noobie needs general info on FLAC
Hi folks -- I'm planning on archiving my entire CD collection (about 1,500 CDs) on a 250GB external hard drive and I read somewhere that FLAC is a good way to go since it is easily convertible to MP-3 or (hopefully) other new formats that may emerge in the future.
Is this true? Any advice, guidance, resources or tips on how to use FLAC would be greatly appreciated...(Best bit rate to use? Will FLAC work with Windows XP? What do I need to convert from FLAC to MP-3? etc...)
Also, I've been hearing about LAME -- what is that?
Thanks so much...Michael
[590 byte] By [
mncowan] at [2007-11-9 15:54:27]
# 1 Re: noobie needs general info on FLAC
FLAC is one of many lossless formats. Any lossless format can be converted to any other format losslessly, thats why they call it lossless. Think of it as zipping a .wav file. Once you unzip the wav you can then convert the wav to an MP3 or whatever.
Best bit rate to use?
Err ok i guess you really don't know what lossless is. Think of zipping a word doc. You don't put in a bitrate when you compress it. You just compress it and hopefully it gets a lot smaller. FLAC/APE/SHN/wavepack/optifrog/etc are the same way. You can't give it a bitrate.
Will FLAC work with Windows XP?
All existing audio codecs work with XP.
What do I need to convert from FLAC to MP-3?
I use foobar2000 because it can decode flac files, pass them to LAME and then after the files are created it tags them, but other software works as well.
Also, I've been hearing about LAME -- what is that?
Its basically the only good mp3 codec made. Check out www.hydrogenaudio.org Their MP3 forum has a few stickied threads that explain LAME in detail, have links to download the latest version and show how to use it best.
# 2 Re: noobie needs general info on FLAC
Use Monkey's Audio (APE), not FLAC.
MUCH better, faster and superior compressibility 350mb avg on a album. Its lossless as well. The format decompresses to WAV(s) and CUE, so it can be easily burnt, or converted to ANY format.
# 3 Re: noobie needs general info on FLAC
Originally posted by stasyna
Use Monkey's Audio (APE), not FLAC.
MUCH better, faster and superior compressibility 350mb avg on a album. Its lossless as well. The format decompresses to WAV(s) and CUE, so it can be easily burnt, or converted to ANY format.
Actually the two are nearly identical. However APE (monkey's audio) is slowly being displaced by FLAC because its much more open and has much more effcient decoding (this is why there are portable FLAC players and not portable APE players. APE is also poorly supported on non-Windows platforms. APE tags are nice though.
Really though the beauty of lossless is it doesn't matter. A few clicks and your collection of FLAC files can be converted to APE or shn or wma lossless then back again.
