression artifacts may no longer be so inaudible.

So for me, FLAC is the format of choice. I'm currently ripping my brother's CD collection to FLAC, and my own will follow after that.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[kevinmenzel]

It might be tedious to rip an entire colelction, but how often do you buy music? It's hardly tedious to rip a single album... you stick in the CD, and on most computers you launch your audio program and press "rip" or "import" - it grabs all of the necessary metadata from the net, and if you've chosen your software well, it'll even either automatically grab your album art for you, or be just one more click to grab the art for the full album.

What CD gets scratched if you're ripping it once to FLAC? It stays in a case...

CDs give you the possibility to convert to ANY format without quality loss, and ripping a CD to FLAC doesn't impede you at all in terms of further conversions.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[kevinmenzel]

My pressed CDs absolutely outlast my hard drives. I have CDs that still play bit-perfectly from the 1980s without a single scratch on them - CDs that I got when I was 3 and my family first got a CD player. I don't have many hard drives that have lasted 25 years. And yes I can find my CDs. They're on a shelf in my music room (well, several shelves), organized by artist alphabetically, and then by order of release... I can also find all of the FLAC files I generated from those CDs on my hard disk, well organized, etc.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[clang_jangle]

320kb mp3 is good enough for the real world. I rarely get to hear music under optimal conditions on ultra high end equipment anyway, which is fine. Ears are like palettes -- educate them too thoroughly and you won't be able to enjoy anything after awhile...

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[Hadlock]

I've never, ever heard of commercial CDs going bad (except from scratches). All my CDs from 5th grade forward (nearly 20 years old at this point) work just fine. I found them while moving, all played fine. I borrowed a friend's CD-R and some cheap media to back up my computer in 1998, THOSE still work as well. This is after being stored in the attic of our house which regularly sees 150 degrees during the day (Dallas), and a huge range of humidity levels. I'm sure if you left them shiny side up on the windowsill for 20 years it would be a different case, but in a taped box off the ground, they're a very good long term storage medium.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[kevinmenzel]

I have pressed CDs from bands my high school friends were in, while they were in high school. It's not an expensive process... and doesn't at all require a strong deal with distributors...

As to what I would do with a CD once I rip it... rip it again, should my online backup of my music hard drive fail when my music hard drive invariably does. My once-ripped CD will still be in perfect condition.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[Phurge]

"So thank you for diverting the conversation."

You must be new here.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[JWSmythe]

    You know, it really depends on the equipment.

    I was listening to some Pink Floyd several years ago (probably 10 years ago), and I had just set up a very nice sound system in my house. I heard things in the music that I'd never heard before. You simply miss out on systems that don't reproduce the full spectrum of sound. It could be a low rumble that's just felt, or a high pitched ting like a little bell.

      Most people's setups have significant gaps throughout the spectrum. There are professional disks to demonstrate it, but most people here can write their own software to generate tones sliding up the scale, from say 20Hz 20KHz. I recently did that for fun on my regular desktop, and noticed about 5 or 6 significant bands where the sound was barely reproduced by the speakers. I moved the machine to my theater room, and hooked it directly to the sound system. It had a few dips, but nothing so significant that I'd go pick up any new hardware.

    Consider where most people are listening to music. It's not in an expensive theater setup. It's on their iPod (or other portable device) with earphones, on their PC, or in their car.

    I enjoy my theater setup for watching movies, and being surrounded by all the sounds that were produced with it.

    I also listen to music on my "good enough" desktop speakers and in the car. Sure, I know parts are missing, and if I compare the output with the theater, I will notice the differences. So, I simply don't. Speakers large enough to fit in my ears aren't going to give an accurate recreation of the music. I listen to FM radio in the car. I enjoy the words, the beat, and know that the speakers in the car are in a harsh environment. Not only the extreme temperatures that the car interior encounters (about 15F to 150F), but there is significant interference with outside noises. My car is transportation, I'm not going to try to make it into a platform to recreate audio performances. Some people do. Some people spend an awful lot of money doing it. In the end, they can listen to music just as I can, except for the hours I'm in my car, and the difference in cost, I have a lot of money left over to spend on other things.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[moxsam]

I'm not sure what's so complicated about this.

You really don't know? It's complicated to get it error-free onto your PC! Red Book has no reliable error detection mechanism like Yellow Book.

So why should I buy an Audio CD if I'm never going to listen to it anyway? But only rip it once or twice. They're simply a nuisance compared to downloaded music files. Please, go listen to some vinyl, grandpa.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[jovius]

Having lossly compressed audio at hand might be plenty good enough, but it's not future proof. The data has had to be compressed because of unavailable media. It's a physical fact that those high end AAC's can't surpass CD quality (Because they are lossy). CD itself is getting old too, so the reference point is not really correct anymore.

Formats that rely on removing inaudible frequencies or such psychoacoustics work perfectly in anechoic rooms or in headphone listening. When listened through speakers the frequencies take multiple routes to the ears at slightly different times, which makes the inaudible frequencies actually audible. So something is definitely missing from the fabric.

I have refrained from bying music online because of the inferior quality. I'd like to hear music that sounds better along with the technological advances.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[ThunderBird89]

Oh yeah, I forgot about scratches: drop the flash chip and co. in a cheap aluminium/steel cassette (think CF cards), and it'll be nearly indestructible by domestic means, while still usable easily. You can't do that with a CD.

I have, however, had trouble with disc degradation, even though I kept them in a mostly-constant temperature room (~21C ±4C), and had a few go bad and unreadable after about ten years, without scratches. They did make nice light shows in the microwave afterwards, though...

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[baronvoncarson]

We Australians pay way too much for cds. $30~ for a new cd? Fuck that for a joke!

Plus for those of us who prefer the ease of having our audio in a digital format (the only thing I own that plays audio cds now is my car) buying a cd for cd quality audio really isn't conveint.

Maybe buying CD singles and albums appeals to you, but for me I much prefer my stuff in digital. Plus if it's DRM free FLAC it'll last a lot longer than a cd.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[paimin]

Why doesn't TFA at least mention that Apple supports an open format that's also lossless, and also supported widely? Its a shame they don't sell it, but they do support it. Implying that they simply don't support lossless audio compression doesn't help sell FLAC as an option, it just makes you look like a liar.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[clang_jangle]

Well I disagree with you so you must be wrong, LOL.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[MBraynard]

That is what "Now that's what I call music 45434" is for.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[kevinmenzel]

CDs definitely aren't that expensive in Canada... well, they can be... but yes, they are more expensive I suppose than fully digital. Yes I prefer to pay that premium for a relatively indestructable copy of my music I can immediately convert to FLAC. If there's any premium applied to an upgrade to FLAC quality, I'm already paying $15 including tax for most of my CDs direct from the artists... I'm even not sure buying a digital copy that I still have to back up somehow is going to beat that if it's a premium on top of the $10 a lossy album typically sells for on stores that don't already offer FLAC...

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[Lundse]

It might be tedious to rip an entire colelction, but how often do you buy music? It's hardly tedious to rip a single album... you stick in the CD, and on most computers you launch your audio program and press "rip" or "import" ...

There is no reason anyone should ever have to do this job - it is as silly as printing and scanning a document, in order to email it. We have better technology than this, why not use it?

Just because the wasted time is a small amount (at a time) is no argument for continuing to waste that time...

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[foobsr]

But then you have to physically move the CD from some place to your place, which requires a distribution network and takes time.

You also probably have to move it from your old place to your new place, which, especially if you move often, is not exactly effortless.

CC.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[hawkinspeter]

Surely the days of music on CDs are numbered as it's a waste of resources to have factories churning out plastic CDs. In order to phase out the production of music CDs, we need a better format than MP3 to ensure that we're not sacrificing sound quality and I think that FLAC is the next logical step.

That said, I only bother keeping my music collection in MP3 format as I'm not an extreme audiophile and MP3 is good enough for my purposes. (Also, my music collection is currently just under 1TB, so storing it all in FLAC would probably expand it to 5TBs which is a bit unwieldy at present.)

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[kevinmenzel]

OK, but instead of that tedium, you have to maintain an active backup of your digital music collection, which is, at the very least, an added expense, if not tedious in terms of setting that up in the first place... Sticking a CD in my drive while I'm browsing the web doesn't seem very tedious to me... significantly less tedious than scanning a document... but I suppose I do have a fairly automated set up that most people don't have...

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[rawler]

Simple. Physical media cannot give me the "instant gratification" of buying downloaded songs. Especially, it puts the burden of actually ripping it onto me, as well as incurr extra costs in manufacturing, shipping etc. Besides, the longevity of CD-formats vary greatly depending on the quality of plastic that is put it. (For example, my father recently discovered some of his 15-years-old CD:s doesn't play back today.) Ripping it losslessly, and backing it up to some cloud-storage is probably both more reliable AND more accessible.

Personally, I've just given up fuzzing around with music since I can never muster up enough interest to decide upon a playlist. Instead I mostly listen to Last.FM and yes, I do get inexplicable head-aches that might be attributed to digital compression. For TV-series however, I often buy the DVD-box when it comes out, just to put it on the shelf and download a pirated version instead. Much more convenient, and I get to skip over all crappy commercials and anti-piracy warnings. Now isn't that irony?

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[BrokenHalo]

I have refrained from bying music online because of the inferior quality.

Likewise. Except that I buy music online that I am only going to listen to on my iPod (usually via the car stereo), where my expectations aren't that high with all that ambient noise.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[CSMoran]

I'm not abdicating getting rid of CDs

You are a ruler renouncing your office while disposing of your CD collection? I must admit it's hard to imagine.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[hab136]

You should have a backup solution in place anyways, so adding your digital music to your backup of your photos, email, spreadsheets, and other documents isn't any more complex. Alternatively, if you don't currently back up your CD collection (by copying the CD), then not backing up your digital music collection is no different.

Moreover you're likely relying on CDDB or similar to get the track names and times. What happens when the CD isn't on there? You have to type it yourself, which again is something tedious that could be done once at the source instead of everyone trying to replicate it.

The real point is that the customer wants this - why isn't anyone selling it to him (at any price)? Even if it's a physical CD full of .flac files, if you want to avoid the bandwidth argument.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[rollingcalf]

"I didn't hear any difference between the wav and mp3. But I was surprised to hear a difference with the original CD (even did a blind test)."

Were all 3 formats played with the same equipment? Or did you play WAV and MP3 with your computer, but the CD was played with an external CD player?

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[beelsebob]

VHS quality is enough for all videos. Why do people want this crappy HD stuff ?

Because that is like comparing extremely low bit rate mp3 to flac, not comparing high bit rate aac to flac. By comparison – a lot of people I know are entirely happy with DVD and don't give a shit about HD because with the size of their TV and the distance they sit from it they can't see any noticeable difference. You'd in fact be pretty surprised by what you can't see in HD – you need a 40" TV to be closer than 12 feet from you to be able to see any improvement above a DVD.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[bwbadger]

But why should I be limited to 'CD Quality'? Linn Records have it right, I think. You can get the same recording at various quality levels, and for certain kinds of recordings I am more than happy to part with 20 quid for an album which is what they charge for 24bit 192kHz FLAC. ... plus I don't want to consume space in my home to store my music collection.

I think the key point here is that choice is good. The music industry needs to start responding to market demand.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[Eivind]

You have other data you need to back up anyway. The added tedium of needing to backup ~50GB rather than say ~30GB (200 albums), is essentially ignorable. Zero extra effort, and the extra cost is in the "small and dropping" category.

At the moment online backup is around $0.10 pro GB and month, so keeping the 200 albums securely backed up is $25/year - and that's for the first year. (if you think a GB of online storage will cost MORE in a year or three, I've got some prime swampland for you...)

Infact, keeping everything on one place (files!) makes proper care a lot *easier* than having to take care of multiple distinct technologies, such as CDs, DVDs and computer-files as three distinct storage-mediums. (and if you think stacks of CDs and DVDs are zero-maintenance, you obviously ain't moved very often...)

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[Hognoxious]

By simply requiring CDs, you restrict yourself to artists that have strong deals with distributors and enough money to produce them.

Bullshit. I have a CD of an amateur pub singer that I bought from her in the pub.

As a bonus it came with an instant rebate in the form of beer, no mailing of vouchers necessary.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[definate]

Yeah, it seems you used the CDs as backups, which is okay, but that hasn't worked out well for me. They get lost, they get damaged, etc.

Also, buying then ripping, or even just buying and copying them across, is just adding another step.

I'll continue to buy music online, as its a lot more convenient. Artists that don't distribute online, and sometimes artists that don't do FLAC, just won't get my business, instead I'll pirate their shit.

Done and done.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[wirefarm]

"Also, what the hell are you going to do with a CD once you have it but rip it?"

Sell it used.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[CastrTroy]

This is the biggest problem with buying digital music in the first place. The other day I decided to browse iTunes to see what was available. The was an upcoming new release by Avril Lavigne. Now I wasn't going to buy it, but what threw me was the price. It was $14.99. For a digital album. The exact same album was $13.99 at Best Buy. There is no way that an item with no manufacturing cost, no shipping charge, and no losses due to breakage and theft (despite what the labels might think), should cost more than the actual physical album. Start charging $0.25 a song and $5 an album (or less) and then we can start talking.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[somersault]

You think a CD is more "indestructable" than having a backup or two of your music collection, which you will be migrating from storage device to storage device over the years? Also, storing masses of CDs/DVDs is just a royal PITA. Especially when it comes to finding stuff later. Or having to rip everything again later rather than just having a lossless digital copy.

I have no qualms about downloading FLACs of any MP3s that I've already purchased, when I decide I have enough space to waste on such things. I think I'd have to have a portable media player with terabyte storage to be able to hold all my music in FLAC format..

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[somersault]

Some places do do it.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[somersault]

As to what I would do with a CD once I rip it... rip it again, should my online backup of my music hard drive fail when my music hard drive invariably does. My once-ripped CD will still be in perfect condition.

WTF. Why are you not keeping a backup of your files? I have all my music on both my media player and a separate backup hard drive. Would you really prefer to rip everything again rather than spend $100 or whatever on another hard drive for backups? You don't seem to value your time very highly.. it took me months to re-rip my CD collection when I decided that 128kbps wasn't good enough anymore. I re-ripped at 192kbps, and decided that if I wanted any more quality I'd just torrent FLACs.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[Solar Granulation]

I would rather see the back of optical media. I prefer to acquire my multimedia content in pure digital form without a physical carrier, then to create backups on other rewritable media. I do not want to see a repeat of the damage done to my collection by the breakdown and increased rarity of tape players, which would recur if I limited myself to CDs which then passed into obsolescence.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[Gordonjcp]

Right, but then you've only got CD quality. If you listen to your music on scratchy little iPod headphones or in the car, this is just about adequate.

You can buy 192kHz FLACs from Linn Records for about the same price as a CD - a little more expensive, but then "good" recordings (ie. not just chart shite) tends to end up around the £20 mark anyway.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[LaRainette]

This is the least insighful comment I've seen modded +5 in my slashdot experience....

Buying a cd :
A] is more expensive
B] means more pollution
C] means you actually have to rip it at some point which takes times and is a pain in the Ass.

You buy CDs because you want an object not the music on it, and even more to the point : the question was more why people are happy with MP3 when they could have a lossless version?

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[hachre]

... especially when high-bit-rate AAC is generally inaudibly different from CD quality, and in fact, the 96kHz ones apple has started selling for some artists surpass CD quality, despite the compression...

This is simply wrong.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[Chatterton]

And I prefer from far to do this ripping and tagging myself. That way I have consistency in the way tags are filled, having all the artists names on compilation cd and not just 'multiple artists'. How many time I have see the track title in the album title tag! How many time i have seen in 1 album the name of the artist spelled differently! And I am fed up of all uppercase titles when the title on the jacket is in title case.

Yes: "Ripping and tagging CDs is tedious". But it should be done if you want it to be done correctly.
I have some FLAC in my collection who have survived the CD they come from (stolen from my car or scratched).

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[MightyYar]

But if a new codec shows up 10 years from now you want to/need to use for some reason

I'm sorry, but do you really see mp3/aac compatibility EVER going away? At this point, storage is so cheap that more efficient compression just won't matter. FLAC only saves like 50% over raw PCM, so I'm not sure what we're chasing here. Is it really worth such a small compression ratio to be fighting this battle? Why even bother with the time and processing power?

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[Dogtanian]

Ya, lifting a spindle of 100 CD's is just Sooooo much trouble

If you're going to bother acquiring and keeping the original CDs, chances are you're going to want to keep the original packaging, i.e. jewel cases, leaflets, et al. You're sure as hell not going to slap them on some crappy spindle.

Personally, I don't think 100 CDs is still that much hassle, and I still like having them for albums, but your argument is disingenuous.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[frozentier]

We Australians pay way too much for cds. $30~ for a new cd? Fuck that for a joke!

Exactly. I remember when CDs first came out in the United States, they were around $14. After about 6 months or so the music industry announced that prices were going to drop dramatically after the medium caught on and more people were buying them. Some 25+ years later, many new discs are now $18 to $20 (or more), and even discs that were available 25 years ago cost more now than they did back then.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[prionic6]

Why can't a 24bit / 96kHz (slightly) lossy AAC sound better than a 16bit / 44.1kHz Audio CD?

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[petermgreen]

Commercial pressed CDs are very different from CD-Rs

A commercial pressed CD is made by pressing a pattern of pits into a disc of plastic and then coating the surface with aluminium. The metal layer is then coated with a protective layer and labeling is applied on top of that. Generally provided it is not badly scratched and the lacquering was done properly this is a very stable construction.

CD-Rs OTOH use a heat sensitive dye. Patterns burnt into the dye serve as a substitute for the pits. There are a number of dyes in use and many of the cheaper ones are rather unstable. Even the best ones almost certainly aren't as stable as the metal on pits of a commercial CD.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[DigiTechGuy]

A few years ago my truck caught on fire and the whole cab was burned out... All my CDs were in there, my digital camera and misc other valuables. Glad I at least had my CD collection ripped to MP3.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[brusk]

Adjusting for CPI, $14 in 1983 is about $31 in 2011. $20 today is about $9 in 1983 dollars.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[maverickapollo]

lol

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[Odinlake]

Seriously, I'm not sure what's so complicated about this. It's not like CDs are that much more expensive than buying stuff electronically. Plus, you have a backup copy that's going to outlast whatever media you rip it onto anyway as long as you keep it physically safe. Plus you have the booklet that goes with it.

But I don't want that. I don't want the gdmn booklet, nor the case nor the worthless plastic that is the actual cd. I don't want to wast time ripping songs off it, hell, I don't even want a cd player (though I have one in a box somewhere) and I don't want to waste more of my precious shelf space. I don't want to clean the worthless pieces of plastic, I don't want to see them or handle them. And all this is only the beginning of what I find wrong with your post.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[LibRT]

Well, for one, I don't want stacks and stacks of CDs. Secondly, it seems ridiculous to me to buy some physical thing when its virtual counterpart is available (and is so much more convenient). Thirdly, the labor involved in buying the CD, getting it home, inserting the disc, then ripping the particular songs I want represents time I can better spend doing something else (like productively reading /.) Fourthly, as someone else has pointed out, it's pretty rare that I want every single song on a CD, and it's often a deep track I like, which isn't available as a CD single (I've never bought a CD single). CDs (and cassettes before them and records before that and 8-tracks before that...) work like cable TV: you are forced to buy a bunch of shit to get the small bit of non-shit you actually want. The digital individual song model has punched a hole through that.

I suspect the real reason music distributors don't use FLAC or other open source formats is one of liability: rather than concern themselves with possible patent violations, they would much rather distribute a format for which a license has been paid, which thereby serves to transfer the risk of a patent violation to the company collecting the licensing fees.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[AmberBlackCat]

You know what's worse than having to make your own mp3's from a CD? Putting all your music on a USB key and finding out your car won't recognize half of it because you bought it from iTunes and it's in aac format. I know you can convert aac to mp3 but I feel like my mp3 files and CD's sound better than aac. So an mp3 converted from aac is going to sound worse than one converted from a CD, to me.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[IndustrialComplex]

Do you buy your shirts separate from your pants? How about your ties? What if every time there was an article of clothing you liked, you were forced to purchase an entire outfit?

Like those shoes? Just buy the suit that goes with them.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[TheRaven64]

But if a new codec shows up 10 years from now you want to/need to use for some reason, re-converting from AAC to .wav to $NEW_CODEC, the compression artifacts may no longer be so inaudible.

There's not much chance of needing that if your music is in AAC format. If you'd ripped to MP3, then you'd still be able to play the music on pretty much any new device. AAC support is similarly widespread. If you've got the music in Vorbis format, then it's a problem. The same for a few other also-ran formats like RealAudio or WMA, but these days new devices always support the old format - it's a good way of encouraging adoption. Sure, your AAC music won't sound as good as your $NEW_CODEC music (although the difference may not be detectable to your ears, or even to any other human's ears), but there's no reason to recompress.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[IndustrialComplex]

Adjusting for CPI, $14 in 1983 is about $31 in 2011. $20 today is about $9 in 1983 dollars.

1983 is a bit early to declare full market availability for CDs don't you think?

I'd suggest a more reasonable date of 'availability' for determining the start of sales (and a price point) as the time when Middle school students are able to afford it on their allowances. That's where the target demographic starts for Pop music anyway (and those are the albums that follow the most common price curve).

In short, 1983 might have seen CDs come into existence, but I would say that they really didn't take off as consumer items until ~1992.

I don't know what the prices of CDs were in 1983, but If we go by your date, I do know that CD Players cost ~$2000 in 1983. Adjusted for inflation, that same player today would cost nearly $4,300. Obviously this wasn't the price which marks the true 'beginning'.

$14 in 1992 would go to $22 (approx). Still higher, but the cost of production of CDs is VERY low today compared to then.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[TheRaven64]

Apple supports an open lossless format? Last I checked, they only supported ALE, which is a proprietary Apple CODEC. It's supported by libavcodec, but only as a result of reverse engineering. There is no public documentation available on the format.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[Pentium100]

Alternatively, if you don't currently back up your CD collection (by copying the CD), then not backing up your digital music collection is no different.

Well, in most cases yes, however, a (pressed) CD lasts longer than a hard drive because it has no moving parts (the CD itself, not the player obviously), so the music on CDs is safer than music in hard drives, even tough there are no backups.

Records also last a long time - I have a record made in 1915 and more records made 50 years ago. A modern record would also last 50 years (well, it's just a piece of plastic). I seriously doubt that any modern hard drive would last 50 years in storage. Flash memory is a new technology, it will be interesting to see how long it can retain its data.

Magnetic tape also lasts a long time, but the sound quality deteriorates from the presence of magnetic fields, but it's still better than a hard drive. I mean I have a tape recorded in 1951 and it still plays (and the quality is quite good, considering that the tape was most likely recorded from AM radio).

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[jovius]

They might sound better but quality-wise they are inferior, because they do not present the full spectrum of audio and the waveforms are crippled. CD is not comparable media to AAC. Basically it might sound as good as DVD (uncompressed audio). If AAC's are made from 24bit/96khz masters they will certainly sound better than CD. For the best quality lossless formats are the only choice.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[kevinmenzel]

Because the added sample rate and the added bit-depth don't help when the mix doesn't actually take advantage of either?

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[iluvcapra]

Red Book uses cross-interleaved Reed-Solomon codes, to the extent that about a quarter of the pits and lands on a CD are redundant; Yellow Book in this regard is identical. CDs have ample error correction, and this dosen't include the informational redundancy of PCM, which can allow linear and polynomial interpolation of dropouts.

Something Red Book does lack is a whole-disk or whole-song consistency check, but if that check doesn't allow reconstruction or repair, it's of questionable utility. CDs are a tolerant medium for a noisy world and were designed before anyone cared if their song's SHA-1 always hashed to the same value, and to this day anyone could care less. "cdparanoia" has "paranoia" in it's name for a reason-- it provides precision bordering on psychosis.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[tepples]

Also, what the hell are you going to do with a CD once you have it but rip it?"

Sell it used.

At which point you are required to destroy the original, as I understand it.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[Dixie_Flatline]

Having lossly compressed audio at hand might be plenty good enough, but it's not future proof. The data has had to be compressed because of unavailable media. It's a physical fact that those high end AAC's can't surpass CD quality (Because they are lossy). CD itself is getting old too, so the reference point is not really correct anymore.

This is only necessarily true if the AAC is ripped FROM a CD. If the AAC is taken directly from the recording source (which seems more likely these days), then it may very well exceed the CDs quality, because as you say, the CD itself is lossy. The question is which compression is LESS lossy. So, in fact, buying CDs may be the best way to get worse sounding music if you're going to rip it to listen to it. One more reason to abandon the format.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[tepples]

If there's a fungus that will eat dry plastic CDs

According to this Wikipedia article, optical discs are glued together, and the fungus eats the glue. Rusting (oxidation or sulfidation) of the metal reflective layer can leave pinholes or bronze behind.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[IndustrialComplex]

I'm sorry, but do you really see mp3/aac compatibility EVER going away? At this point, storage is so cheap that more efficient compression just won't matter. FLAC only saves like 50% over raw PCM, so I'm not sure what we're chasing here. Is it really worth such a small compression ratio to be fighting this battle? Why even bother with the time and processing power?

Do I ever see it going away? Yes. You said it yourself, storage is so cheap that not only will more efficient compression won't matter, less efficient compression or compression at all won't matter. So raw PCM might even be the new 'format' if we decide that we don't care for FLAC's overhead. (we will still care for video though, which dwarfs the storage requirements for audio)

Where compression MAY still matter in the future isn't with storage, but transfer. While we are getting bigger pipes, it is still a long way off before it becomes ubiquitous. As more and more content gets tossed around, compression may even matter more. If you can knock 75% of the size off a file, that is not insignificant if those files comprise even 20-30% of your traffic.

I am literally in the process of building a data storage server for my extended family. Everything is getting stored in lossless formats. However, everything will be converted to a compressed format at/near the server before it is hosted back out to my family. Why? Storage is cheap, but my bandwidth is still precious.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[hawguy]

If you're going to bother acquiring and keeping the original CDs, chances are you're going to want to keep the original packaging, i.e. jewel cases, leaflets, et al. You're sure as hell not going to slap them on some crappy spindle.

I just moved my CDs into 3-ring binders along with the insert booklets. Each 3 ring binder holds around 50 CDs so I went from 250 disks to 5 easy-to-move binders that easily fit into a single cardboard box. I can't imagine that many people care about the jewelbox itself, just the paper inserts.

I still don't know why I hold onto the CDs though - I've ripped everything to digital (and not into to a lossless format, I went with 192kbs MP3). The only time I've even opened the CD binder in over a year is to add a new disk.

Anytime I buy something new, I almost always buy digital except when the CD is cheaper. (why does Amazon sell some CDs for $7.99 + free shipping while the digital download is $9.99!?) The studios should let them sell the digital download for no more than the price of the physical CD.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[Anonymous Coward]

Plus for those of us who prefer the ease of having our audio in a digital format (the only thing I own that plays audio cds now is my car) buying a cd for cd quality audio really isn't conveint.

Sorry...CDs are in a digital format, try to run them in anything that doesn't have some sort of processor...Turn in your geek card at the door.

On a slightly more serious note, you can't even rip CDs? I mean, I understand when the average user doesn't understand exactly how to do it (even though things like iTunes have made this incredibly easy), but when someone on /. is complaining that spending 10 minutes ripping a CD is too much work or too difficult than it's to the point where I just can't fathom how lazy society has become.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[AusIV]

It seems you completely missed Lonewolf666's point. Yes, 320kbps mp3 ripped from a lossless source is good enough for the real world. But a 320kbps mp3 ripped from a 320 kbps AAC file (or other lossy codec) starts to have artifacts noticeable to the untrained ear on run-of-the-mill equipment.

When I buy a CD, I rip it to FLAC, which I consider to be my master copy. When I move content to my iPod or Android phone, my music manager will automatically transcode it to 192 kbps Mp3 or OGG. This sounds just fine in the context I listen to music on those devices, and it allows me to fit quite a bit more music than a higher bit rate.

If instead of keeping my master copy as FLAC I kept it as a high bitrate mp3, this strategy wouldn't work as well. Converting from lossless to 192kbps sounds fine. Converting from 320 kbps mp3 to 192 kpbs introduces artifacts that are audible by untrained ears on run-of-the-mill equipment. I'd have to choose between noticeable artifacts and having less music on a portable device.

Future proofing is also a concern. A few years from now someone could invent a new codec that sounds as good as 320kbps mp3, but only requires 128kbps. Chances are converting from 320kbps mp3 to this new codec will introduce noticeable artifacts, while converting from a lossless source will give pristine results.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[paimin]

I stand corrected, I thought ALAC was an AAC variant, which it is not:

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Lossless

TFA should still mention this, instead of pretending that FLAC is the one and only, and that iTunes supports no lossless format. I do agree in the sense that Apple should either open ALAC and start selling it, or adopt FLAC, or something.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[radoni]

A few refurb SanDisk Sansa Fuze or Clip players and an assortment of 2GB to 8GB uSD cards fills the need to enjoy FLAC based CD-quality music on-the-go. No, you don't need Rockbox (alternative firmware). Native vendor firmware plays 44KHz/16-bit/2-channel FLAC without issue. Labeling uSD cards is a little tricky, and for that task I'll cut an Avery 6737 label in half and write using an ultra-fine (0.5mm) tip pen. After a few insertion cycles of the storage card, the label settles enough that it does not bind on the socket. All of my music is stored and labeled this way and fits in an Altoids tin. Duplicity encrypted backups are stored offline on 1TB or 2TB rotational platter drives. The upfront cost of this setup is about equal or less than what I paid in the 1990's for a used portable CD player, NiCad batteries, and CD case storage.

What I would like to see (as a consumer) is the wider adoption of 96KHz/24-bit FLAC playback capability on portable devices. CD quality isn't good enough for me to justify paying more than the cost of a local live show for it. I can barely notice the difference between CD-quality and a higher resolution signal, but I -do- notice the difference. I.e most people do not notice when they crank up the volume of a player beyond the line input level of a stereo system, and I do know this, it is grating to my hearing and detrimental to enjoying music. Worst yet about our economy today of buying and selling music, most of this music is damaged by the compression methods to the point where not many people can tell the difference anymore. It all sounds like shit at playback no matter what you do to it.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[DavidTC]

FLAC isn't for listening to.

You rip to FLAC and label it correctly, once. Then you burn all FLACs onto a DVD, and file it away, and now you never have to rip a CD again, ever.

Then you take those FLACs and drop them onto your mp3 or ogg encoder.

If you want to change the format or encoding rate, you can get the 'original' music, already labeled and organized, by pulling out the 'music DVD' from your stack of original DVDs, where you keep that Windows DVD and Office DVD, the DVDs you never use but have to keep.

FLAC isn't for listening unless you really want to. It's for doing the time consuming part of ripping music to, which is 'ripping and labeling', and then storing that before you do the irreversible part of lossy encoding.

And, as a bonus, now you have a backup of the CD. Granted, many people already have that and play that instead of the original, but many of us do not, and either don't play CDs that much, or don't make backups of all of them. This way, if one of the original CDs does get damaged, you can recreate it.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[Dogtanian]

I can't imagine that many people care about the jewelbox itself, just the paper inserts.

That might be the case if it comes in a bog-standard generic jewel case, but even so, once you take storing the inserts safely into account, the difference in convenience is much smaller anyway, IMHO.

I almost always buy digital except when the CD is cheaper

I don't understand... why would you buy an analogue copy in cases where the digital CD is cheaper? Hmm...

Good grief, I know some people will dismiss it as pedantry, but given that CDs were *always* sold as a digital format- arguably *the* first wide-selling digital consumer format- I don't think there's even that excuse for the implication that "digital" only encompasses those newfangled downloads(!) Especially not on a geek site like Slashdot...

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[colinrichardday]

Simple. Physical media cannot give me the "instant gratification" of buying downloaded songs.

I am the opposite. I much prefer browsing through a brick-and-mortar music store to ordering something online.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[colinrichardday]

I have a "boom box" which plays CDs. When will it go into obsolence? I suspect that certain audio codecs will lose support before that box breaks.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[DavidTC]

I put them there right after I rip everything off them into whatever format I like best, and they will sit there until such a time as I need to make a new copy from my master.

Why don't you just rip them to FLAC, once, label them, once, and then store that on DVDs? You can fit about 20-25 CDs that way on a single DVD, and you make a copy of a CD without having to go downstairs. (Which, of course, you could still keep.)

Granted, doing that for an existing collection is very annoying, but it's pretty easy on new stuff. Instead of ripping to MP3, you rip to FLAC, and label as FLAC, then you convert it to whatever you want.

Then label a DVD with the artist's name, burn the FLACs to it, and delete them from your hard drive, and tada. If you have other CDs by that artist, or that could logically be grouped together, go get that, and rerip it and burn FLACs also.

Keep a file on your hard drive that has a directory listing of the DVDs if they aren't immediately logical. But as a DVD can store at least 20 FLAC albums, and very few artists have ever released that many, a single DVD per artist, with another DVD containing all the artists you only have one CD of, would be sane.

You're right about the inability for the music industry to innovate, though. Hell, they aren't even being non-innovative, they're just standing in place...how long did it take them to come out with the remastered Beatles tracks?

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[theangryswede]

I still buy CDs just because I have the back-up and can rip it how I please. I also worry that any company that sold me digital music would go belly up, then I can't get that music back. I am assured this when I buy a CD. I know the artists get locked into ridiculous distribution deals with CDs, so a better system has to come around that gives artists more freedom while ensuring the people who downloaded the music can retain and re-download that music. Hopefully google music can fix some of these issues.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[frozentier]

A CD IS a backup of his music.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[somersault]

Well, I don't live in the US for one. For another, I'm hoping they'll have found something more interesting to do by then.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[somersault]

Good job on not reading past the first 3 sentences of my post. A CD is a backup in the same way that having legs is a backup for your car. Sure, you could walk 30 miles to work and back every day if you really needed to, but there are much better options available.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[somersault]

BTW, I wasn't just referring to his music when I asked why he doesn't take backups. He doesn't sound like he's backing up anything.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[hedwards]

FLAC is great, but I personally prefer to embed those files into a Matroska file complete with a table of contents. Makes it a lot more convenient to keep track of my files since I pretty much just listen to entire albums, or portions anyways.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[hawguy]

I almost always buy digital except when the CD is cheaper

I don't understand... why would you buy an analogue copy in cases where the digital CD is cheaper? Hmm...

Sorry, I forgot how pedantic people can be here and are unable to determine meaning based on contextual clues -- I meant "I buy digital downloads except when..."

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[hedwards]

I've read that, but I'm not really convinced that it's true, at least not for discs produced since the mid 90s. I've tried all sorts of cheap media and audio CDs, and it's pretty rare as far as I can find for a disc that goes unreadable in only a couple years. The physical damage to the disc is much more likely of a concern.

That being said, I have taken to protecting my discs with DVDisaster and keeping the ISO on disc, it just makes sense for those times when your house falls over and sinks into a swamp. Physical discs can't be backed up to an offsite storage without being located in only one place or physically making duplicates.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[hedwards]

Because CD quality is already over kill. You'd be hard pressed to find somebody that can tell the difference between that and a LAME preset standard MP3 at 192kbps variable file. The only reason that I insist upon lossless compression is that I like to know that I can compress it in the future as many times as I like for various applications and still have a good copy to go back to.

Unless you're working with the materials in a studio mastering an album, you've got more information in a CD than you're going to perceive. I've got ears that are far better than anybody else I've run into, and I still can't hear a difference between the CD and that MP3 I described.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[Wild Bill TX]

I don't buy CDs because I don't want the clutter or the hassle of ripping them to a more practical location. The physical backup is nice, yes, but not worth the space it consumes.

Also, online downloads offer us the opportunity to surpass CD quality. It's time for the CD to die.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[soodoo]

Why doesn't TFA at least mention that Apple supports an open format that's also lossless, and also supported widely?

If by supported widely you mean "supported pretty much only on Apple devices" then yeah, you may have a point. ALAC is Apple's own format, not nearly as open and documented and supported by as many companies as FLAC. Therefore I don't think it's a format that's healthy for the market/competition/consumers and would only give Apple an unfair advantage if it started getting more support. And TFA doesn't imply they don't support lossless, but it perhaps does imply that Apple is not really a good example in this whole deal. And neither is Microsoft, with their own (yet another!) lossless codec (WMA lossless).

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[twidarkling]

Due to his poor phrasing, you missed that he has an online backup of his local drive full of music, and that the CDs are another level of redundancy.

I think you're right, though. If I listened to my music any more, I'd re-rip/download in flac, rather than the high-bitrate mp3s I have.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[nabsltd]

You don't seem to value your time very highly.. it took me months to re-rip my CD collection when I decided that 128kbps wasn't good enough anymore.

You must have many thousands of CDs, as I just dealt with re-ripping due to corruption that had made its way into the backups, too. It takes me about an hour to rip 30 CDs in the background (so I'm not really dedicating my time to the ripping...I'm just swapping disks). It helps that my music software remembers all the tagging from the first rip. I finished my nearly 1000 CD collection in less than a week, with the biggest pain being carrying the CDs from the shelves to the computer and back. Then, it was one day of computer time to re-create the MP3s for the portables.

Your real mistake, as you can see from my timeline, was not ripping to a lossless format in the first place, as it would have allowed you to just set up the conversion and run it in the background, and be done in a day or so with no real work on your part. That's one of the big points of TFA as far as downloaded music purchases are concerned...lossless allows you to easily do whatever you want with the music while maintaining the maximum possible quality.

I re-ripped at 192kbps, and decided that if I wanted any more quality I'd just torrent FLACs.

And, you've made the same mistake again on this re-rip, so look forward to spending a few months again, since it's quite likely that most of your music isn't available on torrents as FLAC.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[thetoadwarrior]

The point being though if you have the CD (which in the US and UK at least costs the same as MP3s) then you can make FLAC, MP3 or even WAV files and have a your first back-up from the beginning.

I agree with him and do still buy CDs. I don't listen to them. I rip them and then put them on the shelf and if ever my digital file back-ups die I have the CDs.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[Chris Tucker]

RE: Your TV comparison analogy. It's absolutely spot on!

I have a run of the mill 26" Samsung LCD TV. It's about two years old. Comcast is the cable provider.

From where I sit to watch TV, the non-HD image beats the hell out of what my old RCA CRT TV produced, I can actually read the fine print in commercials.

Up close, the picture is absolute crap. But as I don't usually stand with my nose a foot from the screen, I don't care what it looks like that close.

I can receive 720P HD over the air channels if I so desire.

As an example, comparing OTA Fox Network to Comcast provided Fox Network (with the letterboxed cable image blown up to full screen via an option in the TV) The OTA is somewhat noticeably 'better'. But not enough for me to spend the extra money for HD service. For letterboxed content, I push a button on the TV remote 3 times, and the letterboxed content fills the screen with no black bars.

My new Samsung DVD player upconverts DVD to "HD" just fine as far as I'm concerned.

As the old saying has it, 'Perfect is the enemy of good enough.' Good enough is good enough for me for video and music.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[currently_awake]

CD's don't last forever, the plastic degrades and the metal oxidizes, and that's assuming proper storage. As a matter of fact, nothing digital will likely outlive you. Digital information appears to follow an inverse moors law, half of all digital info will be lost every 2 years. One of the tragedies of the modern age is all our culture and history will be lost, not passed down for future generations.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[xtracto]

I wholeheartedly agree with you. That is why I buy my socks by the unit. Usually each one of a different color.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[paimin]

By "supported widely" I mean "supported by the lion's share of the market". I'm just saying TFA is disingenuous, not that Apple is the shining star of righteousness.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[nabsltd]

Well look at you and your dedicated room.

I'm not the OP, but I have nearly 1000 CDs, and the shelves for them take up just the part of one wall in one room...hardly a "dedicated room".

Although many people today have more than 20,000 tracks in their audio collection, I suspect that not all the tracks are legally obtained. It's really a different mindset today, where the quality of the audio isn't as important as the quantity.

My parents CDs skip, have scratches, won't play, etc. They're essentially useless.

Many of my CDs went through college with me, including parties, and I've only had a few that became unplayable due to scratches. Mostly, that's because I didn't just throw the discs down anywhere, but instead put them back into the case after playing. It's amazing how much longer things last when you take care of them. But, I also did not have a portable CD player until after I also had a CD burner in my computer, so I always played the backups in situations that were more likely to damage them.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[brusk]

I agree with you in principle, except that the post I replied to referenced the date when CDs first came out. Still, 1992 seems a little late; I remember CDs becoming popular in the late 80s (albeit for higher-end stereo equipment, not in portable form). But sales grew steadily over the late 80s. http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/stories/021711disruption

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[omnichad]

AAC is a superior format in terms of packing in audio clarity into a lower bitrate. As long as it's DRM-free AAC, you're just dealing with an inferior player.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[Brett Buck]

This is just a load of shit. Home-burned CDs occasionally degenerate, but I have initial release CD from the mid-80s that are still perfectly playable

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[Thing 1]

As to what I would do with a CD once I rip it... rip it again, should my online backup of my music hard drive fail when my music hard drive invariably does. My once-ripped CD will still be in perfect condition.

WTF. Why are you not keeping a backup of your files? I have all my music on both my media player and a separate backup hard drive. Would you really prefer to rip everything again rather than spend $100 or whatever on another hard drive for backups? You don't seem to value your time very highly.. it took me months to re-rip my CD collection when I decided that 128kbps wasn't good enough anymore. I re-ripped at 192kbps, and decided that if I wanted any more quality I'd just torrent FLACs.

Reading comprehension much?

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[Zugok]

We Australians pay way too much for cds. $30~ for a new cd?

Actually, in New Zealand, the prices have been around price point in NZD (about US$24 at current exchange rates) that since CDs first came out in the eighties. If not for that long, that has been the price for new CDs for the past 20 years (about US$15 at exchangerates back then), and purchasing power of money has improved during that time.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[iluvcapra]

FWIW I keep my 200 gig sound effects library in Apple Lossless, I'm really not concerned about lockin in the near term. OTOH, my remote archives, the things that would take a month to download and re-encode, are FLAC'd, GPGd and DARd and PARd. I haven't really noticed a significant performance difference from either, though the systemwide metadata support (It is just an MP4 container) and auditioning in the OS for ALAC breaks the tie for me, for now.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[Rinikusu]

Hindsight is always 20/20 and you forget that many of us have been ripping CDs since the mid 90s back when disk space was nowhere as cheap as it is now (although it was massive and cheap for the time). 200mb drives. How many FLACS can that hold? Don't worry, in 10 or so years, you'll be looking at your FLAC collection wondering why you just didn't rip to whatever format du jour is prevalent and someone will tell you "Well, your problem is that you didn't rip to " where may or or not even be in development right now.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[MightyYar]

Do I ever see it going away? Yes.

Then we fellow Nostrodamasus disagree :)

Where compression MAY still matter in the future isn't with storage, but transfer.

Then the lossy formats will still reign supreme.

There's just no real market for FLAC. It doesn't save enough space to make the hassle worth it for storage, and the lossy formats do better when you do need to save space. Raw is more future-proof than FLAC.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[nabsltd]

(Also, my music collection is currently just under 1TB, so storing it all in FLAC would probably expand it to 5TBs which is a bit unwieldy at present.)

At 320Kbps, with an average track being 4 minutes long, that's over 100,000 tracks. At US$1 per track, that's over US$100,000 spent on music. If you're bitrate is a lot less, it's even more. I'm gonna assume that you probably didn't acquire all those tracks legally.

This means that your opinion on format doesn't really matter much, as you don't really care what format online music stores sell. Personally, I don't care how you got the music...I'm just pointing out that the price of music and a typical somewhat narrow music taste tends to make even a 20,000 track collection a very far outlier to the average, which means a format that is a problem for only those people isn't a problem in reality.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[Dogtanian]

Sorry, I forgot how pedantic people can be here

Ho ho ho... you dismissed it as pedantry, just like I predicted! You're so clever!

Or maybe that wasn't the intention. Who cares... either way, it's still the type of stupid misuse of the word "digital" you'd expect from those whose tech-savviness is superficial at best. The fact that you're aware of this misuse doesn't make it less stupid.

and are unable to determine meaning based on contextual clues

That'd be you, not me, then- it was pretty obvious that I was making a point. If the absurdity of my conclusion in the first sentence wasn't obviously tongue-in-cheek, the spelling it out in the next paragraph should have made it obvious.

Or more likely you knew this, but were lamely trying to score points by intentionally misreading it in a straight manner. Unfortunately, this doesn't really work if the comment clearly wasn't meant seriously in the first place.

I meant "I buy digital downloads except when..."

Yeah, we all know what you meant. We're not stupid, even if you are.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[The Ultimate Fartkno]

Just to go slightly off-topic, how does Apple's lossless compare to SHN and APE and the others? I've been ripping to LAME -v0 for so long that it's just habit, but with 2Tb drives going for under $100 these days I might finally make the jump. I, for one, have never been able to justify the quality vs. space tradeoff since even through great speakers I can't tell a difference between -v0 and lossless. (The one tiny benefit of hitting my 40s, I suppose...) What's the reference standard these days? I still search for new encoding methods every once in a while but the same handful of pages that haven't been updated since 2007 are always the ones that pop up.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[wirefarm]

"No. Bad boy/girl!"

Actually, yes.

Over the years, I've bought hundreds of CDs that I've listened to once or twice and then sold to recover a few bucks. (Much of this before I was ripping CD music to my computer.) I now often purge my music collection both of CD media, as well as digital copies.

Now if I buy a song as a digital download, I no longer have that option.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[Jane Q. Public]

"In the unlikelyhood that you really want only one song on a CD..."

FAR from "unlikelihood" (corrected that spelling for ya): according to the figures I've seen, that is the single biggest reason for falling CD sales and rampant piracy. People don't want to pay $15 or $20 for a CD, when they only like 1 or 2 songs.

And singles have only really become more available lately... precisely because they're being sold as MP3s online for $0.99.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[skoda]

You keep using this word "digital". I do not think it means what you think it means.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[hawkinspeter]

To be fair, my music is probably about half ripped from CD (my wife used to work for a CD distributer and they had a monthly allowance of CDs to take home) and half downloaded. I used to buy a lot of music on CD, but nowadays, I only tend to buy rare old reggae or support artists who distribute independently (e.g. Radiohead).

I'm no longer the target demographic for buying music, so you're right, my opinion doesn't count for much. However, my large music collection means that I favour MP3 whereas smaller music collections should mean that people will find it easier to go with FLAC which I think is the future.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[darkfeline]

From wikipedia: The design life is from 20 to 100 years, depending on the quality of the discs, the quality of the writing drive, and storage conditions. However, testing has demonstrated such degradation of some discs in as little as 18 months under normal storage conditions. Personally, I'd rather skip the CD and go straight to the FLAC you'll have to rip from the CD to backup anyway.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[tyrione]

CD's don't last forever, the plastic degrades and the metal oxidizes, and that's assuming proper storage. As a matter of fact, nothing digital will likely outlive you. Digital information appears to follow an inverse moors law, half of all digital info will be lost every 2 years. One of the tragedies of the modern age is all our culture and history will be lost, not passed down for future generations.

They'll outlive the HDD. My CDs from 1987 are running just fine. I don't own a single HDD from 1987. They died long ago.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[somersault]

Like I said, I'm not going to rip the CDs again. All the music I've bought in the last year has been directly as MP3 downloads anyway, so I don't even have the option to re-rip there. Good thing it's already higher quality than the quality I'd decided I was happy with after running a few tests, eh? Any higher and the only people who will even pretend to be able to tell the difference need to get laid.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[MightyYar]

It's for doing the time consuming part of ripping music to, which is 'ripping and labeling', and then storing that before you do the irreversible part of lossy encoding.

That's the part I don't quite understand - why spend the extra effort over and above raw? Best case, you save a few $50 worth of hard drive space and still have to re-encode everything again for your other audio devices. What's the point?

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[Dhalka226]

People spend a ton of money on having the biggest tv and the fastest pc but they still listen to low quality music on cheap devices with even cheaper headphones.

You're right. Which is all the more reason that "I sell FLAC, buy from me!" is a questionable business model. Even among those who have the inclination to keep a FLAC collection to transcode to MP3 or next-great-audio-format, most don't have the audio equipment to take advantage of it. For those that do, the CD is still an option.

I've heard that there are some places that sell FLACs from the master rather than yanked from the CD. In those cases it might be worth doing, but again, even if that became widespread, the number of people able much less willing to take advantage of (and pay for) that is relatively small.

Keeping a collection in FLAC isn't a bad idea by any means, but it's work to be able to use those songs the way the average person does and for small benefit in most cases.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[Maritz]

I've heard (not sure where) that they last as long as you're likely to need them provided they're in their case/the dark. The plastic loses its opacity gradually in light.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[TheABomb]

But I don't. I want vinyl-quality audio.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[rqg]

> Don't worry, in 10 or so years, you'll be looking at your FLAC collection wondering why you just didn't rip to whatever format du jour is prevalent

No. There point is FLAC has all the sound data a CD contains - it's lossless. You can convert FLACs to a different format - there is no difference between doing so and ripping a CD into said format directly.

I do agree that in the 90s going FLAC wasn't really feasible, but I'd say it's been possible for at least ~8 years. I've been using FLAC since I had 160 GB drive (I think that got one in 2005).

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[mhotchin]

Most raw formats don't support tagging very well.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[Chaonici]

A thousand CDs in a small cardboard box? Let's see.

I'll assume that you're storing your CDs in a standard CD case. Measurements in inches: 5.5 x 5 x .375. This gives each case a volume of 10.3125 inches squared.

A thousand of these would be 10,312.5 inches squared, or almost 860 square feet.

A square box of nine feet on each side gives you a volume of 729 square feet. The box would have to have a larger volume than this to accommodate a thousand CDs in their cases. This is not "small."

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[DavidTC]

Because you can't put tags in raw WAV files, at least not in any well-supported manner. And tagging them before storing them is pretty important, in my book.

Yes, yes, tagging preferences can change, I won't claim that the MP3 files I have are still labeled identically to the backed up FLACs, but that's generally stuff like genres and grouping as 'Various Artists' and whatnot. You can at least have a starting place, instead of just unlabeled tracks.

Now, obviously, the name can hold some info, and encoders can stick that in the right tags, so if you think you can get away with putting all the information in the file names, go for it. Make a standard like Artist-Album-Num-Track.wav and keep with it.

But I find FLAC easier. You can always encode at the fastest setting.

And if you're actually keeping the FLACs on a _hard drive_, you can just change the tags in that and regenerate the other files. In fact, if you're just transcoding for portable, and playing the FLAC on your computer, it will happen automatically. (I keep my FLACs on DVDs, though.)

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[ninjackn]

You do realize formats like CDs remove inaudible frequencies? By that same logic super Audio CDs, DVD-Audio and every single recorded piece of audio has removed inaudible frequencies.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[DinDaddy]

the 96kHz ones apple has started selling for some artists surpass CD quality, despite the compression.

If you are saying apple is selling hi rez (24/96)music on iTunes, what artist are they doing that for? First I'd heard of it.

If you're saying AAC at higher bit rate is somehow better than standard 16 bit 44KHz PCM, you're full of it.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[Lonewolf666]

Where compression MAY still matter in the future isn't with storage, but transfer.

Then the lossy formats will still reign supreme.

There's just no real market for FLAC. It doesn't save enough space to make the hassle worth it for storage, and the lossy formats do better when you do need to save space. Raw is more future-proof than FLAC.

First, I disagree that raw (which might be .wav in this case) is more future-proof than FLAC. Because you can convert from FLAC back into an identical .wav. I tried this before I started coverting everything to FLAC.

Second, FLAC has one nice feature over .wav files:
Replay gain (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replay_Gain).
I hope every player will eventually support that, because it would help to make the loudness wars (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war) pointless

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[Pf0tzenpfritz]

Basically, a CD is a -pretty useless- physical carrier for a 16bit/44kHz PCM (AKA .wav) file. You can encode and play a FLAC file in any quality you want, i.e. 24bit 44.1kHz (which provides much more dynamics for a relatively small increase in file size) or even 32bit 96kHz. You are also completely free to chose how to store it physically, as you are not bound to the plastic disc. If you really want to put it into a conventional CD player, you can still transcode and/or burn it without any loss.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[definate]

What application do you use to do that? Interesting!

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[AmberBlackCat]

I suggest you encode the same music using CDex for mp3 and iTunes for aac, and see if they sound the same to you. I'm not talking about minor distortion. I'm talking about distortion that made me think my headphones were going bad. In fact, I can determine which songs on my iPod are in aac and which are in mp3 just by listening for distortion. I'm not basing my claims on technical details from a wikipedia page. I'm talking about what I hear when I play the music. Also, with variable bit rate, the mp3 files are smaller too.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[Interoperable]

As a Canadian who recently moved to Australia, I can say that Australians are getting fucked by regional pricing. I guess it's partly due to the recent increase in the AUD, but there's nearly a 30% premium on most content in Australia. I refuse to pay $100 for a game when I could get the same game for $60 in the U.S.. Luckily, I have a region 1 console that I brought with me :-)

I know, -1 offtopic, but fuck regional pricing.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[WorBlux]

Basically, there's no reason to use FLAC – "lossily" compressed audio is plenty good enough.

How about being able to convert into whatever lossy format is currently in vogue? If you start in aac and convert to a different lossy model like mp3, you have two passes of losses. With having everything in FLAC and converting if you need to then you only have one pass of losses no matter what. Because it creates the same raw data-stream as a .wav file it is directly or indirectly compatible with every type of audio media and audio media player in the best way possible. Also FLAC is very processor efficient in playback, being very friendly on the battery life of portable music players.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[uniquename72]

True. That's why CD players, which were $300 in 1983, now cost over $600. Oh wait...

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[zmollusc]

Stop playing Devil's Abdicate.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[MightyYar]

First, I disagree that raw (which might be .wav in this case) is more future-proof than FLAC. Because you can convert from FLAC back into an identical .wav. I tried this before I started coverting everything to FLAC.

That means you have to expend twice the effort for something that merely gains you half of your drive space, which by the time you needed to put it all back will be so cheap that you'll wonder what you were trying to accomplish in the first place.

Replay gain is cool, but can be added to any file that supports metadata. It's really a player feature, not a format feature.

I'm not saying FLAC is useless - it obviously works for you. But it is condemned to be a niche. People who want small file sizes have better options and people who want bit-for-bit reproductions of their CD can just keep the raw files, which then can be played on any player. Even Apple's stuff supports uncompressed WAV and AIFF.

And what I said goes double for Apple Lossless :)

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[scdeimos]

We Australians also pay far too much for bandwidth, especially with some greedy carriers charging $1.00 per megabyte (or more) on their mobile data plans. Sure have FLAC as a download option for those who want it, but don't make it mandatory.

In the meantime I'm quite happy to manage my own DRM-free collection and will buy my CDs when they go on sale - or buy them from overseas for half the price (something I need to do frequently anyway, because we have such a limited market in Australia you often can't buy the CDs you want here). As a bonus I can rip my tracks in any format I want, at any bitrate I want, as often as I want.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[MightyYar]

Ah, tagging. I forgot how clunky it was to get metadata to stick on a WAV. At least in iTunes... but then if you were using iTunes you'd just use Apple Lossless and turn on the setting to convert when transferring to your phone.

I investigated all of that crap years ago, and in the end decided that I don't listen to anything that couldn't be encoded at 128kbps MP3 with the crappy encoders from the 90s :) In 2003 when I converted all of my CDs, I chose to go with LAME using alt-extreme. I've never heard anything that bothered me about the encoding in my crappy 80s and 90s rock and pop music... Of course back then a hard drive was much smaller, and I couldn't afford lossless, let alone raw.

I can see how a jazz or classical aficionado might feel the need to protect their bits, but expecting hip-hop fans to clamor for slim shady and Rhianna in FLAC is a bit hilarious.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[MightyYar]

Good point. WAV doesn't show up in iTunes, and AIFF is not exactly universal despite supporting tags.

Of course, we've gotten away from the original topic, which is downloading music in FLAC. I don't really see the point, since most music sold isn't exactly audiophile material. When I was a kid, we happily bought stuff on tape or vinyl - which sounds like utter shit. People complain about an "artifact"... how about a record needle hitting a piece of dust for a big-ass "pop"... or the tape getting to the part where the tape deck ate it and it sounds like it's underwater? I always marveled at how clear the FM radio sounded until I got a CD player.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[PhotoJim]

Here's the great thing about buying a CD: I have a pressed original that will last for a century, most likely, *and* I can make .mp3, .flac, .ogg or whatever format extractions I want. I get the best of both worlds.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[PhotoJim]

CD audio isn't lossy audio unless the studio compresses the dynamic range of the sound - in which case any digital download is likely to be the same.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[PhotoJim]

There certainly have been bad batches of pressed discs, and these are what has likely generated the doubt, but the incidents have been isolated.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[karnal]

Sometimes it can also be how the original source file was mastered. I've heard some mp3s that were kind of shitty - even at a high enough bitrate to not be an encoder error - but in the end it seems that once I track down an original CD, the mastering is crunched so hard it just sounds like crap because it just is.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[aXis100]

CD's have quantisation loss from the origonal sound pressure wave - especially at the high end. Frequency domain analysis tells us you need to sample at 3 times the origonal to get a reasonable representation, so the highest decent frequencies you'll get out of a CD are 14.7kHz.

Granted, most people's ears will have trouble above this anyway, but it's still lossy.

. When they first came out people cried about

It's just been deemed to be

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[zugmeister]

My wife and I have several 22 gallon Rubbermaid tubs of CDs. They sit at the bottom of our stacks of these tubs along with our crates of books because of their weight and are never unearthed. The music contained on them is much more easily accessible / useful in digital format over the local home network. I can't bring myself to get rid of them because they cost so much money, so in the meantime they take up storage space in the garage and will be among the boat anchor items for the next time we move. Never missed the booklet much, haven't been much into album art since Iron Maiden's Somewhere in Time album (yes vinyl) cover....

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[beelsebob]

Are you saying that a physical CD is the original copy of the music? The reason you wouldn't want to bin the Magna carta is not because the copies aren't good enough for everything you might ever want to do with them, it's because the original has emotional value.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[somersault]

It's not that you can rip, it's that you you have to rip even if you'll never use the discs again, and it takes an extra few days/weeks for the music to get to you. Seeing as I will never use the discs for anything but ripping - Nnnnnnnoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo*.

*DO NOT WANT

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[tehcyder]

(the only thing I own that plays audio cds now is my car)

You don't have a computer with a CD drive? Don't you ever have to install software from CDs or play games that use the CD? I know it's cool to be entirely dependent on the internet for downloading everything, but it seems a bit impractical. What happens if your OS gets broken and you have no internet access but need to download a patch/update/new OS?

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[tehcyder]

Digital information appears to follow an inverse moors law, half of all digital info will be lost every 2 years. One of the tragedies of the modern age is all our culture and history will be lost, not passed down for future generations.

Yeah, it's a crying shame that no one has come up with the concept of "backing up important data" yet.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[funfail]

Wrong. My 21 MB Seagate ST-225 (MFM) was still operating until a few years ago. I purchased it in 1987~1988, together with an IBM PS/2 Model 30 Clone:

http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?name=Legacy&vgnextoid=cf26c6ea20fbd010VgnVCM100000dd04090aRCRD&locale=en-US&reqPage=Legacy

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[tehcyder]

Physical media cannot give me the "instant gratification" of buying downloaded songs

I think you're mistaking music for pr0n.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[tehcyder]

Because CD quality is already over kill. You'd be hard pressed to find somebody that can tell the difference between that and a LAME preset standard MP3 at 192kbps variable file. The only reason that I insist upon lossless compression is that I like to know that I can compress it in the future as many times as I like for various applications and still have a good copy to go back to.

Unless you're working with the materials in a studio mastering an album, you've got more information in a CD than you're going to perceive. I've got ears that are far better than anybody else I've run into, and I still can't hear a difference between the CD and that MP3 I described.

Now you'll get dozens of posts claiming that listening to MP3s gives you migraines, brain cancer and probably ADHD.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[seinman]

Pressed CDs, which you refer to as "the real thing," are very cheap and high schoolers CAN afford them for their bands. You can get 1000 real, pressed CDs, jewel cases, and full color inserts for about $1200 (well, that was about three years ago, don't know what the current prices are). That's not terribly expensive, and small independent bands are doing it all the time. Taking the high school example, if you're in a band with four other people, you each need to get together just $240 for a run of discs. Not difficult at all.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[omnichad]

If you can still find them, there's cartridge-based CD-ROM systems. It's just that very few people needed the extra protection.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[ThunderBird89]

Rare enough that I never even saw one in use, this is the first time I've heard about them!

I'm still all for flash chips, though: more compact, durable, and faster (not sure about this, though).

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[ashidosan]

I have a pressed original that will last for a century, most likely

Let me know how that works out for you.

I ditched my 350+ CD collection after ripping them all to FLAC last year. Half-Price Books (used brick-and-mortar bookstore) gave me ~$160 USD for all of them; some of those were singles.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[DavidTC]

It's not just iTunes. It took years to get any metadata standard for wav files, and absolutely no one supports the official standard, because it breaks playback in some players that don't support it. Some players support APE tags at the end of the file, which is not any sort of official thing, but at least is backwards compatible. It's a total mess. If you really really what to do it, the easiest thing is to keep it as 'CD' and have the information in the .cue file which references the .wav files, but good luck finding a tagger to do that.

And if you're using iTunes I would recommend going to Apple Lossless instead of FLAC. Apple Lossless is well enough reverse engineered that you'll be able to convert out of that if need be, and iTunes support it. If you insist on using crappy iTunes, that is. ;)

I had a nice system. I'd rip them to WAVs. When one CD finished, I'd start on the next, and drop the first folder on the flac converter, and then I'd run it through MusicBrainz and label them, comparing it to the actual CD in my hand I just took from the tray. Repeat.

When I was done ripping for a while, I'd put them all in foobar2000, select them all, and run replaygain over the entire thing, which required no help for me. FLAC files done. Burn them to DVD. And then I'd would drag that entire folder to the lame encoder dropper, encode them all, and delete the FLACs. And move that to the music library.

I think iTunes can do all that in a more automated form, but it's really not much more work. And I rather loathe using iTunes so have no idea.

And, yes, we did have to convert because of size considerations. But frankly, at this point, if I ripped a CD (Pretending I did that anymore.), I would simply rip to FLAC, keep it as FLAC on my computer, and let Media Monkey transcode it when copying it to my iPhone.

I mean, I have enough storage space for entire TV series. 170+ episodes of DS9, just so I can flip through them and find one to watch if nothing is on TV. 60 gigs. And that's just one series. I have 500 gigs of 'reruns' that I can flip through and find something interesting.

One album in FLAC is somewhere between 200-400 megs, about the size of a TV 350meg TV episode. Worrying about the size of audio files on computers makes absolutely no sense anymore. Spend 50 dollars, get 1 terabyte USB hard drive to stick them on, you're done unless you somehow have three thousand CDs. The only reason I haven't gone back and pulled my FLACs off the DVDs and replaced the MP3s with them is that I'm lazy.

The only place MP3s really still make any sense is on portable devices.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[toddestan]

Wrong? How is that wrong? So you have a drive that lasted longer than its projected lifespan? So what?

Besides, they don't make drives like they used to. I have that same drive (purchased in 1988) and it still works. But I seriously doubt any of the 1.5-2TB drives I've bought recently will still function in 23 years.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[AmiMoJo]

I think the point was that downloads can't be resold when you tire of them and therefore are worth less than a physical CD.

Re:If you want CD-quality audio, buy CDs

[YggdrasilOS]

...an mp3 converted from aac is going to sound worse than one converted from a CD, to me.

Not just to you. MP3 and AAC are both lossy compression algorithms. Which psymodel fits you better is a matter of taste, but there's no doubt that both throw away parts of the song that they think you can't hear. Running a song through both in sequence, then, will lead to a demonstrably lower quality file.

Which, incidentally, is the whole point of the submitter's call to distribute music in FLAC. FLAC is lossless, so you can transcode from it to whatever format you please without suffering the double-degradation problem of transcoding from one lossy format to another.

Why FLAC

[qinjuehang]

Wavpack is superior technologically!

Re:Why FLAC

[FatLittleMonkey]

FTFA: "Lastly, why do I support FLAC and not some other good and free format, like WavPack? The main advantage of FLAC is that it's already much more widespread than WavPack and other free lossless codecs and I believe it would be better to standardize on something, rather than have a fragmented lossless market, which could fall pray to some proprietary format that's not as accessible to everyone or is encumbered with DRM."

Re:Why FLAC

[qinjuehang]

While that is true, it doesn't matter due to how easily audio formats can be converted, unlike many analogies raised here about competing hardware formats.

Re:Why FLAC

[soodoo]

That's debatable. Yes, it compresses more, making slightly smaller files (at least currently). But it also needs more power to decode (play) those files. Where these two things actually matter (portable devices) I'd say it's about even, depending on what you value more - space or battery life.

Re:Why FLAC

[petermgreen]

according to http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Lossless_comparison#Comparison_Table wavpack is faster to compress and offers marginally better compression but flac has wider support from both hardware and software.

IMO the difference between 58.7% and 58.0% compression is negligible and for a store wider support is more important than faster compression.

Yes we geeks have no trouble rigging up a script to convert anything to anything (though preserving tagging can be trickier) but we are a tiny minority of the market.

Re:Why FLAC

[vegiVamp]

Given that FLAC is lossless, the only ways Wavpack could be relevantly superior is by compressing significantly better, or by being able to be played on lower-power devices (that is, requiring significantly less CPU and memory for playback).

Is it better in one of those ways? I'm happy with FLAC, so pretty much too lazy to google :-)

FLAC is definitely a sound option

[Pricetx]

That's rather a good point. Personally i've always just used spotify free to stream my music but this has the fairly major disadvantage of only being 160kbps vorbis. I only own one album in FLAC form and have to admit you can hear the difference between it and some of my higher quality mp3 albums. The fact that it's an open format will help it be future proof as well. Win Win situation.

Portable players

[Xtense]

I'm a proud owner of a Rockboxed Sansa e250. However, if I kept the music I listen to regularly in FLAC, both the internal storage (2GB) and external microSD fall short. No, hotswapping isn't a good idea, especially if you're treating yourself to music going long distance. That's why I decided to settle for Ogg Vorbis - quality good enough that I don't hear a difference between the source and the compressed file (as proven by several long blind hearing tests), and file sizes that make my collection that much more managable.

Re:Portable players

[Tubal-Cain]

FLAC wouldn't be for your Sansa; it'd be for your media library. You keep it on your PC and your backup media, and transcode that to Vorbis or MP3 or whatever for your portable device.
Which is why they'd probably never go for it. A business model that is incompatible with DRM? Are you mad!?!?!?

Re:Portable players

[timbo234]

While this would be the ideal setup most of us simply don't care enough about a (to most people) imperceptible difference in quality to go through all this hassle. Also if your typical MP3 collection was in FLAC it would be impractical to backup online. Online/cloud backup and syncing is what the consumer world is moving very rapidly towards.

Re:Portable players

[Kijori]

Isn't the bigger problem with that that it makes life much more difficult for the user (longer download time, time spent transcoding everything they want to put on their MP3 player instead of just copying) for a marginal benefit that only occurs in an already rare scenario? It's a lot of hassle to go to in order to enjoy very slightly increased quality if you ever either buy an incredibly high-quality sound system or migrate to an MP3 player that can't play your MP3s, neither of which are ever likely to happen for the majority of users.

Re:Portable players

[AAWood]

I tried this. Apart from the time needed to re-rip the music you have to FLAC, if your player works in a fashion that transcoding is possible, that still means extra time to recode every file you're copying, every time you're syncing... not something you want if you're just putting a couple of songs on before heading out. Of course, this isn't even possible with all players. iPhones and iPods are the biggest sellers out there, and the only way you're getting files on those is through iTunes which, while it has a setting to transcode to AAC, doesn't support FLAC last time I checked. (OK, sure, there are ways around all those thing, but that's no good for the majority of people out there.)

So if you can't or don't want to transcode, you now you have two sets of files... but where do you put the ones you don't have a high-quality source for? Do you keep them with the PC music, or the portable music? Do you make an identical copy for each folder, just to keep it neat and easy to find? Or do you make a FLAC version of the lossy file for the PC, just to keep everything for it in the one format? Not to mention that a lot of media players used for syncing with portable devices keep a "library" of songs they're managing now, which means you need the player to know to play music from THIS folder, but sync music from THAT folder. Playlists can get around this, but at this point the procedure when you get a new song is 1) put it in the PC folder, hopefully in .flac, 2) re-encode it in a format the portable likes and put this in your other folder, 3) open your media player, and add both copies to your library, and 4) add each copy to it's respective playlist. For *every* song. So that you can have a practically unnoticeable increase in audio quality on the PC.

Just encode your music in a high-quality lossless format that your portable player supports. Your music will still sound great, it's much easier to handle across devices, and you use about 10-20% the HDD space you would otherwise. If you're really that obsessed with sound quality or future proofing, get a portable player that actually supports FLAC and has plenty of storage.

Now if we're talking an ideal world, from-this-point-on thing then, yes, it would be great if music could be sold to us in something like FLAC and have all our devices handle it.

Re:Portable players

[mccalli]

"Which is why they'd probably never go for it. A business model that is incompatible with DRM? Are you mad!?!?!?

There's this tinsy little online place does it somewhere. Err...ah yes, iTunes Music Store. That's the one. DRM free and iTunes has an option to transcode to a lower bit rate when transferring to an iPod.

Cheers,
Ian

Re:Portable players

[perryizgr8]

i download songs directly to my phone. it has an 8gb microsd in it. i can store ~1000 256kbps mp3s. i dont wanna reduce that to ~300. also, the music player app that supports flac sucks up lotsa battery.
another reason is that i don't really pick up improvements in flac over 256kbps mp3.

Re:Portable players

[DavidTC]

iTunes is not the only way to put music on iPhones and iPods. Plenty of music players can do it. foobar2000 and MediaMonkey, for two.

I have no idea what you mean by 'the majority of people'. The majority of people using iPhone are probably using iTune to sync...but, OTOH, they're probably using iTune to rip too, which means FLAC is a non-option for them anyway.

The actual people who know how to rip to FLAC, who actually understand that a media player and ripper and how it rips are things they have a choice over, are probably already using something besides iTunes, which is a pretty limited mp3 player.

And both foobar2000 and MediaMonkey will transcode files into whatever format you want before syncing them with the iPhone.

Re:Portable players

[npsimons]

FLAC wouldn't be for your Sansa

Why not? I use FLAC on my Sansa CLIP all the time. Sure, I can't hold bazillions of songs, but if you choose wisely, you won't need that many (hint: pick things you won't get sick of after 1-3 listenings; things that are complex, or have replayability).

Re:Portable players

[Jaegs]

I do this exact thing and use mp3fs on Ubuntu to allow me to quickly transcode files for use in iTunes. You basically mount your directory containing the FLAC files in fstab as something like /media/music/mp3s and voila, instant mp3s with tags. Works great!

Re:Portable players

[Tubal-Cain]

iTunes or whatever equivalent could do it automatically.

Re:Portable players

[AAWood]

iTunes is not the only way to put music on iPhones and iPods. Plenty of music players can do it. foobar2000 and MediaMonkey, for two.

Hence why I said there are ways around having to use it. However, as you agree in the next line, most people are using iTunes. So assuming you think transcoding is the better option, which I'm not convinced it always is, you still need to figure out why and how to convince people to do so... right after you've convinced them they should go down the "lossless source" route at all.

I have no idea what you mean by 'the majority of people'. The majority of people using iPhone are probably using iTune to sync...but, OTOH, they're probably using iTune to rip too, which means FLAC is a non-option for them anyway.

Which was rather my point. To go down this route, you need to change the way you rip, store, manage and sync your music collection, and in fact unless you already use lossless codecs will likely have to reacquire most of your music to do it, where it's even possible. The majority of people, myself included, won't do that.

The actual people who know how to rip to FLAC, who actually understand that a media player and ripper and how it rips are things they have a choice over, are probably already using something besides iTunes, which is a pretty limited mp3 player.

Which is why the idea is flawed, because the majority of people (yep, those again) using portable players either 1) don't already know about these things, or 2) already have a system in place that suits them. In either case, you're asking them to do a lot of work on re-ripping, re-downloading, re-encoding and re-syncing files, for an increase in audio fidelity they probably don't care about... Except, as you say, the people who are already doing all this anyway.

And both foobar2000 and MediaMonkey will transcode files into whatever format you want before syncing them with the iPhone.

Which, as I said above, is great as long as you don't mind waiting the extra time for transcoding. And, for that matter, don't mind straying from iTunes. You've admitted the majority of users use iTunes, and then mentioned a set of (otherwise completely acceptable) arguments that only work if they aren't. You have a relative, they have an iPod and use iTunes and they are quite happy. How do you convince them to not only ditch iTunes for another player they've likely never heard of, but also take the time to get the lossless version of their music that would make it worthwhile, all while leaving them still listening to lossy files on the portable player which will now take longer to sync? Because if your answer is "I wouldn't, there'd be no point", we're in complete agreement.

Re:Portable players

[HLJ76]

I have an iPhone and sync via iTunes (as if I had an choice :P.) iTunes has a check-box in the sync window that allows me to downgrade all tracks to 128kbps when syncing them in, leaving the original at it's higher bit rate. Since everyone around here bashes iTunes to no end, I'd guess that kind of functionality is a brain-dead feature any MP3 media player sync tool includes. May be hidden somewhere in the settings.

Re:Portable players

[TheLongshot]

I use JR Media Center for my media library and I have a mix of formats: FLAC for all of my rips and MP3s for the stuff I buy off of Amazon and other sources. When I sync to my MP3 player, there is a setting that will only perform transcodes on the files which the player doesn't support playing. So, it will simply copy the MP3 files to the player, but transcode the FLAC files.

Also, you do not need to transcode every time if you don't want to. In JR Media Center, I can set up a cache which can store such files if you use them again.

Re:Portable players

[arth1]

The size aspect is largely irrelevant these days. So what if your FLAC collection is three times the size of your MP3 collection? It is still tiny compared to the bandwidth and drive space of today.
Twenty FLAC albums is peanuts compared to the size of a HD movie or a downloadable game.

That said, I wish we would move to 24-bit soon. No, I don't want 192 kHz nearly as much as I want 24-bit, and an end to the loudness wars.

Re:Portable players

[DavidTC]

The 'majority' of people aren't discussing what players they use, and aren't even aware there's an option. They aren't choosing to do anything at all.

I have no idea what the damn point is you're trying to make. It has nothing to do with people here, who do know what's going on.

Saying 'the vast majority of people just keep the defaults' is not actually an argument that the defaults are the best choice.

I assure you, no one is suggesting that the vast majority of people somehow get taught how to rip into FLAC, and yet not get taught how to transcode that to their phone. No one is talking about the vast majority of people doing anything, and, if they were, surely it would be some sort of general education thing about formats and rippers instead 'We're going to fuck them up so they end up with FLAC files that they then can't play'. I can't even conceive of how that would be the end result of any discussion here.

People here are talking about their own behavior. Everyone in this discussion knows how to rip into different formats and how to use something besides iTunes to get music on an iPhone. There's not some idiot going 'Well, I ripped to FLAC, and now I'm screwed because I can't play my music on my iPhone.'.

Also, if your computer can't transcode faster than it can copy the file into flash memory, your computer is too slow.

Re:Portable players

[internettoughguy]

I'm a proud owner of a Rockboxed Sansa e250. However, if I kept the music I listen to regularly in FLAC, both the internal storage (2GB) and external microSD fall short. No, hotswapping isn't a good idea, especially if you're treating yourself to music going long distance. That's why I decided to settle for Ogg Vorbis - quality good enough that I don't hear a difference between the source and the compressed file (as proven by several long blind hearing tests), and file sizes that make my collection that much more managable.

Rockbox lets you use SDHC cards in your e250, and you can pick up 32gb cards pretty cheap now. You could probably fit more than 50 FLAC albums on a 32gb card.

Re:Portable players

[AAWood]

You say you don't understand my point, but your very first line here *is* my point. You say people here are talking about their own behaviour... well, back up there two posts ago, that's what I was doing. I tried going the route of having FLAC files and encoding/transcoding for portables, and it turned out to be hassle. At which point you started talking about how there are other solutions available for other people using different software who already have FLAC files available, and frankly I'm not convinced I understood your point any more than you understand mine. Let me take this from the top, and if you're already aware of some/all of this (in fact I'm sure you are), please understand that I'm simply framing the choices available.

If you're already doing all this, then there's no argument, glad you have something that works for you, enjoy. If not, and you want to do this right now, to start you need lossless sources, which most people (and you can take that as most of the public, or just most of us, it really doesn't make a difference) don't have, and in most cases can't get. Assuming you can, and further assuming you want to make the effort, then you then have to choose between transcoding to portables, or keeping two version of the files. If you're going the two versions of files route, I think the issues are clear and I don't believe you've argued them, so I'll move on.

If you're going the transcode route (and this far in my little logic tree here we've already established that you're not already doing this), you need to at best change your settings to move to transcoding, and more likely switch your media player to something that supports it... which also likely includes populating the new player's media library. And, while I daresay my and your computers probably can handle transcoding with no issues (and assuming the player is intelligent enough to be transcoding ahead of syncing rather than on demand, and ignoring the tiny amount of extra time at the start which is simply unavoidable), this isn't the case for everyone... Older computers still exist, after all. So you may be adding the choice at this stage of either putting up with delays (however minor) for transcoding, or upgrading your machine.

So my point at the end of all this is that, no matter how you look at it, unless you are already doing all this it simply isn't worth the hassle. You're trading the initial time taken to get lossless source files, several times the storage space to hold it, potentially extra time to install/learn new software, and a chunk of CPU time (and potentially real time) every time you sync your player, for an increase in fidelity that's practically unnoticeable.

I'm here, I tried to make this my behaviour, and those were my conclusions. It was just investing a chunk of time I didn't need to for no real tangible return. A bit like this conversation thread, really.

Re:Portable players

[petermgreen]

The music industry a while back decided that breaking apples lockin was more important to them than having DRM on downloadable music.

Re:Portable players

[Man Eating Duck]

- With lossy compression you get all the downsides with limiting on what devices you can use it (supported formats) and you cannot really reencode it without losing even more quality.

Agreed. To clarify: If you reencode from one lossy format to another the result will be *really* bad, as in "listening over a bad analog phone connection". This is due to different psychoacoustic models cutting different information, leaving you with far too little in the second generation copy.

"CD quality audio"?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't want CD quality audio. Why should we be constrained to 44,100hz 16-bit audio when we have recording equipment and playback hardware that can do better? You can hear the difference without being an audiophile too.

Re:"CD quality audio"?

[kevinmenzel]

Not if it was well mastered you can't. You definitely don't want to RECORD to 44,100/16-bit. But there's not much of a reason to move to something higher for finished mixes. In my experience as both a recording engineer and a lover and collector of music, higher quality audio formats (DVD-Audio, etc.) tend to be mixed with less overall dynamic range compression - but nothing that's stretching more than 100dB of dynamic range across the recording. Honestly, there's no reason you couldn't get just as good a sound out of 16-bit/44.1KHz CDs. And if you took the same recording project, never downsampled it, and mastered it using exactly the same settings... you would still be getting a product that has no dynamic range whatsoever from most mastering houses these days.

Re:"CD quality audio"?

[cbope]

Agree 100%. As a playback format there is really nothing inherently wrong with CD audio's 16-bit/44.1KHz encoding. The problem is the crappy mastering we have today and the insane amounts of compression. Note, do not confuse this use of the term "compression" with audio codecs, we are talking about dynamic range compression here not FLAC or MP3. This dynamic range compression does FAR more damage to the audio quality than would benefit from 24-bit/96KHz or higher so-called "HD" audio formats vs. redbook CD audio.

Now if you are RECORDING music, higher bit-depth/bit-rate formats are very useful during recording as they increase the precision available when editing and lower the generational losses when multiple edits are performed before mastering. The final downsample to 16-bit/44.1KHz does little to alter the quality at the end. In fact, the audio quality has already been degraded before that final downsample by the insane amounts of compression today's producers feel they need to use to keep up the loudness war.

Re:"CD quality audio"?

[kasperd]

Let's assume the producer has a master in 96kHz 24bits stereo, and you have audio hardware capable of playing that. Which of the following two options for distribution would you prefer?

Master is downsampled to 44.1kHz with the best possible filter to avoid aliasing. Then the samples are scaled and rounded to 16 bits, with a scaling factor carefully computed to give the best possible SNR. And you get this result on an audio CD or using a lossless compression like FLAC.

Alternatively you can choose to get the 96kHz 24 bits stereo sound compressed with a lossy compression (ogg, mp3, or anything you choose) at a bitrate of 1Mbit/s.

Which of the two would you choose? There is no doubt the first of the two options will give the best audio quality if your hardware is somehow limited to 44.1kHz 16 bits. But if your audio hardware can do better than that, I guess the second option will give better audio quality at one third the bitrate.

If you are optimizing for best possible sound quality, you have to know your constraints. Depending on the constraints you will get different result. If your only constraint is the actual hardware from the D/A converter to the speakers you will get a completely different result from when you are constrained to a certain bitrate but can choose audio hardware as you like. You'll get yet another result if you are constrained by cost of the hardware to do the playback.

Re:"CD quality audio"?

[aitikin]

I'm in the audio industry, and, frankly, I doubt that on anything that I own (some decent quality monitors, good quality headphones, as well as shitty iPod earbuds and the like) would I notice a difference between a completely mastered 44.1khz 16-bit audio file and a 96khz 24-bit audio file. I almost guarantee I wouldn't notice a difference between 44.1khz 24-bit and 96khz 24-bit.

Now, when I'm recording or mixing, I always go for the highest available option, but that's mostly because I'm using software based algorithms to treat the sound (EQ, DNR compression, reverb, etc). If I were using actual hardware to handle all of that, I'd be perfectly content at 44.1khz 24-bit.

It's rare that I even notice a difference between the 24-bit final and the 16-bit that I have to give out, and if you do it right, you can prove there is no perceptible difference merely by taking the file, inverting the phase on it (using any audio editor, including Audacity), and then playing it back against the original. It will only play the audio differences then (yay wave cancellation).

Re:"CD quality audio"?

[evilviper]

I guess the second option will give better audio quality at one third the bitrate.

You would be wrong... You're proposing a lossy codec that discards and distorts sound in the audible range, for the benefit of high frequencies nobody can really hear in the first place.

Furthermore, almost all lossy audio codecs are frequency domain, which are unable to accurately reproduce fast non-tonal changes without artifacts (like pre-echo).

Bad Analogy Incoming

[kirbysuperstar]

You can put out a small fire with a hydrant. That doesn't mean you should, however.

VHS vs BETAMAX

[Anonymous Coward]

If i had the choice between mp3 and flac I would choose mp3
1 I would know I could play it anywhere, car stereo, portable player ,phone etc
2 They are still smaller, for example my car only excepts cd's with mp3 no usb or dvd
3 Frankly I cannot tell the difference..

This list is also based on personal priority..

I bought an iriver mp3 player once , one of the main reasons being it could play ogg, never used the feature..

Re:VHS vs BETAMAX

[qinjuehang]

Its not a hardware difference, unlike VHS and BETAMAX. Conversion is possible.

Re:VHS vs BETAMAX

[Phoshi]

You're missing the main point of the article, being that with a lossless FLAC file you can always re-encode it to your needs.To an mp3 for your PMP of choice, if you wish. FLAC is a great archival format, but unless you have a great sound system the audio advantages are small.

Re:VHS vs BETAMAX

[91degrees]

Everything (except one or two highly unsuccessful players) plays mp3. It's an adequate format. Converting is inconvenient. I'm sure there's a free tool somewhere that will batch convert, and I still consider the hassle to be more significant than the benefit.

I mean feel free to call me lazy, but I'm sure I'm not the laziest person around.

Re:VHS vs BETAMAX

[Homburg]

You drag your songs from your music library to your portable device, and your music player automatically converts them if it needs to. I'm not sure what hassle is involved here.

Re:VHS vs BETAMAX

[Phoshi]

Everything does play mp3. Everything will probably always play mp3. At some point, the quality of your audio hardware will be better than the quality of your mp3s - getting songs in FLAC is more about futureproofing than doing it "for the moment". Sidenote, but I've always found Foobar2k to be an excellent converter, and coupled with its decent search functionality will let you batch convert entire albums, artists, whatever with a few clicks.

Seems fairly obvious why not

[aarggh]

Isn't the fact that it's "good, free, and open" the exact reasons the publishers wouldn't use it? It kinda flies in the face of them being tyrannical mongrels controlling the media distribution if customers can actually meaningfully use it.

Re:Seems fairly obvious why not

[Required Snark]

Online sources want to sell the same info to you as many times as they can. Obsolescence is part of their business plan.

For example, Harper-Collens has put a limit on how many times a library can use a copy of an ebook http://ebooks.dreamwidth.org/32051.html The book can only be circulated 26 times before the DRM license runs out.

This is outrageous and stupid. If possible, boycott all their products.

Re:Seems fairly obvious why not

[AmiMoJo]

I was about to post the same thing. How can they sell you the same shit over and over again if they give it to you in the best format to start with?

Best thing to do is buy the MP3s and then download the FLAC files off BitTorrent. Probably violates the license agreement or something but morally you are in the clear.

Re:Seems fairly obvious why not

[pyite]

Isn't the fact that it's "good, free, and open" the exact reasons the publishers wouldn't use it?

Depends on the band. For instance, I haven't bought a CD version of a studio release from Gov't Mule in quite some time. They offer MP3 and FLAC for purchase right on their own website.

Phish even sells what they call "FLAC-HD" versions. These are 24 bit/96 KHz versions of their live shows.

Not to mention, these, and hundreds of other, bands allow people to tape and distribute copies of their live shows. Those recordings are FLAC as well, often higher than CD quality.

Re:Seems fairly obvious why not

[aarggh]

I think apart from the extra money dipping due to rapid technology changes in multimedia, that this is also part of the gradual conditioning, in order to get the masses accustomed to the concept of "ownership" being replaced with "licensed".

Re:Seems fairly obvious why not

[DCFusor]

Yeah, if I had mod points I'd mark parent "insightful".

Re:Seems fairly obvious why not

[Trufagus]

Didn't Apple make a killing playing this game?

First they sold everyone music at 128kbps (though their competitors were all using 192kbps). I can't remember whether it was Apple themselves, or the media, but the idea that there was an deficient about 128 was dumped on.

Then, they started selling the new 256kbps (without DRM).

Correct me if I'm wrong, but people who bought a track when they were only available at 128kbps had to pay to get the same track upgraded to 256kbps.

Next, Apple will probably release it in some new format (called it "256kbps HD") and owners will have to pay a third time for the same track.

Right there, is a good reason that we will not get to buy our music using a lossless format.

Re:Seems fairly obvious why not

[tehcyder]

I was about to post the same thing. How can they sell you the same shit over and over again if they give it to you in the best format to start with?

Best thing to do is buy the MP3s and then download the FLAC files off BitTorrent. Probably violates the license agreement or something but morally you are in the clear.

I thought the official slashdot answer was to download the files from BitTottent, then send the artist a cheque directly if you enjoyed the music? Also, I thought that "morally" you are entitled to copy anything you want anyway?

Maybe I'm not keeping up properly.

Re:Seems fairly obvious why not

[AmiMoJo]

Well, yeah, I would prefer direct donation to the artist. Google Checkout is ideal. PayPal has too much fraud and cheques cost you money if they bounce.

Re:Seems fairly obvious why not

[omnichad]

128kbps AAC vs. 192kbps MP3 = not as much difference as you'd think. MP3 encoders improved a bit after that, while AAC stayed the same. People still look at the numbers first.

Re:Seems fairly obvious why not

[Josh Coalson]

Isn't the fact that it's "good, free, and open" the exact reasons the publishers wouldn't use it? It kinda flies in the face of them being tyrannical mongrels controlling the media distribution if customers can actually meaningfully use it.

From the publisher's point of view, MP3 is as free and open as FLAC is. That's why a lot of them do sell FLAC. Like the Beatles (before they were even in the Apple store), the Rolling Stones and even Metallica.

I don't want it

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't want it. OGG is ok for this task. I can download & pay more or less depending on the sound quality. If I'm going to listen to sth using my old mp3 player, 64 bits is more than enough. If I'm going to use my living room audio set, then 192 might be ok, although I have to say that 128 seems just as fine. My point is, I don't demand it because I really don't want it. The world is full of problems to solve, things to improve. I respect it if you wish to dedicate your time and your life to solving this one problem, but I don't think it'll benefit me in any way.

I also have no need for higher storage demands. I own less than 1TB combined (5 PCs) and so far I have no need for more. If I had more, I'd only be storing more crap in my computers. Having little means that I have to carefully choose what to save, which in turn helps me stay focused on my goals.

I'm not implying that you should not dedicate your time to this, but seeing that there's millions of linux users, I think it would really benefit a lot of people if you helped remove clutter from GNU/* distributions, clean code, remove unmaintained packages, fix errors, provide solutions in forums, help document, help advertise.

Re:I don't want it

[jones_supa]

Having little means that I have to carefully choose what to save, which in turn helps me stay focused on my goals.

I follow the same philosophy.

I don't know anyone who still downloads music...

[Kifoth]

Everyone I know (in the EU) has switched to Spotify.

(This isn't a sales pitch, just a statement of fact :-P)

Compatibility

[Ralish]

Because FLAC is very poorly supported among both portable media devices and media center devices? Further, the difference in actual perceptible quality between a high quality mp3/ogg/wma/whatever encoding and a FLAC encoding is between negligible and non-existent, negating pretty much any benefit of FLAC. Media archival is one area where FLAC is an obvious choice for, but bit-for-bit storage is generally something only a subset of music enthusiasts care about, and so unless constantly transcoding FLAC into a format that your chosen non-PC device supports is your idea of a good time, then it's just not worth the effort...

Re:Compatibility

[aivankovic]

Because FLAC is very poorly supported among both portable media devices and media center devices? Further, the difference in actual perceptible quality between a high quality mp3/ogg/wma/whatever encoding and a FLAC encoding is between negligible and non-existent, negating pretty much any benefit of FLAC. Media archival is one area where FLAC is an obvious choice for, but bit-for-bit storage is generally something only a subset of music enthusiasts care about, and so unless constantly transcoding FLAC into a format that your chosen non-PC device supports is your idea of a good time, then it's just not worth the effort...

I agree. No one talks about the sound quality anymore (eg importance of the quality of the loudspeakers, new models of the amplifiers... even headphones are out of the focus), but only about informatical aspects: bandwith, gigabytes,... It's assumed that sound quality is good enough.

Re:Compatibility

[Gaygirlie]

Because FLAC is very poorly supported among both portable media devices and media center devices?

Indeed. Sure, my PC can support anything I throw at it and my phone does the same, but for example my car audio system doesn't play FLAC or anything, only MP3.

Further, the difference in actual perceptible quality between a high quality mp3/ogg/wma/whatever encoding and a FLAC encoding is between negligible and non-existent, negating pretty much any benefit of FLAC.

Again agreed. Atleast I can't hear any effing difference between FLAC and a good quality MP3. On a portable device the size of the files is much more important and if I can't hear the difference anyways then I obviously choose the smaller files. And since ALL of the devices I use to play music support MP3 then there's no need to do any kind of format conversions or anything and as such there is no loss of quality even over a longer timespan.

Basically I understand why some people want FLAC files, but for general populace FLAC files give absolutely no benefit whatsoever and still takes up more space.

Re:Compatibility

[sim60]

I don't think I've ever spent any time converting FLAC to AAC (which is what I use on my portable player - HTC Desire). I buy a CD, put it in the media player, and press OK on the remote control. Some minutes later, the CD pops out again. The media player music storage has a FLAC copy (which it plays just fine), the portable player sync folder has an AAC copy.

I don't see why I couldn't download a FLAC file, and have some service auto-convert it to AAC and put it in the appropriate place. Should be trivial on Windows or Linux.

If you have any DNLA media players, FLAC could be converted on the fly to whatever format they want, including any of the widely supported .lossless formats, like WAV, WMA Lossless, and Apple Lossless, etc.

Whether you think the difference in quality between mp3 & lossless is worth it is a personal choice. If you listen to a lot of classical, or actually know what a cymbal or violin sounds like, you might prefer FLAC. If you only listen to compressed to death pop through $0.50 earbuds on a clipped at 200Hz & 16KHz portable player while standing next to a busy road, then you're probably happy with mp3 :-)

But personal choice is what the article is arguing for - why not actually allow people the choice in music downloads, in an unencumbered music format, that anyone with a PC capable of downloading it can listen to?

(TBH, I expect the answer would be "personal choice in music formats does not make money for the vendor".)

Simon.

Re:Compatibility

[rawler]

I personally would prefer to BUY in FLAC, even if I later have to transcode. If I buy lossily compressed, I can never get back original quality, but the other way is (relatively) easy. In particular, many of the music-stores are not web-outlets but requires a client-side software. (Itunes for one) If customers demanded it, it would be trivial to implement auto-conversion to the target-device, many already do, while keeping originals in fully-quality format.

Re:Compatibility

[Malc]

Portable support is not the point. Being able to batch encode is. I've been ripping my CDs for years. When I gave up on the whole OGG Vorbis thing and went back to MP3, no problem. When I switched to iTunes + iPhone, no problem encoding to AAC. No decrease in quality transcoding from one lossy format to another. No doubt I'll want to re-enocde again in the future if there is an improvement in the encoders.

Re:Compatibility

[Breetai]

Compatibility should not become a problem. After downloading you can transcode the files to any format you wish to use. Getting a program easy enough to do this without too much effort, will require some work.

Also marketing and promoting to users could become a challenge.
But if you download the .flac from a site. That site could also link to the programs / services that could render your .flac's to .mp3/ogg/wma.

Maybe even the site where you buy your music could also include the lossy compressed files as a bonus for extra cost.
I sense several business oppurtunities here.

Re:Compatibility

[walter_f]

As to portable media players supporting FLAC:

Sandisk (Sansa Fuze, Fuze+, Clip, Clip+)
iRiver (B30, E100, E150, E200, Lplayer, P7, Spinn, S100)
Archos (Vision 3, 24, 28, 32)
Samsung (Yepp M1, YP-Q1, YP-Q2, YP-Q3, YP-R0, YP-R1)
Philips (GoGear Muse)
Sweex (MP470, MP480)
Transcend (MP860, Tsonic 870)

and last but not least,
Cowon/iAudio (all of them)

Prices:
The most affordable player capable of FLAC (and Ogg Vorbis), the Sweex MP480 Vidi 8GB, from GBP 22 (ca USD 35) in the U.K.

Re:Compatibility

[Kijori]

That seems to me a little like arguing that the real loss from not buying CDs is that you don't get a handy portable mirror. Yes that is a benefit that you miss out on - but only one person in a million cares about it. As a reason to advocate FLAC it's a little low on mass-market appeal.

And frankly, what would be the big difference if you had ripped to 320kB Vorbis files (or the equivalent) at the start? You're never going more than one transcode away from the source file so the quality loss would be minimal (I suspect imperceptible to 99.9% of people), you save a lot of hard disk space and you don't have to transcode the files before you put them on your MP3 player (or at least that would be possible now, when MP3 players have enough space for more than one or two tracks at high-bitrate!).

Re:Compatibility

[vakuona]

And crucially, none of them are called iPod. That is a huge downside! No one will sell music you can't play on the iPod. At least no one significant.

Re:Compatibility

[Timmmm]

You're missing the point. You should buy FLAC, not for your portable media player (use MP3 or AAC for that), but so that in future if there is an even more awesome format you can easily transcode to that one.

Re:Compatibility

[cbope]

To be sure, most people use horrible speakers/amps/headphones to listen to music. The fact is, you CAN hear the difference, quite a lot in fact, when you use good equipment. It has been proven time and again in double-blind testing. However, such a result requires high quality components to reproduce the dynamics, impact and feel of the music. I am NOT talking about BS like $500 cables, which are a total sham. I'm talking about the components that matter... speakers, amps and receivers, playback components, headphones. The average consumer-level quality of these is pretty poor from a sound quality perspective and it's not the fault of consumers, they just haven't heard better or know that there is a better. And for many people, what they have is "good enough". It's also a proven fact that some people have better or more sensitive hearing and will hear the difference where someone else may not.

Re:Compatibility

[Ralish]

Can you please provide links?

Re:Compatibility

[FlawedLogic]

The difference in actual perceptible quality between a high quality mp3/ogg/wma/whatever encoding and a FLAC encoding is between negligible and non-existent, negating pretty much any benefit of FLAC.

Every time this subject comes up, someone wheels out this line and it is simply not true. On a crappy iPod it may be the case, but one day you may earn enough to get a decent stereo (I've got a Cyrus DAC and amplifier for example) and you will bitterly regret not having bought or kept a lossless copy of all your music. I can very easily tell the difference between 256kbs or even 320kbs and lossless in a blind test, and so could anyone else on a decent system in a quiet environment.

Re:Compatibility

[KingAlanI]

yeah, I like FLAC, but converting to a lossy format for the portable (I tend to use MP3, 256 or 320kbps) is annoying.

Re:Compatibility

[hazydave]

Indeed... music pricing ought to be based on quality and transportability, nothing more. CD is the base-level standard if you actually care about quality; the market has generally demonstrated that most people do not.

Amazon's sales model is a decent one: downloads in 256kb/s MP3 are generally a couple bucks cheaper than the CD, if you buy by the album. Neither format is device-specific. And yeah, they could add FLAC and offer the CD quality without the disc media, but at the same price, I still like the CD -- free backup media with a nice label.

The big promise of FLAC is finally getting past the CD in terms of quality. They've tried... but the format wars doomed both DVD-Audio and SACD to the fringe. And while most of the high-end audio stuff going forward may be on Blu-ray, there's no guarantee that Blu-ray audio will catch on any better. But companies like HDtracks are already offering selected music in 24-bit and high-sampling (88.2kHz up to 192kHz) via FLAC downloads. And just as important for popular music, this is often sold without the overcompression (audio compression, not format compression) that's typically and increasingly applied to popular music. It's mostly classical and very classic rock albums at this point, but it's a start.

Unfortunately, the set of people who care about such higher quality audio is small enough that you're not going to be buying all your music this way, unless you live in a very weird space, musically.

Re:Compatibility

[hazydave]

You can lose considerable quality transcoding between different psychoacoustic compression models. In fact, it's usually much worse than generational compression using the same model, simply because you get weird random interactions between the models. Not everyone's going to hear this, but of course, some people were perfectly happy listening to 64kb/s WMA files, pre-echos and all.

But the models do improve, absolutely. The ability to re-compress stuff you ripped 15 years ago in the latest LAME encoder, for the player you're using now, is a great thing. That's a 10 minute setup and some off-line crunching if you have FLAC rips of your music; it's potentially months of random CD ripping if you don't.

And don't underestimate that last part, either. I actually DID re-rip my entire collection, many years ago. Not because of a format improvement (though I did re-rip at higher quality, still not FLAC back in those days, but back then, I didn't have an 8TB RAID either), but because my original music disc crashed, and I hadn't made backups. All my music in those days was CD rips, but I still had to start over... that's a huge investment in time. Don't forget about the backups, either... I currently have everything on Blu-ray backups, as well as MP3 versions of all music on my PS3's HDD (would be nice to automate that part).

Re:Compatibility

[hazydave]

The big issue with FLAC isn't just player compatibility, but storage. I have a few 24-bit/96kHz FLAC-encoded albums, averaging over a gigabyte each in size. Unless you're using one of the hard-drive equipped Archos devices or something similar (if anyone else uses HDD anymore), you're not going to keep many albums on your player this way.

You're also probably listening via earbuds, maybe some better cans if you really care, but still... there's not that much need for the higher quality on a portable device. Unless you're using a Cowon device, you may not have the audio chops in the device hardware needed to get much better sound out of these files, either. But it's nice to know you can play that latest HDtracks download without the need to transcode.

And for those living in the 21rst century (dedicated audio players being so 1990s), FLAC is also supported in many Android media players.

Re:Compatibility

[m85476585]

I can here the difference on good headphones and certain songs. I've done listening tests on 3 headphones. Using Sennheiser CX300's ($30), I could barely tell the difference between FLAC and V0 MP3. In a blind test, I might not be able to tell them apart at all. Using Sennheiser IE6's (~$120) it is easier to tell the difference, and I can tell the difference on certain songs. Using my friend's Audio Technica ATH-M50's (~$120), the difference is obvious on many songs. All of this is listening coming straight out of a PC sound card. With the ATH-M50's I will sometimes use a headphone amp because my sound card can't drive them loud enough to hear every detail.

When I say certain songs, I like to pick songs that the V0 encoder had trouble with, or in other words V0 encoded songs with the highest average bitrate. When there are many instruments and voices at the same time, there is more information that has to be represented, or more than may be lost in compression.

The difference is most noticeable in the high end, particularly in the percussion. I can hear up to 19.5KHz. If you can't hear as high, you will have more trouble distinguishing FLAC vs MP3, bu it isn't impossible. Percussion, especially cymbals, sound clearer and sharper in FLAC, but clearness or sharpness alone aren't enough for me to distinguish the difference in back to back listening. I always listen for flaws in the sound of cymbals-- instead of sounding like a real instrument, they will sound digital, shimmery, or wrong. It's hard to describe without making up what sounds like audiophile BS, but the difference is there.

I agree for casual listening FLAC is unnecessary. If there is even the slightest noise coming from the environment (in the car, air conditioning running at home, etc) it becomes hard to distinguish the difference, and if I am not devoting my full attention to the music, I don't hear anything wrong MP3 encoded music.

Re:Compatibility

[Sirusjr]

But FLAC doesn't need to be compatible with your player. You can always convert directly to ALAC for an iPod or WMA Lossless for a Zune or any other silly lossless format your player supports. You still have lossless files because there is no loss between the two. Also if you are thinking about the future, you may want to store your lossless downloads until you get a system that can properly play the files. Wouldn't it be hugely annoying if a few years down the road you buy a quality speaker system or set of headphones and you start to hear the difference between lossless and lossy and you can't go back and listen to it in lossless?

Re:Compatibility

[npsimons]

Why not just post the link to the list of portable Vorbis players? Also, the list of not-so-portable players wouldn't hurt either.

Re:Compatibility

[DavidTC]

The ability to re-compress stuff you ripped 15 years ago in the latest LAME encoder, for the player you're using now, is a great thing. That's a 10 minute setup and some off-line crunching if you have FLAC rips of your music; it's potentially months of random CD ripping if you don't.

Indeed, I was starting to think I was the only person who did that.

This whole 'FLAC' discussion is pointless. Everyone should rip and label to FLAC, and burn those to a DVD somewhere so you can get them later.

Then, if they have the space, sure, if they want, keep them around in their computer, if their portable media device has the space and can play them, use them there too. Or keep them on their computer, and transcode to the portable device.

Of, instead, or batch encode them to MP3s or Oggs or whatever on their computer and delete the FLACs. This takes no added time, as you mentioned....it's a batch process, just run it overnight. (We're long past the point where people would have to convert in the middle of this because the uncompressed audio files were taking up too much space.)

FLAC is to save the trouble of reripping and relabeling every time you want to try something else, and it lets you put 20+ albums on a DVD as a backup instead of having to duplicate 20 CDs and kept those as backup.

Anything after that is a matter of storage space and personal taste. For me, it varies by the band whether or not my computer has the FLACs or MP3, and all FLACs are transcoded when put on my iPhone to MP3s.

Well ...

[lennier1]

Most of the time I listen to music using a mobile device (phone, PMP) and earbuds. So for my purposes large lossless files wouldn't make much of a difference anyway.

But in the end it all depends on whether there's a large enough demand on the market.

FLAC is bullshit

[ZankerH]

I tried converting my entire mp3 library to FLAC and couldn't hear any difference. It's just audiophiles circlejerking. I bet you all use golden audio cables and $500 cable stands, too.

Re:FLAC is bullshit

[Corbets]

I tried converting my entire mp3 library to FLAC and couldn't hear any difference. It's just audiophiles circlejerking. I bet you all use golden audio cables and $500 cable stands, too.

Is that +1 funny or -1 troll? I can't tell...

Re:FLAC is bullshit

[kevinmenzel]

Bahahahaha... Now I kind of wish I hadn't posted just so I could mod this funny :) You made my day good sir.

Re:FLAC is bullshit

[Rik Sweeney]

Obviously you're joking, but just in case you're not:

Converting a lossy format (MP3) into a lossless format (FLAC) will not magically restore the bits lost in the original conversion to MP3.

What you're doing is the equivalent of taking an 800x600 image, scaling it down to 1x1, saving it, re-opening it, scaling it back up to 800x600 and complaining that all you have is a single colour image rather than the original.

Re:FLAC is bullshit

[Gaygirlie]

I tried converting my entire mp3 library to FLAC and couldn't hear any difference

WTF? You converted from a lossy format to lossless format and expected to get MORE audio data than you had in the beginning? *facepalm*

Re:FLAC is bullshit

[Arancaytar]

Hey, that would work in Hollywood OS.

"Enhance!"

Re:FLAC is bullshit

[Gaygirlie]

Or in CSI.

Re:FLAC is bullshit

[nloop]

Woosh!

Re:FLAC is bullshit

[moonbender]

Me, too. In fact, when I reconverted it back to MP3 to save on size, it sounded worse than the original MP3s! Clearly the FLAC step actually reduces sound quality!

Re:FLAC is bullshit

[suss]

This may be modded as Funny, but there are a lot of people out there that have actually done this...

See also; "Why didn't upconverting my cd audio from 16 to 24 bits make my music sound better?!?!"

Re:FLAC is bullshit

[game kid]

you idiot, you only hear the difference if you play the flac in a video tag (but NOT in ie9 because microsoft sucks and itll sound like an atari). HTML% FTW

Re:FLAC is bullshit

[greg1104]

Wait, did you connect your computer to the network using a regular cable when you did the conversion? There's your problem. You need to use a good network cable or the bits aren't polished properly when you convert from MP3 to FLAC. You might think "but I didn't even use the network when I was converting". Doesn't matter--the audio bits leak out of there if you're not using the right cable.

Re:FLAC is bullshit

[Velex]

What you're doing is the equivalent of taking an 800x600 image, scaling it down to 1x1, saving it, re-opening it, scaling it back up to 800x600 and complaining that all you have is a single colour image rather than the original.

Hey, man, I see that work on CSI all the time! You ain't foolin' me!

Re:FLAC is bullshit

[SnakeEater251]

I had a roommate in college who spent hours converting his MP3 collection to FLAC... I facepalmed.

Re:FLAC is bullshit

[urbanriot]

Because you're hard of hearing, you devolve to name calling? I'm sorry that you're too young to afford a quality sound system, but many of us adults who are listening to music on equipment other than your PC speakers can immediately discern the difference between CD audio / .flac and .mp3. Also, you're doing it wrong; try and convert your CD audio to .flac rather than your .mp3 collection and perhaps you'll understand the conversation the adults are having. I'm wondering if that little bit of irony is why you were modded 'funny'.

Re:FLAC is bullshit

[GrumpySteen]

The song "Lube It With Me One More Time" was recorded the night of the murder and the recording studio is just three blocks away from the crime scene.

Let me put it in the computer here.... okay. Now let's rip the song to FLAC, filter out the vocals and the instruments, increase the gain on the background noise, filter out electrical hum, enahance the sine wave, refactor the coefficient of the waveform and run in through a furry transformer and we should be able to hear the victim's last words.

The only music worth paying for...

[Terminus32]

...is music that is pressed onto vinyl! :-)

Why not just sell fully uncompressed audio?

[zalas]

You know... FLAC doesn't actually compress down from WAV all that much. Given current storage sizes, why not simply just sell fully uncompressed audio files? You can use FLAC or whatever as the transmission medium and/or storage server-side to be less of a bandwidth burden, but the user should just see an incoming WAV file, etc. that he can do whatever he wants with...

Personally, I rip all my CDs to --preset-extreme MP3 to listen, since I can just pull out my CD if I really needed a bit-perfect copy (e.g. for voice track extraction).

Re:Why not just sell fully uncompressed audio?

[cbope]

I don't know about you, but ~60% of original size when using FLAC sounds to me like compression is useful. While nowhere near the 10x or more compression of popular lossy codecs, it's still useful to save space. It also helps when you need to make backups.

Re:Why not just sell fully uncompressed audio?

[Anonymous Coward]

You know... FLAC doesn't actually compress down from WAV all that much. Given current storage sizes, why not simply just sell fully uncompressed audio files? You can use FLAC or whatever as the transmission medium and/or storage server-side to be less of a bandwidth burden, but the user should just see an incoming WAV file, etc. that he can do whatever he wants with...

Personally, I rip all my CDs to --preset-extreme MP3 to listen, since I can just pull out my CD if I really needed a bit-perfect copy (e.g. for voice track extraction).

WAV has extremely limited support for meta tags. If you're a serious music collector, FLAC allows you to encode the most mundane details of a track into the tags (composer, producer, recording engineer, 2nd violin player). That way if I wanted to find every track that a really good session musician may have played on, it's in an easily searchable field, without having to pollute the "song title" filed (e.g., "Song Name [featuring guy1, guy2, guy3, guy4]").

I would strongly recommend going to your favorite fancypants hifi store and checking out a Meridian Sooloos music storage system for an example of what I mean.

Doesn't matter: Loudness wars...

[irp]

While I would like to agree, I don't really think format matters as long as the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war is going on. I would rather have a consumer demand that the music retains the full dynamic range. Quiet should be quite - please DON'T try to decide at what volume I hear the music. I have a volume control, I can turn it up myself thank you very much.

The newest CDs of the bands I listen to (which I admit are rather loud, but also melodic) sound imho like crap. The individual numbers are good - but I can not listen to them in sequence. All appears have equal volume - even the quiet ones! It really tires my ears. Also the sound doesn't seem as "sharp" to me, it its loud and overwhelming - but there is no "kick" in it, even when it shift from a "quiet" passage to a "massive" one, it's just noise... :(

Re:Doesn't matter: Loudness wars...

[cbope]

ReplayGain, while not a cure for the original problem, at least helps considerably. It may not restore the missing dynamics, but it does help with the annoying "feature" of playing back a mix of tracks from different albums where the volume can jump all over the place, especially when playing back music from the 60's and 70's before the loudness war really took over.

I wish today's producers would get the fact that they are destroying the music they are supposedly making in the first place. It's totally unnecessary but I lay the blame on most of the younger generation's ADD-like listening habits. Ooooh... louder... must be better. As parent says, we have volume knobs, USE THEM!

Re:Doesn't matter: Loudness wars...

[DigiShaman]

So true. My old tape cassettes sounds better than these CD and digital rehashes because of all the damn compression these days.

Re:I don't know anyone who still downloads music..

[lilo_booter]

... considering only 7 countries are supported, not everyone I know in the EU has the option (including myself).

Demand for FLAC

[Wowsers]

I could demand FLAC, but not many people use the format or know what it is. A quick experience I had. After a system crash I decided to upgrade from WinXP to Win7 (I very rarely use Windows, and it's only there for testing). There is no default support for FLAC in Windows, in fact, the only lossless format I did find support for is WAV (PCM).

If Windows does not provide support out of the box for FLAC, and to add it to Windows Media Player needs hacking of the registry, you can see why not many people would use the format, or even know of it's existence. It also does not help that there are multiple websites that proport to add FLAC support, but which Windows package really is genuine, or spyware?

I use FLAC on my Linux setup, my PMP, and phone (it's a deal breaker with me that an "MP3" player MUST support FLAC).

Re:Demand for FLAC

[DarwinSurvivor]

Ran into this myself at an event we were running. I had asked a friend to bring a laptop (he runs window) for people to listen to songs with so they could select one to be used at the next station (on my linux machine). It wasn't until after copying the library over and him trying a few songs that we discovered there was NO flac support what-so-ever on his machine. Turns out the *only* way to play flac on a windows machine is with FooBar (audio program) or VLC. PITA!

Re:Demand for FLAC

[Weedhopper]

FLAC on your PMP and/or phone? Why? On what output devices are you listening to your FLAC on the go?

I used to have a script to manually downgrade my lossless audio for portable carry but now that iTunes does that for me as a per device option, I just let it do it automagically.

Re:Demand for FLAC

[DarwinSurvivor]

Yeah, had there been INTERNET at our location, there wouldn't have been a problem. We were literally running the entire station of generators, we were lucky to have flush toilets at this location!

Re:Demand for FLAC

[Tordre]

WMA 9 has a lossless option which is supported by windows, its not flac but it is lossless. also you can get a flac directshow codec for windows media player, or you could use a 3rd party media player like winamp, or vlc.

Maybe they won't sell a lossless format because...

[jmcvetta]

.. that would impair their ability to charge the same person several times for the same content in different formats.

I rip all my CDs into FLAC.

[dpmarsh]

My entire CD collection is ripped to FLAC first. Then I encode 2 further copies, one in MP3 and the other in OGG. MP3 for the kids and OGG for my Ipod Video which has Rockbox as my ears preferred the quality of OGG over MP3. It can even play FLAC if I really wanted but takes up too much space. If they ever decide to get rid of CDs I am going to be hard pressed to find FLAC music online, so I say YES, lets tell the music industry we want FLAC! However as one poster has already commented, CD quality was never really quality. 16bit 44100Hz Stereo is not a 'scratch' on analogue, infinitely variable, vinyl :)

Re:ALAC is good enough

[jmcvetta]

legit music that I can do anything I want with.

Contradiction. The very idea of 'legit' music recordings contains within itself restrictions on what you can do with said recordings.

Re:ALAC is good enough

[kevinmenzel]

In my country, iTunes Plus is still "the new standard on iTunes" and refers to 256kbps AAC, not ALAC audio files - has this changed in the States?

Re:because people "buying" music are already idiot

[jmcvetta]

Man, post as your real self, whoever you are. I want to say "Amen, brother".. but not to a fucking A/C.

Re:I don't know anyone who still downloads music..

[Kifoth]

Thought it was bigger than that! Insensitive clod is insensitive :)

Ah well... My point is still that, based on the speed at which Spotify is growing (where available), the future is streaming.

Why do we put up with DRM?

[Arancaytar]

Same reason. There are not enough consumers who care in order to put any kind of pressure on the music cartels.

Re:Why do we put up with DRM?

[neiljt]

Same reason. There are not enough consumers who care in order to put any kind of pressure on the music cartels.

"You" might ... "We" don't. And if you think there's no pressure on the distributors, which planet have you just arrived from?

Because it's not enough

[mysidia]

"We have plenty of HDD space and broadband internet. Why don't we demand full CD quality audio in an accessible format from online music stores?

I can tell the difference between CDs and records; the CDs have distortion. I don't want crappy 48khz 16-bit CD quality audio.

I want 96khz 24-bit digital audio (or better).

Storage is cheap now. I don't understand why we are going backwards, and why the manufacturers have trouble getting back to or acknowledging that CD quality just isn't good enough. And lossy compressed audio is grossly unacceptable.

Re:Because it's not enough

[kevinmenzel]

You almost certainly can't tell the difference between the same mix, through the same mastering process, whether that file is 44.1/16 bit (CDs aren't 48KHz), and something like 24/96. Audio for records is mixed and mastered DIFFERENTLY. It's not simply a matter of format comparison, but actually comparing two different mixes. Same, for the most part, with DVD-Audio mixes, and SACD mixes. Take the same mix, master with the same settings, but change the target bit-rate and sample-rate and you will not be able to tell the difference.

Re:Because it's not enough

[Gordonjcp]

CDs have a lower noise floor and less distortion than vinyl. They also sound much, much better, since they have a far wider frequency range and are maximally flat up to around 16-17kHz (they roll off well below the Nyquist frequency because otherwise the filter slope would be ridiculously steep and ringy - but that's still far higher than vinyl goes).

Unless you're using quarter-inch tape, you're just playing.

I don't want FLAC

[flimflammer]

We may have a lot more hard drive space these days, but really? There are many formats that produce great quality and don't need to be ~25 megs per song. To anyone but real audiophiles, I think this would be a waste of space.

Re:I don't know anyone who still downloads music..

[91degrees]

How do you get music for a portable media player? Surely at least one of your friends has one.

Re:I don't know anyone who still downloads music..

[Kifoth]

Premium has local storage. Works on all the major mobile and desktop OS'es.

Re:Gosh since when was CD quality quality?

[mysidia]

CD sound is compressed and leaves out "unneeded" bits of audio because it had to be processed by very early and cheap computers. You might as well say MP3 quality. Lossless copies of a lossy media are NOT the holy grail of HiFi.

No. That is incorrect. CD sound is uncompressed PCM; no bits are "discarded" except signal bits that were never sampled in the first place, due to the finite sampling rate, OR bits that were aliased due to distortion; all conversions to digital from analog require sampling. A frequency called the Nyquist frequency is defined to be half the sampling frequency of the digitally processed signal. It can be mathematically proven that aliasing can be avoided if the Nyquist frequency is greater than the maximum component frequency of the signal being sampled..

CD audio 16-bit 44.1kHz; which should be lossless up to the Nyquist frequency of 22.05kHz -- for most humans, the audible frequency range is 0 to 20 kHz, so the only audible difference should be the possibility of certain audio artifacts; not due to any 'compression' or 'removal' of information.

CD audio is not as good as the best possible DVD audio (24-bit 182 kHz)

CD audio is also not as good as LP audio; where the LP playback is done with a high quality pickup cartridge, and the playback is pristine (no record scratches, dust, vibration, hum, incorrect turntable setup, etc).

Re:Gosh since when was CD quality quality?

[sokoban]

But CD, DAT, and the stereo PCM option for DVD-Video all use uncompressed audio.

Yeah, but most music is mixed in at least 24bit/96kHz these days. CDs have to dither to 16/44.1 which either requires truncation or psychoacoustic noise shaped dithering.

Read this if you're actually interested in a full explanation:
http://www.izotope.com/products/audio/ozone/OzoneDitheringGuide.pdf

Related: ripping CDs to FLAC/CUE properly on Linux

[RichiH]

On Windows, Exact Audio Copy seems to be the gold standard with more bells and whistles than I could wish for.

I don't use Windows though.

What is the "best" way to rip audio CDs to FLAC with CUE sheets on Linux? Ideally, I'd like:

* automagic grabbing of meta-data off the Internet
* automagic comparison of my ripped results to an online database. I.e. I want to know if my rip is bit-perfect.
* a guesstimate of how good/bad a rip's quality is, depending on the read data of the disk drive
* optionally a log file of the ripping process embedded in the FLAC
* optionally a way to mark and/or save perfect copies to a different location

Someone on /. has to be an audio nerd as well. What's your setup, how do you do this? Or should I run EAC in Wine? Or do I need Windows, after all?

Re:do you stick CDs in your phone? :)

[Xtifr]

Because FLAC is very poorly supported among both portable media devices and media center devices?

So are CDs, yet people buy those. I have bought FLACs from livedownloads.com, and it's a lot like buying a CD, except it was a little cheaper (about halfway between the MP3 price and the CD price), and I didn't have to wait for delivery. Once I got 'em, I transcoded 'em (once) for my portable, and burned 'em for my CD player(s), so the total amount of work was almost exactly the same as for a CD (which I would rip instead of burn). I didn't see any particular downside, and I'd like it to be an option more often.

Consider *who* is listening to the music

[fantomas]

Not only where people are listening to the music, but also who is listening to the music.

Lots of us have been exposed to loud noises over the last 20, 30, 40 or more years. Some through our own choices (loud live gigs, nightclubs etc), and through noise that isn't our choice (living in cities, working in industrial workspaces).

Lots of us don't have perfect hearing so to be honest less than perfect sound reproduction is good enough, our hearing is too shot. No point spending thousands on a sound reproduction set up because we can't hear the difference.

I read an interesting story about the BBC maybe fifteen- twenty years ago. They were having a hard time finding sound engineers who could meet their high standards, because teenagers from the personal music generation (mid 80s onwards) had universally damaged their hearing through the volume they set their music at. Until personal mobile music came along there just wasn't the opportunity for people to damage their own hearing as a leisure pursuit in that continuous manner.

Re:Consider *who* is listening to the music

[JWSmythe]

    You are very correct.

    When I was about 18, people had noticed that I set sound equipment with more bass and less treble. I could also hear the whine of CRT monitors, and from the next room. People were frequently thrown when I could say "Oh, you have a computer in your office", before stepping into their office. That was a while back, when it wasn't too terribly common to have your own computer in your office or at home.

    I had my hearing tested not too long after that. It showed that my hearing in the low and mid ranges were perfectly normal, but in the high ranges it was well above normal. That's why treble sounds were "too loud" to me.

    In my 20's, I developed tinnitus, so I have a pretty substantial ring in my ears all the time at about 13KHz. Day and night the sound is there.

    Now, in my 30's, my hearing in the upper ranges has dropped down to "normal", and my bass hearing is still normal. That's with my own share of rock concerts, listening to bands at bar gigs, clubs, listening to unmuffled engines (race cars, aircraft), air tools, gunfire, and explosions. I can't imagine the 100 to 125 decibels found in most airliners, and the thousands of hours I've spent flying around the country (and world).

    Now when I fly, I use pressure relieving earplugs and noise reducing headphones (at the same time). I don't hear the noise, but I also don't hear the flight attendants asking what I want to drink. I do a pretty good job of reading lips, and pointing at what I want during the flight, or just buying my own overpriced drinks at the airport and bringing them on the plane.

    Hopefully I can keep what's left of my hearing for a while. I'm sure hours in datacenters don't help much either. Earplugs aren't exactly practical there, where I'm frequently shouting instructions to someone on the other side of the rack, or I need to be able to yell at someone on the phone "I'm in the datacenter. Hold on while I go outside."

Devices, convenience and lack of knowledge

[jcostom]

3 reasons why this will never happen on any large scale. 1. Portable devices don't do FLAC. No FLAC on the iPod/iPhone/iPad means you just eliminated >90% of the portable device market. 2. Convenience - several folks cited how ripping CDs is inconvenient. So is converting FLAC to something usable by your devices. 3. Lack of knowledge/commitment - be honest. Think about how many people you know would be willing to learn how to do the conversions or commit to doing them. Until those 3 are solved, you're going to be buying online music in MP3 or M4A formats.

Re:Devices, convenience and lack of knowledge

[Mashiara]

1. The portable device issue is one of chicken-vs-egg, add demand and support will follow (probably in short-order since it's just a firmware update, something iThings handle very nicely if you use them with the iSoftware).

2. Ripping is indeed a pain, however I like to hoard the physical goods; the sleeves and whatnot. I rip them to flac and mp3 and my Squeezebox plays the flac versions, my portables will settle for mp3 (mostly because of storage space and the devices don't have that good DAC+amp anyway). Another reason for flac is future-proofing, I would absolutely hate to re-rip the 600+ (and counting) collection: it would take months...

3. Is also simply solved by the iSoftware (it already has options for automagical transcoding), or whatever software your favourite player ships with.

Proper Perspective

[BlueStrat]

From TFS:

...better future-proofing and converting capabilities. FLAC is a good, free and open format...

We see here yet another case of mistakenly assuming a commonality of perception where history strongly suggests the opposite. The things listed above as features are actually perceived as bugs by the media distribution cartels.

Strat

Where's the story?

[cbope]

I do it today. I buy CD's and rip them to FLAC (simultaneously applying ReplayGain) and then they go to my media jukebox. The CD then goes on the shelf and is my master backup should all else fail. I can easily transcode the FLAC to anything else I need without generational loss in quality. My media jukebox is a commercial NAS with RAID 5 and hot spare, so backups are less of a concern. No matter what happens in the future with audio formats, FLAC is about as future-proof as you can get while preserving original quality.

I doubt we'll ever get to buy FLAC from the major labels because there is no possibility to lock it up in DRM.

Re:because people "buying" music are already idiot

[MysteriousPreacher]

Yeah, good luck forcing your Star Trek ancestor worship-based economy on to others.

Rotational Velocidensity

[bmo]

I have a PhD in Digital Music Conservation from the University of Florida. I have to stress that the phenomenon known as "digital dust" is the real problem regarding conservation of music, and any other type of digital file. Digital files are stored in digital filing cabinets called "directories" which are prone to "digital dust" - slight bit alterations that happen now or then. Now, admittedly, in its ideal, pristine condition, a piece of musical work encoded in FLAC format contains more information than the same piece encoded in MP3, however, as the FLAC file is bigger, it accumulates, in fact, MORE digital dust than the MP3 file. Now you might say that the density of dust is the same. That would be a naive view. Since MP3 files are smaller, they can be much more easily stacked together and held in "drawers" called archive files (Zip, Rar, Lha, etc.) ; in such a configuration, their surface-to-volume ratio is minimized. Thus, they accumulate LESS digital dust and thus decay at a much slower rate than FLACs. All this is well-known in academia, alas the ignorant hordes just think that because it's bigger, it must be better.

--
BMO

Re:Rotational Velocidensity

[Anonymous Coward]

Hearing the difference now isn't the reason to encode to FLAC. FLAC uses lossless compression, while MP3 is "lossy." What this means is that for each year the MP3 sits on your hard drive, it will lose roughly 12kbps, assuming you have SATA - it's about 15kbps on IDE, but only 7kbps on SCSI, due to rotational velocidensity. You don't want to know how much worse it is on CD-ROM or other optical media.

I started collecting MP3s in about 2001, and if I try to play any of the tracks I downloaded back then, even the stuff I grabbed at 320kbps, they just sound like crap. The bass is terrible, the midrange, well don't get me started. Some of those albums have degraded down to 32 or even 16kbps. FLAC rips from the same period still sound great, even if they weren't stored correctly, in a cool, dry place. Seriously, stick to FLAC, you may not be able to hear the difference now, but in a year or two, you'll be glad you did.

Re:Rotational Velocidensity

[usul294]

I've heard these can prevent the digital dust menace, though only for a short while.

Re:Rotational Velocidensity

[hazydave]

But of course, you must know the latest "dustbuster" hard drives entirely eliminate the "digital dust" problem. The disc's rotational speed is modulated to hit the resonant frequency of digital dust (similar techniques are used to keep DSLR imagers clean), preventing any dust accumulation.

For archival, they also have electrostatic vaults now, which keep your hard drives safe in a temperature controlled environment, in a strong electrostatic field, that completely prevents the accumulation of digital dust. That dust, in fact, is harvested, and sold to companies like Apple and Microsoft. When incorporated into operating systems, this digital dust ensures that, over time, you start to hate that shiny new OS, and will convince yourself that you need the new version, despite there being any good reason for this upgrade.

Linux, curiously, contains no digital dust. There are occasional small self-generated bits of it, as with any large software project, but they tend to be quickly removed by the community. It's possible those are also sold off to Microsoft or Apple, but I have no specific knowledge on that.

Re:Rotational Velocidensity

[c0d3g33k]

Pish posh. You just need to apply a dust protectant upon storage and then periodically dust the files off if they accumulate too much: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Parchive

Re:Rotational Velocidensity

[El_Oscuro]

You have answered a question I have had for ages. Whenever I open a computer, I see a lot of dust around the hard drive and wonder where it came from. It must be the bits flying off from the centrifugal force as the disk spins.

Re:Gosh since when was CD quality quality?

[Mashiara]

> CD audio is also not as good as LP audio; where the LP playback is done with a high quality pickup cartridge, and the playback is pristine (no record scratches, dust, vibration, hum, incorrect turntable setup, etc).

Actually LPs have significant dynamic range compression (ie reduction in "quality") for example the "RIAA correction", now you could claim that since all of this is done in analog you still have "infinite" resolution but fact is that vinyl has higher noise-floor than CD.

Now the mastering techniques are different and especially when CDs were new people didn't really know how to master them properly and thus did all sorts of mistakes leading to the fact that those albums sounded much better on vinyl.

And to dispel another myth: tube amps actually distort the sound more than transistor amps, however the distortions are "pleasing" to most humans so many people prefer the tube sound even though from cold-facts POV it's inferior quality. And of course it can be argued that if a record has been mastered in the golden age of tube amps then it will likely sound best on a tube amp due to the fact that the mastering has been tweaked to take advantage of the limitations of the medium.

I do agree that 16bit @44.1kHz is a bit low for "true sound" since there are all sorts of harmonics to consider in the frequencies that are technically above human hearing range, but isn't new recording work done on 24bit @192kHz, I must admit I can't remember the dvd-audio spec... Anyways even if you master down from that in the intermediate steps you will want plenty of headroom so nothing gets lost accidentally.

Re:Related: ripping CDs to FLAC/CUE properly on Li

[neiljt]

I use Windows and Linux (servers) -- mainly so I can choose the best tools in either world. Linux provides a CIFS file system accessible from Windows. I use EAC to rip my CDs to wav format, and Linux to enclode to flac.

Incidentally, this doesn't so far seem to be a particularly informed thread, though opinions abound! Sure, not everyone can tell the difference between mp3 (or any other lossy format) & flac representations of a particular recording. For those who can't, the choice is simple: go with mp3 & save the space! For those who can, the choice is almost as simple: if you can afford the space, go with flac and enjoy the greater sound spectrum!

My point is, just because you can't see or hear something does not mean it is isn't there. Though that sounds a bit religious, for which I apologise.

Re:I don't know anyone who still downloads music..

[cbope]

Totally disagree. I live in the EU, use Spotify and still buy my music on CD. I rarely purchase music electronically, unless it's in a DRM-free lossless format like FLAC. For me, Spotify is simply an online replacement for FM radio. It does not replace my need to buy music or keep it cataloged at home on my media server. I can't use Spotify in my car, and I don't like the idea of streaming it over my mobile phone. Also, Spotify uses lossy compression and bitrates are very low compared to FLAC. It is definitely far from audiophile quality and barely a step above FM radio in terms of audio quality.

I can't tell the difference

[rossdee]

I can't tell the difference between an original CD and an MP3 of the same track (at 256kbps)
(admittedly I am old, and my hearing at high frequencies wasn't that good even in high school)

Bandwidth is increasing

[SpaghettiPattern]

Bandwidth is increasing and disk space is getting cheaper so now we can afford this luxury. Pretty soon we will have formats like FLAI (Free Lossless Audio Inflated) whereby original tracks are bloated for no reason other than beauty of the ASCII art representation when run through od -x.

Don't laugh at me yet. We've had this since Emacs.

Sorry Rich. I know I drove a Buck knife in your back right now but I couldn't resist.

You already can!

[Hatta]

Phish sells FLAC recording of all its recent shows at LivePhish.com. You can get FLACs of other live shows at LiveDownloads.com. All lossless soundboard recordings.

Re:You already can!

[Holistic Missile]

I download the FLACs fo the Phish shows that I've seen, and others that I want to have, and burn them to CD. My friends can't believe the sound when they're over for parties and such.

Moe, Umphrey's Mcgee, String Cheese Incident, Govt Mule, and many other jam bands offer FLAC (and usually ALAC - Apple's proprietary lossless format) as well as VBR .mp3 files for download. I've downloaded Phish's show from the same night while in the parking lot waiting for traffic to clear out after the show.

Of course, jam band fans aren't your typical music consumer either... We are a crowd who actually appreciates the music itself, and isn't just looking for a simple beat to bounce around to.

CD singles sucked... good riddance

[Dogtanian]

Yes, I know that in North America, the CD single doesn't seem to have been a hugely popular concept. I have several CD singles from artists I like that originate in Europe however, and as a bonus, you get all that B-side material that comes with the CD single whether that be remixes, or even tracks that will never be on an album.

Here in the UK, CD singles had their heyday during the 1990s, and they were *grossly* overpriced. They often used to have them on promotion to get them into the charts during the first week (at around £2 to £2.50), but after that they usually went up to £4. That's £5 to £6 in today's money!!! I ended up buying quite a few singles on cassette because they were much cheaper (even though the quality was nowhere near as good and they probably weren't actually cheaper to manufacture).

And yeah, all the bonus tracks were nice if you wanted them (*), but in the majority of cases you didn't and you were effectively paying £4 for a single song!

And frankly, who the hell wants a single CD for each song anyway? I used to have that, and it's just clutter.

(*) The record companies exploited this to get songs into the charts too- have two different versions of the CD single with different bonus tracks- so screw that cynical marketing trick as well.

Re:CD singles sucked... good riddance

[xtracto]

Yup, CD singles also sucked big time in Mexico. They are overpriced shit for people who could not wait 1 month or so to buy the whole disk.

And also, usually the "single" contained whatever song was mainstream. Usually other songs start to grow on you after listening once or twice. Nowadays, a lot of my favourite songs from several groups are those which had no "single" released.

FLAC for archiving, MP3 for use

[SageBrian]

FLAC is certainly a better format. However, it is not a practical format for use.
Yes, it should be made available to those that want it. MuleTracks.com offers both FLAC and MP3 for sale, and FLAC is a little more expensive but it's likely worth it for those that want it. (remember that there is actual extra costs involved with downloading larger files, and that cost should be covered).

However, for the masses, for actual usage, MP3 is fine. It's portable and DRM free. Simple to copy and backup. Every player and OS plays it. No extra knowledge needed.

Think of how many people have no idea what formats are. Don't include your friends that know what /. is. Look at family and co-workers. They don't even know the songs are 'files'; it's just a 'song in iTunes'. They might know how to transfer a song to you, but they have no idea of files, tags, folder structure, filenames. The best we can do with them is advise them to stick with mp3 and DRM free formats.

For those more advanced creatures, FLAC is great in concept, but not worth the extra effort for basic usage. Most just want to be able to play their music, wherever and when ever they want.

FLAC is best for the purist, the hobbyist, the collector. Yes, it should be made available for them, even though it's really a small percentage. I appreciate those that feel the need to preserve the music in lossless format, especially when we can't be sure the industry will. And we need them as a backup. But they are a select few, and they will find a way to attain the best quality anyway. Having it available for download, even at a slight premium, would make it easier for them, and validate them, which is good.

Let's not bash mp3, but instead help educate the masses that they should use mp3 and not some DRM format. And teach them that mp3's should not be burned to CD format, etc. Don't try too hard... they can't take too much 0's or 1's.

mp3 for all.
flac for the select.

The solution?

[tompccs]

Just buy audio CDs. You may have to wait a couple of days for delivery, but in the end you get a non-DRM, full lossless quality backed up on physical media with a free booklet with often beautiful artwork, not to mention a better selection that doesn't just include what you hear on Capital FM, plus resale and sentimental value. Why do we have digital downloads again?

I already DO demand FLAC (or other lossless) audio

[hackel]

If the music companies don't provide it, then I will get it elsewhere. If they don't get with the program and offer a permanent license to full-quality audio, that is not my problem. I agree with OP--there is no excuse for mp3s in this day and age!

Highest Quality

[betso.net]

I could understand some price differences in offering different qualities on a carrier (e.g. CD vs. DVD-A). But I definitely can not understand why I don't have the opportunity to buy the highest available quality. Studio recordings are done in 24bit/192kHz and not in 16bit/44kHz. The difference is as audible as it is between mp3 (even at 320kbit/s) and 16bit/44kHz (CD quality) when you have equipment used to be called audiophile but easily available nowadays. As long as 24/96 recordings are offered for $80 per album, I will refuse to buy them. And I am not sure that this is the goal of the music industry. It is just that greed and stupidity run hand by hand. Unfortunately the discussion about higher quality recordings is far from getting relevance, as we know that the most successful online music store price a song at $1. (On top of that they put also some restrictions on how you should use it.) At this price you could get a CD with CD-quality sound, carrier and a booklet. Still, this music store is so successful that the music stores almost disappeared from the streets.

Re:Highest Quality

[kevinmenzel]

Studio recordings are done in 24-bit 192KHz (probably not actually at 192 if they're targeting CD - they'll probably go with 176.4KHz) because in the studio you do a lot of processing after you have recorded the raw track - things like adding track effects, or even doing things like changing the volume of an automated track. In fact, most audio engines for professional DAW software record to 24-bit, but do all the processing in 64-bit floating point. So even 24-bit mixdowns aren't "studio quality" if you want to be really technical about it... it won't sound better to you but gosh that's what they use in studios so it MUST sound better....

Re:I don't know anyone who still downloads music..

[Jugalator]

I agree. Downloading feels old school to me now. It's not just Spotify either - there are more services than that, like Rdio for the US. Or Grooveshark for everyone.

I thought I'd be hesitant about now "having" the stuff physically on my hard drive, but I'm not really concerned by that anymore. If the bad day comes when Spotify goes bankrupt or have to throw a lot of their music out, I'll have to go through the trouble of getting that music by other means. That will be doable, but annoying. Until then, I don't care. I can have all this music now along with my playlists on my phone, computer, car, and TV. All ad-free and at a high bitrate Vorbis encoding for a reasonable price. That's good enough for me. :-)

Re:I don't know anyone who still downloads music..

[Jugalator]

I thought I'd be hesitant about now "having"

About NOT having.

I hate those typos that change the meaning competely. But only next to hating Slashdot's no-editing-allowed-ever feature.

Re:I don't know anyone who still downloads music..

[dotwhynot]

What a load of guff. In fact, I'm sat in hospital in central London, the largest and most connected city in western europe and I can't get a decent 3g or wifi signal good enough to stream low bitrate radio without breaking up never mind anything else. Streaming will never, repeat, never take over me popping a cd in my laptop or playing my mp3 player unless we have guaranteed super-fast-never-failing broadband connections.

You do know that you can offline sync all your Spotify playlists and play without any connection at all, on smartphones and PC/Mac.

Also MediaMonkey

[KingAlanI]

MediaMonkey, my player/manager of choice on Windows, handles most any audio format I throw at it, including FLAC and OGG. One reason it *is* my player of choice (it's closed-source freeware, by the way.)

Buying files is stupid.

[Lord Bitman]

Buying files in a specific format is stupid. If you want to buy music, you should be able to buy rights to listen to music. Get files however you want, in any format.

People Just Don't Understand

[KingAlanI]

yeah, it annoys me when people don't know about or understand FLAC.
For their sake, I sometimes do a second copy of my uploads in 320kbps MP3.
And speaking of my uploads, why won't some people use BitTorrent?....grr...
I do appreciate those who do get it, however.

XKCD?

[KingAlanI]

I'll spell it out with regards to the XKCD you're presumably referring to: http://xkcd.com/841/

Restore original CD from FLAC

[droidsURlooking4]

I recently came into an album that was one long .flac file plus a .cue file. I prefer individual song files so I took a few steps to break it up. Basically using ImgBurn and MadFLAC, I was able to recreate the original CD via the .cue file and then re-rip the cd in the manner of my choosing. I didn't realize the power of the CUE file allowed me to create that cd again that was even recognized by a gracenote lookup. Fantastic.

some other options, but wish there was more

[KingAlanI]

Yes, some places do already offer downloads (whether paid or authorized free downloads) in lossless, but I wish it was more widespread.
Various artists' bandcamp pages
http://www.hdtracks.com/

I sometimes feel the need to buy a physical CD (when available) to get lossless.

Other lossless formats OK

[KingAlanI]

Since I'm not an open-source zealot, other lossless formats would be OK by me, since they serve largely similar purposes.
I already work with a bit of lossless AAC and WMA along with the large amounts of FLAC.
(though it wouldn't hurt to have the OSS option as the de facto standard, let's all just pick something. :P)

Re:I don't know anyone who still downloads music..

[Kifoth]

Sure. I get the need to own music. I've personally never felt a sense of ownership for my mp3 collection in anything close to the way I felt ownership of my CD's.

My point related to downloading music. Digital 'won' over physical because of convenience; and streaming (with offline caching) is far more convenient than downloading. It's just 'there' with zero wait.

Also, Spotify premium streams at 320kbps. AFAIK FM is 96kbps?

Yeah, I don't get the DRM theme on this thread

[KingAlanI]

I hear that - in this regard, non-DRM'ed lossless wouldn't be different from the non-DRM'ed lossy they're already selling - Amazon's and eMusic's non-DRMed .mp3's can join ITMS's non-DRM'ed .m4a's on your list. :)

Re:If you want CD-quAlright grality audio, buy CDs

[morgan_greywolf]

Alright grandpa let me tell you how it is: The world is moving to a fully digital and online universe. How about the original bit-for-bit studio copy.

Now let me tell you how it is, sonny. Wake me up when it really is all digital. Right now, it's not. Artists play analog instruments into analog recording elements, that are then still most often captured onto a 32-track or 24-track analog recorder, and which are mixed using an analog mixing board then, finally, they are digitally mastered from there.

Go to a recording studio and learn. Now get off my lawn.

collection organization

[KingAlanI]

Yeah, sometimes the online databases don't have a CD or only have it tagged in some screwed-up manner like what you described. However, fixing those occasional mishaps is better than having to type in tag info for _everything_.

Organizing downloaded files as opposed to ripped-from-CD files can also be a PITA.

Re:Related: ripping CDs to FLAC/CUE properly on Li

[frank_carmody]

Would I be correct in assuming that XLD is the OS X replacement for EAC? If not, what's my best option?

MP3

[wisnoskij]

Their have been studies and in general people simply prefer the hiss of lossy mp3 compression.

Re:Gosh since when was CD quality quality?

[hazydave]

CD audio is not as good as the best possible DVD audio (24-bit 182 kHz)

DVD Audio and Blu-ray audio can each support 24-bit and 192kHz sampling. Neither of which is "the best possible audio", but simply, the best commercially available audio. But there's certainly a point of diminishing returns... even 24-bit/48kHz is an improvement over 16-bit/44.1kHz... as you improve, the incrementals buy you less and less.

It's different when you record. I do all my recording in 24-bit/96kHz (my 88.2kHz if it's targeting CD only). Not because I need 10 or 15 tracks at 24-bit/96kHz to make a DVD or CD sound good, but so there's plenty of extra resolution for tweaking final levels to the CD. So while it's true that a professional studio might well be doing everything at 24-bit/176.4kHz or 24-bit/192kHz, it's not that useful in the final product -- the point is to keep everything at the highest possible quality throughout the mix.

CD audio is also not as good as LP audio; where the LP playback is done with a high quality pickup cartridge, and the playback is pristine (no record scratches, dust, vibration, hum, incorrect turntable setup, etc).

You mean that LP format that requires all sorts of heinous audio compression before being written to disc (eg, a 20dB cut in low frequencies -- which pushes audible sound down into the noise floor, never to return)... and all done, at least historically, via random analog filters. Even once they standardized on where to cut and boost the audio for mastering (the RIAA compression standard), there are variations from disc to disc and player to player.

Not to mention tracking errors on playback, unless you're paying serious green for a linear tracking turntable with ultra low mass cartridge. And a super low capacitance cartridge and wiring, so you don't eat up the high frequencies on the way to the preamp. And of course, you need that 10kg turntable, to avoid mechanical rumble and fluctuations. Some audiophiles spend more on their turntables than I did on my whole multitrack recording rig, including a over a dozen professional microphones. Or my car. I get better sound.

No thanks.

Re:Gosh since when was CD quality quality?

[hazydave]

You don't have infinite resolution in any analog medium... it's just a different limit. In digital, you think of resolution in terms of bitrate, sampling rate and resolution, etc. In analog, the limits are bandwidth and noise floor.

So, for example, RIAA compression. This boosts the high frequencies, because LPs are very lossy at high frequencies, and it cuts the lows, because LPs made with full amplitude low frequencies would run 10 minutes per side or less, and you'd have the tone arm skating across the disc every time a canon fired or a bass drum hit. That 20dB cut ensures that 20dB of low frequency audio is pushed down into the already high (as you mention) noise floor on the LP, never ever to be returned. It is gone for good, as is any other signal that's pushed into the local noise floor.

Some early CDs sounded like crap because they were mastered poorly. And there was such a rush to release, it was often worse than that. There were even a few cases of LP masters, RIAA compression and all, going directly onto CDs in the early days.

They've pretty much fixed that, these days. But there are still problems. For one, most popular music had heinous audio compression applied. No special reason, other than it makes it sound loud on radio and on your MP3 player, both situations where your room noise levels probably make compression not such a bad thing. But it shouldn't be in the original format you buy.

That's one practical advantage of LP these days -- when an LP is actually made today, the manufacturer knows the target is this weird class of audiophile who still worships at the LP alter. Or a DJ who hasn't discovered Serato discs yet. So they actually think before they master, they may not apply the nutty consumer compression, etc. Thus, LPs actually do sometimes sound better, on a very good system, than CDs, but for entirely the wrong reasons.

And you can also get that kind of attention on SACD, DVD-Audio, or Blu-ray... anything made for the audiophile/audiophoole market. And that's not a suggestion to buy $5,000 speaker cables or $25,000 turntables or other nut bag stuff.

And specking of that, don't forget SHM-CD. This is a bog standard CD using a new polycarbonate formulation or some such... or maybe they mix in the ghosts of dead musicians, not sure. Anyway, despite the obvious "bits are just bits" factor of any digital medium, this is (or at least was) all the rage in the Japanese audiophile community awhile back, and you can still find many SHM-CDs on Amazon and other music outlets... usually in the $30+ range. Audiophoole publications have claimed these sound as good as SACD on regular CD players (and given that they generally cost more than SACD or DVD-Audio, you'd kind of hope for that... but unless you believe in magic, don't).

The weird thing is... they often actually do sound better than regular CDs. For the same stupid reasons: these are in some cases being made with far better mixes... audio mixed for people who are going to listen on a high quality home stereo, not an iPod.

And that's the bottom line.. the mix is usually the limiting factor, not the medium.

Better than CD

[at.drinian]

Why stop at CD quality? It's an old and outmoded format; most music could be resampled at better aural resolutions. Thomas Dolby's promised to release his next album in higher-than-CD quality formats online.

More important question: Mastering

[Casandro]

The more important question is how well those recordings are mastered. Are they just dynamic compressed to death or do they accurately represent the intention of the artist?
Other than that, there is no reason to stick with "CD-Quality". If you want good quality, you can just as well higher sample rates.

Re:3 Copies ?? // Re:I rip all my CDs into FLAC.

[hazydave]

Dude.. it's just audio. My entire MP3 directory, about 16,000 songs, tops out at around 60GB. That's like one hour of 1080/60p video in Cineform format (a popular editing format, for those not familiar). This isn't even a burden for my PS3 (there's a copy of all my MP3 stuff on my PS3), much less a decent PC. With 2TB drives at under $100 these days, most anyone's uncompressed + compressed audio needs will easily be met for not much cash.

Re:Related: ripping CDs to FLAC/CUE properly on Li

[mark_reh]

Your feature list describes EAC and there's no linux application that does all those things as far as I know. It's no problem because EAC runs under wine in linux with no problems. I haven't ripped a CD in a couple years but I used to use EAC running under wine in linux to do it. My CD collection (about 600 discs) is stored as flac files on two HDDs, one in a server and the other a back-up disk. I stream audio to three squeezeboxes- a classic, a duet, and a boom scattered around my apartment. Back when I lived in a bigger place I had a very nice system including biamped Quad ESL-63 speakers with some bass units, amps, and crossovers I built myself. I haven't had time or space for "serious listening" for the last few years but both will improve soon and I plan to set up the old system again.

Simple reason why we don't buy music in FLAC

[SilverBlade2k]

The file size is like 10X the file size of an mp3, and it doesn't nearly sound 10x better. It's a *very* small gain in audio quality compared to the file size that comes with it. The only reason I buy FLAC, when I can, is for archiving and in case the mp3 files become lost or distorted somehow. That's it, otherwise I listen to mp3's

They consider FLAC "pirate-friendly", me thinks

[amn108]

I am pretty sure most music execs have been to at least 1 meeting each where FLAC was discussed. I am inclined to believe one of the reasons they have dismissed it is exactly because they or the tech savvy people who advise them know that no ripper or audiophile with respect for their occupation will ever consider converting MP3 files to ANYTHING. MP3s are made for listening by humans, it's not an archive file format. They (the execs) have been advised how FLAC excels in both playback quality as well as archiving, and have figured that offering full-quality, essentially master, copies of copyrighted music over the wire electronically as FLAC files is a whole lot worse for their business than even CDs, although they know perfectly well that any vanilla Audio-CD can be 'ripped'. Human psychology, go figure. To sum up - they are afraid of FLAC much like cavemen were afraid of lightning...

Re:They consider FLAC "pirate-friendly", me thinks

[amn108]

To back my reasoning with a simple situation: Person A has a good ear and does not download MP3s, in fact they make humming sound in his ears and spoil his listening experience. Person A wants music in FLAC. They go to piratebay.org and look up some music they like. It's most often found available as MP3s only, unless it's Pink Floyd or something. Obviously, its availability is a violation on part of whoever put up the torrent on Pirate Bay, so we have one pirate already. However, the key here is that we don't have a second pirate stealing the music BECAUSE IT'S IN MP3 FORMAT. If FLAC would be the format of choice circulating in the wild, the amount of music pirates would be higher, because all the FLAC-only audiophiles would join in on the pirating. More revenue lost for the traditional record labels.

There's bud and then there's bud

[tepples]

Streaming low quality shit over your laptop at a party is on par with serving your guests budweiser.

Which Budweiser? Are you talking about Czechvar or Anheuser-Busch's pee?

Re:I don't know anyone who still downloads music..

[tepples]

You do know that you can offline sync all your Spotify playlists

But do all foreign counterparts to Spotify offer this feature as well?

Getting what they deserve

[DCFusor]

I'm an ex audiophool, and yeah, I can hear the difference fine -- but only on recordings that were well made in the first place.

For YEARS we whined to the recording studios to quit using so much limiting, compression, and putting too much level on the vinyl so no cartridge on earth could track it (and mistracking makes vinyl wear faster).

No go, "louder is better" and "wall of sound" and all that, with very few exceptions -- some producers or bands that had good taste and such.

Now, having gotten everyone used to second rate sound quality, they find that people are happy with the easy to "share" mp3 class formats that no old audiophile would have poked with a stick. And on nearly all current popular music, there really isn't much difference -- just substituting one kind of crap for another when you digitally compress it further.

Remember, in information theory, the ability to compress means there was redundant content...heh.

Why does putting p in brackets to separate my paragraphs make every single line double spaced on top of that? Does no one at slasdot know how to code? That's stupid.

Re:Related: ripping CDs to FLAC/CUE properly on Li

[c0d3g33k]

EAC under Wine works perfectly well and can rip to FLAC with CUE sheets, extraction logs and such. That's what I use most of the time. The downside is you are obliged to use a GUI, so no easy way to script rips once you've found the settings that suit you. Not a problem for the occasional rip, but can get tedious if you are doing your entire CD collection.

morituri (http://thomas.apestaart.org/morituri/trac/wiki) is trying to get there, but seems to be moving slowly and isn't quite ready for general use, IMHO. No GUI, and not many configurable options yet. Seems like a good fallback if you prefer commandline, though. When it works the rip is verifiably good, at least according to AccurateRip.

Somebody else in the thread mentioned Rubyripper (http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Rubyripper). Seems to be what morituri wants to be when it grows up. I'll have to give it a try.

When I don't care that much for EAC-level validated accuracy (that is to say, rips that are probably perfectly good, but not validated as accurate during ripping), abcde (http://lly.org/~rcw/abcde/page/) is the best for convenience and configurability.

Unlimited bandwidth!

[spammeister]

Not every single person on the planet has the ability to download until they turn blue in the face. Even when comparing a single 320kbit mp3 rip of a CD to the same done in FLAC, the megs really adds up.

FLAC is something 1% of 1% of the population wants and demands. I'm sorry if you audiophiles are butthurt over the lack of the FLAC, go buy the CD.

Re:Unlimited bandwidth!

[Kohlrabi82]

Funny how you mention wasted bandwidth and 320kbit CBR MP3s in the same sentence, since CBR encoding is the prime example of wasted bandwidth (i.e. virtually no quality gains while needing more bits).

Who are you "we"?

[MrJones]

Maybe you should look around, not all people have your internet connection. You can ask for that kind of service for your city, but don't assume internet is fast in all parts of your country or continent.

Re:I don't know anyone who still downloads music..

[nOw2]

Agree. I started using Spotify to have music to listen to in work, without having to spend time choosing music to go on my iPhone / iPod, find I'm not in the mood for anything I've synced, or the effort of streaming from my home network. Over time I've been using it more and more even to listen to music at home which I already have as MP3.

I've still bought a few of my favourite tracks and albums (through iTunes) but my 14 year old MP3 collection running to hundreds of GB has hardly been touched for a while now. Of course, my CDs just sit taking up space on shelves. I've considered eBaying the lot - which would have been unthinkable a few years ago.

As for the format question, I'm not really a fan of flac. I've not really been able to hear the different between it and good quality MP3, and while disk space is cheap it's not free - especially if you want to run RAID and have reliable backups. On top of that, I got sucked into the iTunes world (life is honestly so much better) and iTunes won't play flac.

Cost of smartphone and monthly data plan

[tepples]

Not everyone lives in a Spotify-serviced country.

And if by "Spotify" you mean "Spotify or foreign counterparts", I don't think all of them offer offline listening. Alone, it's not a killer enough app to get someone who makes only about 40 minutes of calls a month to pay for the upgrade from a $60/yr prepaid feature phone to a contract smartphone with a data plan.

Why not better than CD audio?

[multimediavt]

1. I agree, with larger storage media and faster networks we should be demanding better than MP3 or AAC audio.
2. FLAC? CD QUALITY?!?! Why not linear PCM audio at 24-bit/96kHz? A good number of digital studio masters are in 24/96. Most modern sound cards are quite capable of supporting that resolution, so why not go for the gold?

Seriously folks. CD quality is just barely passable as it is, and don't get me started on *ANY* compression codecs, so why would I demand something that is already suboptimal? I'd rather make them give me analog masters (1" tape or LP) than anything short of the resolution it was recorded in.

Re:Why not better than CD audio?

[tyrione]

1. I agree, with larger storage media and faster networks we should be demanding better than MP3 or AAC audio.
2. FLAC? CD QUALITY?!?! Why not linear PCM audio at 24-bit/96kHz? A good number of digital studio masters are in 24/96. Most modern sound cards are quite capable of supporting that resolution, so why not go for the gold?

Seriously folks. CD quality is just barely passable as it is, and don't get me started on *ANY* compression codecs, so why would I demand something that is already suboptimal? I'd rather make them give me analog masters (1" tape or LP) than anything short of the resolution it was recorded in.

It seems Classical Music and a select few artists have offered such quality printings ever since 24/96 first came out in the mid-90s. It's truly sad.

Don't blame me

[npsimons]

When allofmp3.com was around, I bought FLACs from them, and highest quality OGGs when FLAC wasn't available. Then it got shut down. Guess how many digital music files I've bought since then?

I still buy CDs and rip them to FLAC. But not nearly as many as I used to, and I'll usually look for used first. All I ask for is FLAC with no DRM, but no one is willing to provide that.

Re:Don't blame me

[WorBlux]

HDTracks offerd FLAC with no DRM.

Forgot to mention: archive.org

[npsimons]

I forgot to mention: you can go to archive.org and find tons of public domain or CC licensed stuff in FLAC (and OGG Vorbis). If you think it's all outdated garbage, well, I'm not sure there's any hope for you or your taste in music.

archive.org: it's not just for website backups anymore!

Most people don't care

[DogDude]

Most people simply don't care because, most people don't really listen to music any more. Music isn't something that people listen to on a nice stereo in their house. Music to most people today is whatever the latest computer generated pop garbage that people have on the background while they're doing other stuff, and they listen to it on crappy "earbuds" or cell phones. Most people simply don't care about the quality of their music, or the quality of their music.

I only shop locally, and it's getting pretty hard to find CD's at all any more. Luckily, I live in a college town. I have to imagine that most of Average Joe living in Suburbia has exactly -zero- options for buying actual music today, except for online, and almost no music is sold lossless online. Demand for actual music has dropped to such a point that access to it isn't even a possibility for most people. People don't want to buy it. Nobody sells it.

Personally, I think it's another sign of the coming Idiocracy.

RE: Just buy a CD

[Chris Tucker]

That's exactly what I do.

I buy a CD. A USED CD.

Often for less than a few tracks off iTunes.

Rip 'em to iTunes. Gracenote adds the fiddling small details.

Google Images or Amazon provides album art for CoverFlow.

I rip to MP3. My 'stereo' is my old dual processor G5 Mac, with a pair of Cambridge Soundworks speakers.

Good enough for these old ears of mine.

As always, YMMV.

I have compared both to several people

[Truekaiser]

I have played a song that was encoded into a flac file then played the same song encoded from the same source in a mp3 format with the same speakers and sound card to several people. NO ONE absolutely NO ONE i did this with could tell the difference. Of course thats because all audio compression formats do the same thing. they eliminate from the recording the sound spectrum that 99% of the human population cannot hear because their ears can't pick up the sound.

Upmod parent please!

[l00sr]

Penny wise, pound foolish! The difference between FLAC and lossy compression at a reasonable bit rate is negligible to most people. What we should really get behind is an end to the loudness war, which is a far more pernicious form of compression that's applied before the music even hits the CD. Unless it stops, FLAC or no FLAC, your music will continue to sound crappier and crappier over time.

Re:Related: ripping CDs to FLAC/CUE properly on Li

[Ant P.]

You probably want this, then.

Chance to make money

[stumblingblock]

Looks like an opportunity. Somebody should start offering FLAC MP3 and let the market decide. If the demand is there, his fortune is made.

iPods

[JTD121]

That's why we can't buy our digital audio in FLAC format. I have two rips of music here. One is FLAC, the other is MP3. The FLAC (according to the properties) was ripped as 'Perfect (lossless)' quality. The MP3 is VBR -V0 from that FLAC.

The FLAC version is 589MB, 28% compressed from the original. The MP3 is 149MB, 82% compressed from the original. And you know what? They sound the same to me. I haven't done any ABX on them, but it doesn't bother me if it's anything above VBR -4.

As I said, iPods don't support (so far, to my knowledge), FLAC. They support ALAC, which is Apples lossless format. Would you want to buy in that format instead? If you are all about lossless, and Apple offered it, would you buy it? Even if you don't have an Apple iDevice? I have an iPod Mini running Rockbox, and I can play any format they have a codec for, so I'm good, but I still stick MP3s on there, since it takes (on average) one quarter the digital bits.

While many of us have ridiculous amounts of space on our personal desktop/laptop setups, how much of that music do you actually listen to? How much do you bring with you, in case you want a personal soundtrack, or want to listen to not the radio?

-Josh

Re:iPods

[JTD121]

Of course, I was referring to the general populace that buys their music from iTunes.

Bandcamp is neat-o though! Anytime I've bought from them, I've always gotten the VBR versions. And you can go back and download any other format later on some of them!

-Josh

Re:Related: ripping CDs to FLAC/CUE properly on Li

[RichiH]

Thanks, but this does not ensure bit-perfect copies.

Detection vs. correction

[tepples]

Once stored within some archive format (zip, rar, lha etc) it should not matter one itoa if mp3, flac, ogg format was used for the encoding of the music. The archive application can and will have checksums, recovery bits to safe guard the data.

PKZIP format stores a CRC for error detection, not the much larger "recovery bits" needed for error correction. For that, you need Par2 or something like that.

Reference published papers to backup your statement:

Given the widespread practice of paywalling, I can't, but if you have free access to more journals than I, look for compression error propagation.

The reason is obvious

[kheldan]

The recording industry still doesn't want you downloading anything, even if you pay for it; they want you to buy a CD. Therefore while they grudgingly allow paid downloads, they don't want you to have full fidelity from those downloads. Note that I think it's utterly rediculous, too, and the recording industry is run by dinosaurs, but I do understand it, I think.

Bit rot does happen.

[freddienumber13]

This is not as stupid as it sounds, hence the reason that newer filesystems (such as ZFS) calculate checksums for all data independent of those used by the hardware. Similarly, people use RAID in hardware not only to mitigate hardware failure but data corruption. To a certain extent, storing data in formats such as ZIP/RAR offers you the ability to be aware of data being corrupted through the use of checksums but alas recovery is limited. If/when storage devices have an error rate of 0, then the parent to this is a joke.

There are only a few bands

[Beelzebud]

that I still actually buy their albums. For those, I just buy the CD, and make my own flac set. The last 10 CDs I've bought, were only used once for ripping, then put back in the container and shelved.

Re:because people "buying" music are already idiot

[MysteriousPreacher]

The point is that you can't force it by just taking the music on some dubious sense of justice. There are some artists out there releasing content under flexible terms. Support them; help establish a market. Most of all, abstain from music you feel to be unfairly sold.

FLAC --for format choice

[DCheesi]

One reason I'd like to see lossless files available is so that I could put everything in my preferred lossy format on my devices. Can't fit your whole library in 320kbps? Just re-encode for a lower bitrate. Too snobby for 128kbps? Re-encode for a higher bitrate. That's something you can't do with MP3 source files without enduring multi-generational loss issues.

In my case, I'd prefer to have this capability for a rather unusual reason. Amazon's MP3s are done in a VBR MP3 encoding; for some inexplicable reason, most VBR encoded MP3s give me a slight headache?! This is true even when I'm not aware of the encoding beforehand. I'd much rather have CBR encoded files just to avoid this strange effect, even if I had to use a lower bitrate.

For those with no time to RTFA

[stumblingblock]

http://encyclopediadramatica.com/FLAC

Actually, "you're" the idiot

[DavidinAla]

It's ironic that you took the time to write a post calling other people idiots, yet you still managed at least four errors in your four sentences: 1) In your first sentence, you mean "you're," not "your." 2) In your second sentence, it's wrong to put an apostrophe after "MP3" in an effort to make it plural. It's just MP3s. 3) When you refer to a decade in your second sentence, the apostrophe is supposed to go where something is left off. If you refer to the 1990s, you're dropping off the "19," meaning the correct form is '90s. 4) In your last sentence, you meant "you're," not "your." It's probably wise that you posted as an AC.

Re:What a bullshit story

[Anonymous Coward]

"The advantage of lossless compression is not only the small audio quality improvement"
If anything gets added to the ORIGINAL via compression it's not an improvement it's a fucking artifact or distortion.
You cannot magically put in quality that was never there in the first place.

Uh, I think he means the quality improvement of lossless over lossy, not over the original.

HTH. HAND.

Re:Gosh since when was CD quality quality?

[izomiac]

And to dispel another myth: tube amps actually distort the sound more than transistor amps, however the distortions are "pleasing" to most humans so many people prefer the tube sound even though from cold-facts POV it's inferior quality.

That's only true for people who grew up with tube amps. Younger people have been found to prefer MP3 artifacts, even over lossless files.

Some labels are doing it right

[enoz]

I recently bought a vinyl album released by Asthmatic Kitty Records, it included a download of the entire album in FLAC and MP3 already tagged for your convenience. I don't even own a turntable, I bought it for the included artwork and to support the artist.

Some labels are doing it right.

with you on the sensible behaviour, buddy

[fantomas]

yup, with you on the sensible behaviour buddy. Couple of years ago I was at a small music festie in the north of Scotland and dropped into the local bands' tent with a couple of mates, both folk musicians. As a band got up on stage my friends both pulled a small box out of their pockets and completely unthinkingly popped open the boxes, reached out sound reduction plugs and popped them in their ears. One of them saw me not doing this and kindly offered her spare pair. Since then I've always taken noise reduction plugs to gigs. Got to protect what I've got left..... wish kids did the same.... but I guess we were all young n stoopid....

Re:with you on the sensible behaviour, buddy

[JWSmythe]

    Actually, I know quite a few musicians, and yes, they do frequently use ear protection.

    Now, remembering or planning ahead to have ear plugs with me is the problem. I really need to just pick up a bag of them. They have 80 packs for about $15. It's probably worth keeping some in my car, datacenters, and flight bag.

Re:Gosh since when was CD quality quality?

[petermgreen]

A frequency called the Nyquist frequency is defined to be half the sampling frequency of the digitally processed signal. It can be mathematically proven that aliasing can be avoided if the Nyquist frequency is greater than the maximum component frequency of the signal being sampled..

True but that is a very big IF. Real signals are almost certain to have components beyond the audible. These must be filtered out before sampling or they will be aliased down into the audible range. Afaict it's pretty much impossible to make an analog filter that passes 20KH\ perfectly yet applies a massive cut (big enough to put the aliased signals below the noise floor) cut at 22.05KHz

It's possible to get around this by sampling at a higher rate then filtering and downsampling (typcially you would combine the two operations for efficiency) digitally but digital filters have their own set of issues (for example a basic FIR design will produce "pre-echo")

Icing on the cake!

[Unnamed Chickenheart]

Good: CD quality 44kHz / 16-bit sans lossy data compression.

Slightly better: 24 bit in 96kHz or 192kHz.

Requirement: A recording sans post-performance bullshit like volume dynamic compression, supersampling, multi-recording, reverb, auto-tune, filters, mixing or whatever the stuido cheats are called.

Musician ==> microphone ==> recording.

Note: I deliberately oversimplified this.
I do understand that heavy processed music may be needed in noisy enviroments, but I want none of it on my high fidelity sound system.

Re:WMP- surely you jest!

[DarwinSurvivor]

Wow, somone's having a bad day. For your information.
A) I had no idea wmplayer was his only media player until we got there
B) We had NO internet access on site
C) I did not have any linux boot medias on me.

It would not have been nearly as much of a PITA had we had internet, but we didn't.

This is BS

[GWBasic]

AAC, which is an open format, when compressed from a 24-bit source at 256kbps, will sound better then anything degraded to CD-quality 16-bit audio.

Re:It's all lossy

[bgspence]

Ok, I get it. If I record something live at 128k that's lossless, but down sampling a CD to AAC at 320k is lossy.

So, the real solution is to release lossless, uncompressed music at 128k for those who want to save space and have lossless audio.

I'll stick with my lousy, lossy AACs

Re:Gosh since when was CD quality quality?

[arth1]

the point is to keep everything at the highest possible quality throughout the mix.

Not necessarily. (I know you know this, but someone might get the wrong idea). The highest possible quality that doesn't cause resampling artifacts, which is not always the same as the highest possible selectable quality.

A case in point are the horrible Soundblaster series cards that were popular for many years. Which resampled everything to 48kHz, no matter what. And a resampling from 44.1 to 48 does not in any way improve sound -- you have to be pretty amusical to not hear that this isn't an improvement.

Going from 16 to 24 bits is less of an issue. In fact, it can in some cases improve sound if using filters (like a volume control is). So one of the first things I do on my computers is to set the sound to 24 bit 88.2 kHz, as that hurts CD sound very little, and still doesn't do a horrible job with computer generated sound which is often at 48 kHz.

Re:Gosh since when was CD quality quality?

[mysidia]

You don't have infinite resolution in any analog medium... it's just a different limit. In digital, you think of resolution in terms of bitrate, sampling rate and resolution, etc. In analog, the limits are bandwidth and noise floor.

Eh? bandwidth and noise floor are not unique to analog; just because you passed the signal through an AD/DA converter to sample the analog waveform, does not mean there is suddenly no longer a bandwidth limit or noise floor for the digital signals; the digital signals do not have an advantage in this regard.

The straight analog signal has an inifinite "resolution" or "sampling" rate, because it has not been sampled. That doesn't mean the "quality" is infinite, but that is a characteristic of the quality.

The AD/DA process of converting the analog signal to a digital one limits the resolution of the signal and introduces noise, aliasing/harmonic distortion, and clipping, due to the conversion process -- and there not being enough sampled bits to quantize the full dynamic range, and yet more noise will be introduced when converting from digital back to analog.

Noise that results in degradation that is more perceptible to the human ear.

The fact the signal had to be converted to digital at all, was itself a step that reduced quality.

Bandwidth of the digitally sampled signal is limited by the frequency that you sample; and the the number of bits per sample. The Frequency response of LPs is more reliable, and has important influences on how pleasing the sound is to a human.

As long as the steps to put the analog media on LP don't introduce too much more problematic noise than the steps to put the digital media on a CD, the LP will sound better.

A slightly lower noise floor alone does not allow CDs to win any competition.

whooosh

[Brannon]

fun.

Linn sells FLAC....

[Clairvoyant]

www.LinnRecords.com :)
There, problem solved. up to 192kHz/24bit flacs without drm. I buy stuff from there occasionally. And I know there are several others around.

I refuse to buy CDs. The CD medium itself is from the 70s. The quality (resolution) is limited and so is the length of recording that fits on it. There have been high-quality players and digital alternative formats for many decades. Couple that with a fossilized business model of the industry and you end up with pirating music (hoping that release quality will increase in the future as music comes to better media)

Re:Linn sells FLAC....

[Skapare]

Even today, cheap (that's most of them) CD players still have jitter issues. Each block (1/75th of a second) can be shifted off one direction or the other by up to 7 time samples (up to 1/6300 second). It is hard to hear that, and it doesn't happen that often, nor in a consistent way. There is some computer software designed to detect and correct this (by re-reading until it has all the data bits, then aligns them correctly) for ripping purposes. So you can actually get better than "CD quality" via ripping (where "CD quality" is defined as tolerating these little bits of jitter). Some people prefer 24 bit (instead of 16 bit) at 192 kHz (instead of 44.1 kHz). Personally, I like 32 bit and 960 kHz (it also happens to have an exact number of samples per video frame for every TV/video standard in the world that is used for media purposes).

Re:If you want CD-quAlright grality audio, buy CDs

[omnichad]

The industry standard for studio sound recording is ProTools, running a many-track digital recorder at 196KHz and 48-bit or higher. A digital control surface that integrates with the software is used as the "mixing board." Yes to the analog instruments and microphones. No to EVERYTHING else.

get vented ones

[fantomas]

Get some vented ear plugs. They cost more than the foam ones (about 12 quid each, I think that's about 20 USD) but are comfortable to wear, and drop the noise levels so you still get a nice balance but just cuts the high levels down a bit. Really nice, so much better than the foam freebie ones, you can chat with them in, they just drop the top frequencies a bit.

CD quality vs higher-res compressed

[Fuchsteufel]

I'm really looking for a format that sounds better than CD quality, and is also more compact than FLAC. I'm not convinced that 44 kHz 16-bit linear audio is the best you can get, for the bitrate. Music these days is commonly created at 96+ kHz and 24-bit, and then "compressed" down to 44 kHz 16-bit for CDs, then further compressed to MP3 etc for electronic distribution.

I think the most important question is: for a given bitrate, which format gets you the closest fidelity to the 96 kHz 24-bit original? Losslessly compressed 44 kHz 16-bit, such as FLAC, runs at around 800 kbps for music. At that enormous bitrate, is FLAC really the best you can do? Wouldn't an MP3-like codec, that operated in 20 or 24 bits, and at a maximum frequency of 96 kHz, sound better for the same number of bits? (Only a small amount of information would occupy the frequency range between 48 and 96 kHz, so unlike linear formats, it's not like doubling the frequency range doubles the bit count).

I'm really curious -- at what bitrate would an MP3-like codec, compressed from a 96 kHz 24-bit original, sound as good as 16-bit CD quality, in a high-fidelity listening test with high-quality components? My guess is somewhere less than 800 kbps. This is the format we should use moving forward, not an inefficient 1980s linear standard.

Re: Just buy a CD

[Chris Tucker]

The G5 is also my main computer. It sits under the table I use as the "workstation".

Of course, if you had bothered to inquire before making your asinine proclamation, you'd have saved yourself the embarrassment of outing yourself as a judgmental little shithead.

Oh, wait, that's EXACTLY what the AC option is for.

beatport.com sells WAV files

[scum-o]

http://beatport.com/ sells the original WAV files. They're a little more expensive than iTunes, but you get the raw data.