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FLAC Gets First Update In 6 Years
An anonymous reader writes "The Free Lossless Audio Codec, FLAC, loved by audiophiles for its lossless fidelity has been
updated to version 1.3.0. FLAC is an audio format similar to MP3, but 'lossless', meaning that audio compressed in FLAC doesn't suffer any loss in quality. FLAC v1.3.0 is the first update in almost 6 years and it is also the first release from the new Xiph.Org maintainer team."
Big new feature: ReplayGain works for sampling rates up to 192kHz so you can finally control the volume of your obsessively ripped LPs.
I heard this wasn't too bad.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I wonder if that because no one cared or because it was a solid piece of software...
May Peace Prevail On Earth
Release once every 30 years! We're doing awesome stuff, trust us!
LOL, backwater idiots.
>implying I will stop using mp3s and ever be able to fully recollect all my music in FLAC
uppermost lel
http://xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html
I been using flac for all my music collection about 5 years now. Also have had an mp3 player that has supported it for 3-4 years now.
Ten years ago, when hard drives were small and NAS systems for home use didn't really exist, I could see the point of all this ripping and converting. But now, with multi-terabyte HDs and the proliferation of NAS appliances, there is a limited need for this or any other 'compressed' music file format.
After all I didn't know and why should I it isn't like this site is for news for nerds.
FUNSA
All the music I ever bough was FLAC, mostly thanks to services like Bandcamp. They require the artists to upload their song in lossless and from there they provide all the formats you'd ever want. That's how all music should be sold.. with no shitty codecs and DRM.
While this is mostly accurate, articles like this fail to mention where 192KHz is useful. That is, for certain types of digital post-processing and effects. Doing a digital time or frequency shift (not a re-sample, that's simple and effectively lossless) yields atrociously poor results if using 44.1 or even 48 KHz. With 192KHz, you can't hear the difference, and that is why it is used in the studio. Auto-tune is a decent example of that kind of processing. It works much better at higher bit rates.
None of this matters to the average listener though, or to the DJ who only cares about a simple speed up or slow down (or re-sample).
MP3 compresses audio files so that they have the same playback within the range of human auditory sensation. FLAC is superior because it retains full audio fidelity across the entire frequency spectrum. This will be of the utmost importance if you are a dog.
I was wondering what happend to FLAC. It has been a while since I've encoded .wav files into FLAC.
Funny thing is I remember when reel to reel was touted as much better than vinyl. Then CD's were touted as a hundred times cleaner than vinyl or reel to reel. Then dvd's were superior to cd's. (Then everyone used mp3's anyway)
Now... we're back to vinyl.
Gotta love marketing.
Wuddooeyeno? IITYWYBMAD? Like nuts? eclecticallyincorrect.com
While this is mostly accurate, articles like this fail to mention where 192KHz is useful. That is, for certain types of digital post-processing and effects. Doing a digital time or frequency shift (not a re-sample, that's simple and effectively lossless) yields atrociously poor results if using 44.1 or even 48 KHz. With 192KHz, you can't hear the difference, and that is why it is used in the studio. Auto-tune is a decent example of that kind of processing. It works much better at higher bit rates.
None of this matters to the average listener though, or to the DJ who only cares about a simple speed up or slow down (or re-sample).
Wrong. Article mentions it as being useful for processing. Article uses oversampling for antialiasing / cutoff as an example.
At no point would the signal have to be stored in a high sampling rate to get this benefit. Article mentions most ADCs/DACs handle this shit transparently.
"Sampling rates over 48kHz are irrelevant to high fidelity audio data, but they are internally essential to several modern digital audio techniques. Oversampling is the most relevant example [7]."
ReplayGain works for sampling rates up to 192kHz so you can finally control the volume of your obsessively ripped LPs.
What does sampling rate have to do with volume? Is there some sort of DSP going on to resample it down to 48kHz and increase bit depth (which increases dynamic range but not volume)?
Oversampling at the ADC level is NOT post-processing. Post means "after", in case you didn't know. If the desire is to use audio for a multitude of uses, say to play back in a sampler frequency shifted or to "correct" some awful notes (as is commonly done), it is still worthwhile to record raw audio at 192kHz. It is never worthwhile to distribute the finished product at high sample rates, unless the finished product IS in fact sample material intended to be used by studio people.
This, I believe, is the first time an acronym has been expanded in a Slashdot summary.
megs of ram runs phil0sophies must And shouting that Get how people can
goals. It's when
Lossless is impossible with digital. You have virtually infinite ways to groove an old LP record. With digital, there is a very finite ways to set the bits to zero or one.
That's a reason why old musician and audiophiles usually prefer LPs. They say they are better with harmonics and they say they can tell the difference, especially with instruments like the violin.
Personally, I find that a brand new high quality LP played on a high end sound system sounds better than numeric, even with no compression at all (raw) formats.
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
I can see that for those who are audiophiles and purists, this is good news. Or those with Super-Hearing :)
"Oversampling" and recording with a high Fs are two different concepts. Oversampling is specifically when the AD runs at a higher sample rate than the effective Nyquist rate.
Oversampling technologies are things like 1-bit delta-sigma ADC and MASH. They trade sample rate for bit width, and are used because high-frequency oscillators are cheaper to engineer than 24 bit symbol encoders.
To people digitizing rare LPs and the people posting Youtube videos that show a phonograph record going round.
Please oh please fill a spray bottle with a solution of water with a tiny bit of liquid soap, and spray the surface of the record before and occasionally during recording. After, rinse and dry with fluffy-towel and lean on edge to dry completely before re-sleeving.
You will be flabbergasted with the result. Even if you do not flabbergast easily.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
And yet when someone with hearing problems presents themselves to an expert on human hearing they'll tell you the human ear is an incredibly delicate part of the body that they don't fully understand,
I think of digital music and lossy codecs in the same way I think of GM foods. Yea sure, they're probably OK, but maybe they're not. When someone speaks with absolute certainty about a subject no one understands absolutely I have to raise an eyebrow.
But this sampling rate goes to 11
It's because FLAC rocks... There has been no need to update it. It's one of the huge open source/open spec success stories.
Zoid.com
Wish we could see 6 years of advancement in file compression technology with FLAC. I know space is on the cheap these days, but that doesn't mean we should just keep inflating files more and more. As much as I do appreciate FLAC, when it's virtually impossible to tell the difference between a 6MB file and a 24MB file, it starts to feel a bit wasteful, especially when the source was something like a compact disc to begin with.
So yes, it's rather limited still. However, it's not the codec that's the limiting factor, it's the choice of the hardware vendors, since the codec itself is free to implement.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Adobe needs to install an updater for the installer. Continue?
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
What sort of definition is that? It's the first time I've seen it mentioned. Maybe you mean that mp3 uses a psycho-acoustic model that takes out "definition", spatial information and volume dynamics? Depending on the amount of "loss" in the compression, mp3 is somewhere in between "some musicians and audio purists are statistically able to distinguish between the compressed and non compressed format" to "a casual listener on a mediocre audio device may not hear the difference in a noisy environment." Both FLAC and MP3 encoded files with a lossless source file usually don't contain any frequencies above 20 KHz, so your dog will probably not hear things a human with non-damaged ears wouldn't. FLAC may be capable of storing such formats, but even straight-from-the-stylus-to-the-DAC style LP rips just don't contain these frequencies because the original artist never recorded them.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
They trade sample rate for bit width, and are used because high-frequency oscillators are cheaper to engineer than 24 bit symbol encoders.
In part, there are other reasons as well. For example you can never get a a regular symbol encoders to be completely linear. (Technically there will always be some jitter on the oscillator too, but it will have a better distribution and will be insignificant compared to the equivalent symbol encoder.)
Sometimes the cheaper option yields better results. Just don't tell an audiophile about it.
FLAC is an audio format similar to MP3, but 'lossless'
Sooo... not similar at all, really?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
http://jn.physiology.org/content/83/6/3548.full
The Oosashi study has been debunked so much that it's not even funny anymore.. I did not even bother opening the link, but I'm pretty sure it's the same old Oosashi crap.
"smaller THAT" - YOU MORON.
Do you not understand what the words "that" and "than" mean?
My barber was saying this exact thing to me the other day. So I says to him, "Frank, come on, can't you just correct for nonlinearities?" and he laughed at me and gave me a look like he couldn't believe me. I've decided to change barbers.
FLAC may be lossless but it's still no guarantee of super HiFi. You've still got the DAC, amp and speakers to worry about. People often assume because it's FLAC, it is the acme of quality even played back on an iPod with Apple headphones. Ain't so.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
The OP (like so many others) doesn't understand the difference between lossy and lossless compression, and why each is useful and necessary -- yet completely different tools for completely different jobs. People don't use flac because it "sounds better". They use it because it is suitable for permanent archiving, where lossy compression is not. Why? Because a decompressed flac is bit-for-bit identical to the original wav. A decompressed mp3 is anything but. Therefore, if you rip your cd collection to flac, you have a true archive of the original. If you rip your cd collection to mp3, you don't have a true archive; you have an approximation. Simple as that.
But still true enough for car stereo. I needed a new one about half a year ago, and while many can play MP3, I did not find one that will play FLAC.
May I introduce you to some car radio head unit models that can play FLAC ?
http://www.kenwood.de/products/car/receivers/mediareceiver/KMM-357SD/
http://www.soundstream.com/html/source-units-inteq.html
http://www.poweracoustik.com/pa2012/source-units-ingenix.html
http://www.crutchfield.com/S-f7u1W1rzkpx/p_113KMM100U/Kenwood-KMM-100U.html
But this sampling rate goes to 11
kHz?
The 90s called, they want their 8-bit Sound Blaster back
FLAC is an audio format similar to MP3, but 'lossless'
In other words, it's like mp3, but the exact opposite.
NO IT IS NOT!!!11
real time decoding of FLAC uses less that 10% cpu on a $25 raspberrypi (ARMv6).
So once you're playing the music and four sound effects at once, you have only half the CPU left for the rest of the game.
flac people assure me that flac is perfect already
So sure, if all you ever do is _play_ source material by all means use mp3. But when DJs or audio engineers want to do a remix or mashup they need source material in a _lossless_ format.
Then the owner of copyright in the sound recording can distribute lossy files to the public and distribute lossless files only to people who have bought a license to make remixes.