mp3? That’s like, so, 1998.
Fri, Apr 20th, 2007
Okay, I’m gonna rock out the audio geek shit:
Lately, I’ve been ripping my new and older CDs to Free Lossless Audio Codec format rather than good old MP3 or OGG. FLAC is exactly what it says it is: lossless audio. The files ripped in it sound amazing, and though they take up a good deal more space than your average near-transparent MP3, they’re absolutely worth it for recordings where quality matters (say, Jazz, classical, ambient, or even some electronica). Storage is pretty damn cheap nowadays anyway, so the extra space isn’t even that much of a consideration.
The downside of FLAC, though, is that iTunes can’t play it natively, which is only an issue if I want to share music with J (I use Amarok or XMMS for my music listening needs). My iPod can play the files, but only because I’ve replaced the stock Apple firmware with RockBox (which can handle MP3 plus a bunch of other formats, including FLAC and OGG) .
When I’m not using FLAC, I prefer LAME’s -V 0 –vbr-new encoding for MP3 files, as this sounds damn near transparent to me, and significantly better than Apple’s encoder in iTunes.
For those of you who could care less, I apologize, but I was listening to some FLAC encoded files tonight, and sat in awe at how good they sounded. I just felt that I should share it with the world.
# Comment by Alli on Fri, Apr 20th, 2007 at 10:36 am:
I downloaded a torrent full of FLAC and I wanted it, but damn iTunes for its lack of support. They need to catch up.
# Comment by Ryan on Fri, Apr 20th, 2007 at 2:07 pm:
How’s it compare with APE in terms of file size, quality, and player support?
# Comment by noixtoc on Fri, Apr 20th, 2007 at 9:56 pm:
They also take up one heck of a lot of space. I used to do FLACs only, but I got tired of worrying about space, so I switched to MP3s (I’m not enough of a connoisseur to be overly worried about loss of undertones, etc.)
# Comment by Luke on Fri, Apr 20th, 2007 at 11:31 pm:
When you say it’s worth it for when quality matters, does that mean that the format only has a discernable difference on jazz etc? Is it worth exporting to FLAC for the more punkish variety? If so, I’ll give it a try as long as the file size is not 50mb like wave files.
# Comment by Derek on Sun, Apr 22nd, 2007 at 9:02 pm:
If anyone’s concerned about hacking their iPod’s firmware to play FLAC, you might want to try Apple Lossless, which is built-in to iTunes and is fully iPod supported. It is a proprietary format, but it has been reverse-engineered already, so you’re not trapped in totally.
John Gruber had some interesting tidbits on audio formats a few weeks back.
# Comment by Bob Torres on Mon, Apr 23rd, 2007 at 9:18 am:
@alli: There are plug-ins for iTunes. Grab them and you’ll be flacfabulous.
@Ryan: not sure. But I use FLAC because it is more easily integrated into the players I use. I do have some APE stuff, and it sounds great. Hey, if it is good enough for the Philadelphia Orchestra, it is good enough for me. (And their FLAC downloads are very, very good).
@noixtoc: yes, they do take up more space, but with drives being so cheap, that’s less and less of a concern to me, though for portability, it is an issue.
@Luke: most punk has terrible recording values, and you won’t notice ripping it in FLAC versus MP3. I don’t bother ripping punk into FLAC, personally. And the files aren’t like 50mb, but they’re probably, oh, 10mb for a quick song?
@derek: AppleLossless is a great idea for iTunes folks who really want quality (I still think the MP3 encoder in iTunes gets the pants beaten off of it by LAME). As for Gruber (and that fucker still owes me a damn t-shirt from last year!), he raises some excellent points, but as someone with a few files sitting around in a DRM’d format that I can’t play on every computer I own, I can understand where the critique of “lock-in” comes from for Apple.
# Comment by Eric Prescott on Wed, Apr 25th, 2007 at 1:16 am:
I was consolidating my music files onto one computer over the weekend (that was a pain in the ass, let me tell you), and I noticed a few things:
1) I don’t listen to music loud enough and without enough background or mental distractions anymore to notice the difference between a 192kbps AAC file and a 256kbps MP3 file. I’m just not the audiophile I thought I was when I was in college (and just out).
2) My 192kbps rips of remastered albums (I know, I regret that bit rate) blow the doors off earlier editions ripped at 320kbps.
3) I still don’t have room on my iMac to rip any of the music still sitting on my shelves, and I don’t feel like buying and hooking up an always-on external hard drive (I smell a new iMac with 500GB drive in my long-term future), but I never listen to CDs anymore, which means at least half my collection is never in active rotation.
4) Despite all this, I’m going to regret not having ripped more of my music at least in Apple’s Lossless format. I don’t mind not using FLAC, despite it’s apparent quality, because I like using iTunes, but I don’t intend to re-rip 60GB worth of music into 180GB of music. I just don’t have the time, nor evidently the ears, anymore to make it happen.
5) That said, once I have more storage, I do intend to rip all my future tunes at no less than 320kbps in AAC format, which I do find much more pleasant to the ear than MP3.
Hope that wasn’t as dry for you as it seems to me. I suppose I can share my situation, since you did.
I’m enjoying that you’re blogging so much about random stuff, Bob.
np: Depeche Mode: “The Things You Said” (256kbps AAC)