Ogg-Vorbis or FLAC?

[aria]

Thanks Vinny, I already looked at these settings, but didn't know what to change. Still was intrigued by the stereo 16 bit rate. 32 bit wouldn't be better? Than, where do I find "man flac" and what is this, a manual?

[james147]

Thanks Vinny, I already looked at these settings, but didn't know what to change. Still was intrigued by the stereo 16 bit rate. 32 bit wouldn't be better? Than, where do I find "man flac" and what is this, a manual?

You type it in a terminal, and yes it is a manual.

Allot of unix command come with a man page to explain how to use them and how they work which can be accessed by typing in a terminal

man [I]command[/I]

[aria]

Thanks James147, found "man flac" in menu-search, as a run command, but didn't work. Sure, I had to think at the terminal first.

[vinnywright]

Thanks James147, found "man flac" in menu-search, as a run command, but didn't work. Sure, I had to think at the terminal first.

dose this mean you found it ?

in a terminal

vinny@Vinnys-HP-G62:~$ man flac


FLAC(1) FLAC(1)

NAME
flac — Free Lossless Audio Codec

SYNOPSIS
flac [OPTIONS] [infile.wav | infile.aiff | infile.raw | infile.flac | infile.oga | infile.ogg | - ] ...

flac [-d | --decode | -t | --test | -a | --analyze ] [OPTIONS] [infile.flac | infile.oga | infile.ogg | - ] ...

DESCRIPTION
flac is a command-line tool for encoding, decoding, testing and analyzing FLAC streams.

OPTIONS
A summary of options is included below. For a complete description, see the HTML documentation.

I think the section you are looking for is

-0..-8, --compression-level-0..--compression-level-8
Fastest compression..highest compression (default is -5). These are synonyms for other options:

-0, --compression-level-0
Synonymous with -l 0 -b 1152 -r 3

-1, --compression-level-1
Synonymous with -l 0 -b 1152 -M -r 3

-2, --compression-level-2
Synonymous with -l 0 -b 1152 -m -r 3

-3, --compression-level-3
Synonymous with -l 6 -b 4096 -r 4

-4, --compression-level-4
Synonymous with -l 8 -b 4096 -M -r 4

-5, --compression-level-5
Synonymous with -l 8 -b 4096 -m -r 5

-6, --compression-level-6
Synonymous with -l 8 -b 4096 -m -r 6

-7, --compression-level-7
Synonymous with -l 8 -b 4096 -m -e -r 6

-8, --compression-level-8
Synonymous with -l 12 -b 4096 -m -e -r 6

--fast Fastest compression. Currently synonymous with -0.

--best Highest compression. Currently synonymous with -8.

so maby adding --best to the k3b string is what you want.



VINNY

[aria]

Yes Vinny, found it. K3b showed no compression setting, counting (I suppose) for -5, the default. But I'm somehow confused by the terms: -0 or --fast for the fastest compression, -8 or --best for the highest compression. I mean, what do I want for best quality: fast (I understand low) compression, or highest compression (curiously called best)? How could be --best associated with the highest compression level? I'll give it a try first with -0, than with -8, see which of these produces the largest file. I suppose the largest file is the 100% loss-free one. Than I'll look for the --bps=16. Is this a compression speed? Will see and will be back.

[aria]

I'm back, and it is like I suspected: -0 or --fast gives a larger file (45MiB) than -8 or --best (38.9MiB). I suppose faster compression means lower compression level, and higher compression means higher compression level, thus I cannot understand why they say --best to the highest compression. Seems -0 (or --fast) is the 100% loss-free, because it produces a larger file. Is my understanding the right one?

[vinnywright]

the quality is not changed by compression , just the file size -0 or fast is less compression = larger file size ,,, -8 or best (hear best is just referring to best compression)=smaller file size .

--bps is --bps=# Set bits per sample.

@hear using k3b's default string to rip in flac produced a 344.6MiB file from a cd , adding the --best to the string just reduced the file size of the same cd to 342.8MiB and took about twice as long to rip

playing one of the songs in avplay showed no diference in quality and I heard none

vinny@Vinnys-HP-G62:/media/6d8f8f09-a999-4405-ad9a-e0df9224a3ba/Music/Anthrax - Among The Living$ avplay 01\ -\ Among\ The\ Living.flac
avplay version 0.8.4-4:0.8.4-0ubuntu0.12.04.1, Copyright (c) 2003-2012 the Libav developers
built on Nov 6 2012 16:51:33 with gcc 4.6.3
[flac @ 0x7f144c0008c0] max_analyze_duration reached
Input #0, flac, from '01 - Among The Living.flac':
Metadata:
ARTIST : Anthrax
TITLE : Among The Living
track : 01
DATE : 1987
ALBUM : Among The Living
Duration: 00:05:16.20, bitrate: 921 kb/s
Stream #0.0: Audio: flac, 44100 Hz, 2 channels, s16
54.33 A-V: 0.000 s:0.0 aq= 324KB vq= 0KB sq= 0B f=0/0

the aq=324 is the quality of the decoding process and was the same on the 2 files

VINNY

[vinnywright]

I'm back, and it is like I suspected: -0 or --fast gives a larger file (45MiB) than -8 or --best (38.9MiB). I suppose faster compression means lower compression level, and higher compression means higher compression level, thus I cannot understand why they say --best to the highest compression. Seems -0 (or --fast) is the 100% loss-free, because it produces a larger file. Is my understanding the right one?

NO thay are both loss-free just compressed further .

VINNY

[aria]

Another test: this time I was interested in speed, and the CPU/GPU temperature during encoding. So: 10 min track on the CD, encoding started at 40C CPU/GPU temperature.
--best (or -8): 1min 15sec, max. 45C CPU/GPU, file size=32MiB
--fast (or -0): 1min 9sec, constant 41C CPU/GPU, file size=37.9MiB
Thought there was a larger difference in CPU/GPU temperature. But it seams that K3b encodes at the ripping speed, which is below the CPU/GPU capabilities. Thus the temperature much lower than with Asunder (Asunder first rips, than encodes, so it uses the whole CPU/GPU resources rising the temperature at 60C for a 10min track or so). This is why I prefer K3b, it's cooler!

Thanks Vinny for your help, thanks James147 too. As K3b runs cold and FLAC quality is the same, I think I'll go with --best or -8.
--Bests,

[SteveRiley]

From the FLAC FAQ:

Why do the encoder settings have a big effect on the encoding time but not the decoding time?

It's hard to explain without going into the codec design, but to oversimplify, the encoder is looking for functions that approximate the signal. Higher settings make the encoder search more to find better approximations. The functions are themselves encoded in the FLAC file. Decoding only requires computing the one chosen function, and the complexity of the function is very stable. This is by design, to make decoding easier, and is one of the things that makes FLAC easy to implement in hardware.

Why can't you make FLAC encode faster?

FLAC already encodes pretty fast. It is faster than real-time even on weak systems and is not much slower than even the fastest codecs. And it is faster than the CD ripping process with which it is usually paired, meaning even if it went faster, it would not speed up the ripping-encoding process anyway.

Part of the reason is that FLAC is asymmetric. That means that it is optimized for decoding speed at the expense of encoding speed, because it makes it easier to decode on low-powered hardware, and because you only encode once but you decode many times.

What is the lowest bitrate (or highest compression) achievable with FLAC?

With FLAC you do not specify a bitrate like with some lossy codecs. It's more like specifying a quality with Vorbis or MPC, except with FLAC the quality is always "lossless" and the resulting bitrate is roughly proportional to the amount of information in the original signal. You cannot control the bitrate much and the result can be from around 100% of the input rate (if you are encoding noise), down to almost 0 (encoding silence).

What kind of audio samples does FLAC support?

FLAC supports linear PCM samples with a resolution between 4 and 32 bits per sample. FLAC does not support floating point samples. In some cases it is possible to losslessly transform samples from an incompatible range to a FLAC-compatible range before encoding.

FLAC supports linear sample rates from 1Hz - 655350Hz in 1Hz increments.

Will FLAC ever support floating-point samples?

It's unlikely FLAC will ever support floating-point samples natively. The main application for floating-point is audio engineering, which demands easy editing and very high speed for both encoding and decoding above everything else.

FLAC is designed as a consumer audio format. It trades ease of editing for a featureful, robust transport layer more suited for playback, and encoding speed for more compression and faster decompression.

[HalationEffect]

Still was intrigued by the stereo 16 bit rate. 32 bit wouldn't be better?

Standard audio CDs are encoded at 16 bits per sample, so using 32 bits per sample when encoding a CD to FLAC would gain you precisely nothing.

If you're a serious audiophile and your source material is of higher quality than a standard CD, such as DVD-A, or vinyl (but only if you have a very high end turntable, cartridge & pre-amp) then you might benefit from a higher bits per sample setting.

[aria]

Thanks Steve. Does help.
Thanks HalationEffect.

Standard audio CDs are encoded at 16 bits per sample, so using 32 bits per sample when encoding a CD to FLAC would gain you precisely nothing.

Many of my CDs (Deutsche Grammophon almost sure) seem to have been originally encoded at 24 bits. On some (not D.G.) it is even written 24 bits. Anyway, I encoded some to Vorbis highest quality, and listened in Audacious, where I can chose the bps rate. Found that 16bps sounds poor (flat), 32bps shines obviously, and floating-point sounds bumped, like a very fine studio recording. Now, after reading your post, I also tried 24bps in Audacious and found no difference compared to 32bps (which confirms my hypothesis that D.G. CDs at least, were encoded at 24bps).

In this case, I think I'll change the bps rate in FLAC settings from 16 to 24. In fact, I believe that the sound flatness I experienced with FLAC compared to Vorbis (set at highest quality) might be exactly because FLAC was set by default at a 16bps rate. Any comments on this?

[SteveRiley]

In this case, I think I'll change the bps rate in FLAC settings from 16 to 24. In fact, I believe that the sound flatness I experienced with FLAC compared to Vorbis (set at highest quality) might be exactly because FLAC was set by default at a 16bps rate. Any comments on this?

Sounds reasonable. Best way to test: rerip one of your 24-bit CDs to FLAC, using 24bps sample rate. Then give a listen.

[aria]

Just did the test with a CD I believe was encoded at 24bps. The FLAC file also encoded at 24bps was impossible to listen to: 90% noise and 10% music. Will go back to 16bps for FLAC, but cannot understand why Vorbis set at highest quality makes a significant difference between 16 and 24bps.

[SteveRiley]

That's odd. A few years ago there were some issues with FooBar 2000 barfing (that is, making noise) when attempting to play a 24bps FLAC file, but that was fixed. I'm not aware of any other situations.

Try something, please. Download this 24bps FLAC file: http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/...e=post&id=4423

Now play it. What do you hear?