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RE: Best format to store music files

84.222.251.151

Posted by Primiano Tucci on June 10, 2007 at 15:32:02

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

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

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