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Best format to store music files

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Posted on June 9, 2007 at 22:15:38
Antonio Tucci


 
I'd like to know which is the best losless format to store music files on Hardisk.
Someone told me that WAV format represents the best (and only) way to obtain an audiofile quality. However this format takes a lot of space.

Someone else told me that FLAC format is as good as WAV but it allows to save 50% of space compared to WAV. However it has been called to be involved in alteration of the signal when playing.

Which format do you suggest?

Many thanks

Antonio

 

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RE: Best format to store music files, posted on June 9, 2007 at 22:31:29
Dawnrazor
Audiophile

Posts: 12809
Location: N. California
Joined: April 9, 2004
 Good luck getting any sort of consensus on this, especially on the sound quality aspect.

Unless you have a huge collection, hard drive space is so cheap, that wav is very viable.

That said, you may want to use flac, since it allows tagging and will save space.

It all depends on what is more important to you. I chose wav for my 200 or so cds, and since I listen to albums and not playlists most of the time, the tagging is not something I need, and wav files with cue sheets, can accomplish most of what tags can accomplish.

 

RE: Best format to store music files, posted on June 9, 2007 at 23:29:02
Todd Krieger
Audiophile

Posts: 37501
Location: SW United States
Joined: November 2, 2000
 I've recently discovered that the Sun/Unix AU format is the best sonically. When ripped directly from the CD using a utility called Switch (link), the sound is very similar to the CD itself, with very little strain. This is a non-compressed format, so it will take up the same disk space as WAV and AIFF.

AIFF is my next-favorite, and the best for iPods (they don't take AU). Comming in third is OptimFROG, which is my favorite "lossless" compressed format.

 

RE: Best format to store music files, posted on June 10, 2007 at 01:36:31
fmak
Audiophile

Posts: 13158
Location: Kent
Joined: June 1, 2002
 I am suspicious of FLAC even at 24/96 played backl on Foobar. HF seems to have an unwelcome emphasis.

Any form of compression entails the use of a statistical model on how to shoten certain types of audio informtaion, and an algorithm ecexecuted to recover the information for playback.

Computer software written to execute these are NOT tranparent as to what models and assumptions/truncations are used. If you absolutely believe in 'bits are bits' and programs comaaring them are infallible in terms of reassembling the audio string, then you will say that there cannot be a difference in sound quality.

I don't and believe I can hear differences. So I use wav at original resolution. HD space is cheap and fancy catalogging is not necessary. You cannot do this with a CD, so why on a computer?

 

RE: I agree with you here..., posted on June 10, 2007 at 06:59:42
aljordan
Audiophile

Posts: 1252
Location: Southern Maine
Joined: November 4, 2003
 See the link below for details on a small test I did in response to a post by Todd Krieger.

Alan

 

Is it the performance of the codec which is at fault?, posted on June 10, 2007 at 09:30:44
Flatmap
 Hi fmak, I'm still trying to get my mind around this.

I take a face value that you can hear a difference. I really don't have a clear idea of how this all works, but you're thinking that it's the performance of the codec which is at fault? And since the dac is conversing with the codec algorithm, it is interacting with a procedure whose performance negatively impacts the resultant audio?

Do I have this right?

 

RE: Best format to store music files, posted on June 10, 2007 at 12:48:01
Primiano Tucci


 
>I am suspicious of FLAC even at 24/96 played backl on Foobar. HF seems to have an unwelcome emphasis.

>Any form of compression entails the use of a statistical model on how to shoten certain types of audio informtaion, and an algorithm ecexecuted to recover the information for playback.

FLAC compressor is lossless, it means that converting a wav file into a flac and bringing it back to wav will give you a bitwise exact copy of the original wav file (i've tested it today, it gives back a wav file with the exact CRC checksum), so i can't figure out how a lossless codec could even alter emphasis or dynamic response.

Lossless codecs (such as FLAC) absolutely don't use statistical or psychoacoustic models to achieve compression (rather than lossy such as mp3, wma ...). The work on the raw byte data of wav files in a similar way of zip(or similar) compressions.

Today i've spent some time to write down an article on my site. It contains also a guide to configure EAC to directly rip cd into flac files.
I hope it would be useful :)

http://www.primianotucci.com/go/flac

Primiano Tucci
(yep, I'm the son of the thread poster, of course ;-) )

 

RE: Best format to store music files, posted on June 10, 2007 at 14:35:39
Dawnrazor
Audiophile

Posts: 12809
Location: N. California
Joined: April 9, 2004
 FLAC compressor is lossless, it means that converting a wav file into a flac and bringing it back to wav will give you a bitwise exact copy of the original wav file (i've tested it today, it gives back a wav file with the exact CRC checksum), so i can't figure out how a lossless codec could even alter emphasis or dynamic response.

I don't think that anyone is arguing that Flac isn't lossless, just that the process of "unzipping it" during playback can affect the sound. Several posters have heard differences between identical files.

This all may depend on the computer involved and extra things going on like use of crossovers, room correction, upsampling.

Do a search for posts from Christine Tham...she has some posts that give some plausible explanations as to why differences are heard.

 

Count me in too! :o). Uncompressed WAV for me. (nt), posted on June 10, 2007 at 15:09:44
Presto
Audiophile

Posts: 6003
Location: Canada
Joined: November 10, 2004
 nt

 

RE: Best format to store music files, posted on June 10, 2007 at 15:32:02
Primiano Tucci


 
I've just done a little test.
Using an intel P4 2.4 ghz Prescott cpu the flac decoder takes about 5 seconds to fully decode a 3 minutes flac file to wav.
Now, it actually depends how the player works... it could decode the flac to wav, and then play the wav file, or it could decode and play the flac wav on the fly (if you use the directshow filter the decode and play process is surely done on the fly).
However, doing a simple calculation based on empiric tests, it seems that the flac decoding process takes about 3% of cpu bandwidth (5s to decode 180s of data= 2,7% of real time cpu usage).
Sincerelly I find really hard to believe that an additional 3% could affect resulting sound
One of the great aspects of digital computating is that the response you get is discrete: you get the output waveform,or you lack it, but you can't get a degraded waferorm.
So, in my point of view, the only way (or better the main way) to compromise sound quality is falling in underrun of sound buffers (so you should hears gaps in sound).
In order to have a buffer underrun the cpu must be under severe load averages (and i don't think it's the case of flac decoding).
Howver this argument is really interesting me... as i'll get a bounch of free time i'm curious to try a file by file "Wav vs flac human test" ...i'll let you know my subjective impressions ;-)

Primiano Tucci

 

RE: Best format to store music files, posted on June 10, 2007 at 17:02:10
Dawnrazor
Audiophile

Posts: 12809
Location: N. California
Joined: April 9, 2004
 Using crossovers and upsampling on my 1ghz dedicated machine, I can tell you that on occasion I have done combinations particularly upsampling that have maxed out the processor, and made the sound behave like a 45 run at 33 or slower.

3% can make a difference for this pc, and from what you are saying, it is 3 % on your more than twice as fast pc or more than 6% on mine slow one.

let us know how your tests go. Others have heard a difference and I wish I had the spare time that you have to test this myself.
having gone with wav, it is pretty acedemic from me at least.

 

RE: Best format to store music files, posted on June 10, 2007 at 22:33:34
fmak
Audiophile

Posts: 13158
Location: Kent
Joined: June 1, 2002
 You need to read up on FLAC!

 

RE: Best format to store music files, posted on June 10, 2007 at 22:35:13
fmak
Audiophile

Posts: 13158
Location: Kent
Joined: June 1, 2002
 What you have done has no bearing on the sound or the accurracy of model or reconstruction

 

RE: Is it the performance of the codec which is at fault?, posted on June 10, 2007 at 22:38:03
fmak
Audiophile

Posts: 13158
Location: Kent
Joined: June 1, 2002
 I don't know, but where there is no clarity in how things are done and I hear differences, I can only attribute this to the model or the programming.

 

you need to read up on file comparators, posted on June 10, 2007 at 22:49:57
kgiessler
Audiophile

Posts: 131
Location: South Shore MA
Joined: April 30, 2007
 its a pretty simple test

 

RE: Best format to store music files, posted on June 11, 2007 at 05:22:50
JimOfOakCreek
Audiophile

Posts: 1301
Location: S.E. Wisconsin
Joined: August 23, 2004
 I would choose a lossless format that allows tagging. FLAC is a VERY good one. I personally use Apple Lossless because of my love for the iPod.

There are two main reasons to go with a Lossless compression. Although storage is cheap it's not free. Plus, you may want to tag your files which WAVs do not support.

IMHO the processors have become so powerful that the simultaneous play and uncompression of a lossless file does not strain the CPU. YMMV

 

RE: Best format to store music files, posted on June 11, 2007 at 08:18:07
Dawnrazor
Audiophile

Posts: 12809
Location: N. California
Joined: April 9, 2004
 I am guessing that you are not upsampling.

Using Secret Rabbit at 176, waves play fine, but on the same damn file but in flac, it doesn't play flawlessly...flac takes 11 seconds to produce sound, and then there are pops and clicks and it sounds like things are spead up. Typing causes the sound to drop out completely.

Even changing to realtime and closing other programs like virus scanner doesn't allow flac to play without pops. Wave plays fine. On this pc (Athalon 64 2800 with 1gig of ram) flac doesn't have such a light footprint as you and others are painting. On my 1gig main rig, I bet I couldn't do anything with flac unless I didn't oversample, even then the crossovers need resources.

I do agree with you though on apple lossless. When I do the test with ALAC, it plays fine like the wave. But, the flac file doesn't as described above. (I haven't listened to see if they sound different yet, but not much need for me to do that since all files are already ripped to wav)

What does tagging get you? Wave and cue sheets can do most of those fancy taging features, and I don't have to worry about sound quality or unzipping mucking up the sound.

Perhaps when I get cable and my 3ghz media center pc becomes available, then I can play flac and upsample and use crossovers, but right now, flac has too heavy a footprint.

 

RE: Best format to store music files, posted on June 11, 2007 at 08:36:51
JimOfOakCreek
Audiophile

Posts: 1301
Location: S.E. Wisconsin
Joined: August 23, 2004
 Your experiences are very interesting. My older Compaq laptop has the same processor, Athlon 64 w/ 1 gig RAM and it plays FLAC perfectly.

You are correct in that I don't upsample.

Could there be something else going on with your machine? Or is it due to me not upsampling that I get flaweless play from FLAC?

Tagging allows iPod users to veiw album covers on their iPods. Also, Apple makes it oh-so-easy to download and tag Artist, Album etc.

Either way I love iTunes/iPod/Apple-Lossless.

 

RE: Best format to store music files, posted on June 11, 2007 at 09:02:09
Dawnrazor
Audiophile

Posts: 12809
Location: N. California
Joined: April 9, 2004
 Yeah, flac works fine without upsampling, and it also seems to work ok at 96. It is at higher resolutions that flac breaks down.

WIth drc, crossoves and upsampling, I can see flac as a huge detriment vs.waves, unless you have a superfast pc. If I had to go compressed, I would choose apples format, but some say it doesn't sound as good as wav.

With wave and cue sheets, I too have all the cover art I need.

 

RE: Best format to store music files, posted on June 11, 2007 at 19:59:58
Dawnrazor
Audiophile

Posts: 12809
Location: N. California
Joined: April 9, 2004
 Hey F,

When you say that you use the original resolution (16/44) is this because your DCS upsamples, or is this an indictment of upsampling in general???

 

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