Sorry, 2 Newbie questions: Purchase software for Mac and Windows&ripping uncompressed

[currter]

1) I would like to know if I could make a one purchase for $30 and use the
software on both Windows and Mac as I use the two interchangeably on a Macbook
Pro (Bootcamp and Parallels)? Or do I have to purchase twice, one for Mac and one for
Windows as I decide which OS is better accomplishing goal of re-ripping a 1200+ CD collection.
I used iTunes to rip to .wav using the Mac ... now I want to try out using .flac
and may just use Windows to do this.

2) In the Encoder section/tab, is there an advantage of ripping the .flac files as
lossless uncompressed as opposed to lossless level 8? I noticed that the resulting
.flac file as uncompressed has a comparable size to the .wav files I am used to
or even .aiff and I would prefer that. Of course I could save space using the
compressed level 8 (default is 5), but would that require more processing of the
flac player to use "uncompressing" algorithms to get back the original audio file?
I do not care for disk capacity issues and so far I am using .wav on various
hard drives (the master copy or source) and flash drives and microSD cards that I may use
in car stereos (FAT32 or exFAT formatted 64 GB storage media ).
For me 1 USB3.0 64GB flash drive can hold about 1400 + or - .wav files which is
sufficient for my purposes.

I may want to explore re-ripping my 1200 CD collection to .flac as it can hold the
meta data and I can see the album cover images on the Sony or Pioneer
car stereo systems. I am not sure if I can view the same images using .wav files.
I am just now exploring the usage of .flac now.

Thank you.


TC

[Spoon]

Re: Sorry, 2 Newbie questions: Purchase software for Mac and Windows&ripping uncompre

1) The software is either Windows or Mac, until you decide you can try the 21 day full trial on each platform.

"but would that require more processing of the flac player to use "uncompressing" algorithms to get back the original audio file?"

Yes this is true.

[currter]

Re: Sorry, 2 Newbie questions: Purchase software for Mac and Windows&ripping uncompre

1) The software is either Windows or Mac, until you decide you can try the 21 day full trial on each platform.

Well, I may have made a mistake by downloading the 21 day trial software on both platforms and
I have decided that I do want to purchase the software eventually. I guess my question was if I really
want to use both mac and windows with it, would I have to purchase the software twice or could I use
the same key on both operating systems? If not, could I get a discount for a "bulk" purchase for both
operating systems? I think at this point I may just worry about getting this for Windows
but again, I do like to go back and forth and though I prefer the Mac over windows... however since I ripped the
CD library of 1200+ CDs using iTunes on the Mac... then as I embark on this project to rip to .flac
using another hard drive, I will use Windows 10 this time. (balance)

Addendum: I had thought about using some batch program or process to just convert all the .wav files
I had processed already, but I am not sure if I would get all the metadata associated with just
re-ripping all the CDs again from scratch and maybe this time get some more analyses done as
far as error corrections if the CDs were slightly damaged or smudged the first time around.
I certainly cannot listen to every song on 1200 CDs to figure out if any have errors , pops, skips...
though I had run across a few and managed to re-rip those cleanly into .wav ....
It is a monumental task and I just want to do it right this time with the added knowledge so
I do not have to do this again with 1200 CDs.



"but would that require more processing of the flac player to use "uncompressing" algorithms to get back the original audio file?"

Yes this is true.

So since I do not care about space limitations on the flash drives and hard drives, your recommendation is just to
rip using the uncompressed lossless form so I get practically the .wav audio file and along with it the metadata
(album cover art)
associated with it in the resulting .flac file; and therefore there would be less or no processing needed when translating the
.flac file back to .wav or when playing the audio on a car stereo such as Sony XAV-650BT or the Pioneer AVH-4200NEX....
Again, my initial exploration into .flac was to rip the files using that level 8 lossless compression resulting in a smaller
file size (maybe by 30%) compared to .wav.
I want to do this right as I will need to take yet another 1 week or more to rip those 1200 CDs yet again and want to make
sure I do this the proper way and this time getting the images of the album data stored.

Thank you for your suggestions.

[currter]

Re: Sorry, 2 Newbie questions: Purchase software for Mac and Windows&ripping uncompre

so in essence would you say and confirm that .flac that is uncompressed lossless (fully) is
essentially the .wav file but with metadata (images)?

I think so and I need to know this... as I am about to embark re-ripping the massive CD
library yet again and want to do this right this time....the first time I was not thinking about
metadata when I ripped everything to .wav but realize my car stereo can display that so
why not take advantage of that.
And I have an extra, free 1 TB hard drive...

And maybe $60 is not too much to pay to get the sofware on both operating systems
but if I could save money a bit, why not take advantage of that too.

[Spoon]

Re: Sorry, 2 Newbie questions: Purchase software for Mac and Windows&ripping uncompre

Flac uncompressed can still compress under certain circumstances (such as the audio is digital 000's).

If you purchase for 1 platform, then on the download page is an offer link with a 50% discount on a 2nd purchase.

[currter]

Re: Sorry, 2 Newbie questions: Purchase software for Mac and Windows&ripping uncompre

Also I was thinking it would require more processing of the CPU to "decompress"or "uncompress"
the a flac compressed audio (at the various levels ) to essentially recover the original .wav or .aiff
form so since I am not concerned about hard disk (3 TB) or flash drive or SD card (64GB to 128GB )
space limitations, I would want to rip the audio files at the maximum CD quality sizes even though
I know and hear that all flac files are lossless regardless of the compression levels (and can
save space on the storage devices which I am not concerned given the wealth of storage capacities
I have now).

so this is why I have chosen to use lossless uncompressed (is that a word?) and I get the
added benefits of having the tag and album cover and art images added into each .flac file
for display on my audio/video device (Sony or Pioneer car stereos).
also why make the stereo work any harder than necessary translating the compressed files back to
wav (analog)... thus my reasoning for using lossless uncompressed -- unless I got it all wrong?

Thank you.

Again, I am just learning more about the benefits of flac and I just filled out a
form to Apple support to hopefully add flac support in iTunes.
(and sent a copy Apple's CEO by email).

TC

[currter]

Re: Sorry, 2 Newbie questions: Purchase software for Mac and Windows&ripping uncompre

I think some of my postings are censored or not going through...
I think I said I guess I got it all wrong as far as the pricing thinking $28...
when it is $68. OH well I am a newbie so that explains that.

Also is there a command line flag/switch option to flac executable to bypass the
numeric level compression (1 to 8) to do uncompressed lossless?
I am exploring something else... maybe to use EAC on WIndows and reserve
purchasing dbpowerAmp for the Mac that way I can just buy one copy.

is it flac -6 (for level 6 compression) but instead flac --bps=16 --sample=44100 --bit-rate=1412 ...
or some form like that?

[Spoon]

Re: Sorry, 2 Newbie questions: Purchase software for Mac and Windows&ripping uncompre

There is no command line to do flac uncompressed, as far as I know.

The uncompressed mode does take less cpu effort to decode that is correct.

[currter]

Re: Sorry, 2 Newbie questions: Purchase software for Mac and Windows&ripping uncompre

So is it fair to say that this special mode (lossless uncompressed to get a resulting audio file
comparably sized with .wav and/or .aiff) is proprietary software within dbpoweramp software and
is independent to the flac command or program?
Is this a special case issue and one cannot duplicate it using flac or EAC by changing
the command line options and switches ?
If not, then is it possible to find out what the command line options should be
to not use the -6 or -8 level of compression and generate a larger file with the .flac benefits?
I do not know why this is so difficult to find out even EAC is giving me a hard time getting
this information. And this is supposed to be open source software? And I cannot find out what
the proper command line options are or should be? I guess I will have to download the source
and analyze the code to figure this out?

I had a difficult time replying to this...
this site does not seem to be friendly with replies being censored, blocked or whatever...

[garym]

Re: Sorry, 2 Newbie questions: Purchase software for Mac and Windows&ripping uncompre

So is it fair to say that this special mode (lossless uncompressed to get a resulting audio file
comparably sized with .wav and/or .aiff) is proprietary software within dbpoweramp software and
is independent to the flac command or program?
Is this a special case issue and one cannot duplicate it using flac or EAC by changing
the command line options and switches ?
If not, then is it possible to find out what the command line options should be
to not use the -6 or -8 level of compression and generate a larger file with the .flac benefits?
I do not know why this is so difficult to find out even EAC is giving me a hard time getting
this information. And this is supposed to be open source software? And I cannot find out what
the proper command line options are or should be? I guess I will have to download the source
and analyze the code to figure this out?

I had a difficult time replying to this...
this site does not seem to be friendly with replies being censored, blocked or whatever...

I've never seen posts censored, blocked, or whatever in all the years I've posted here. I suspect there is some issue with either your local network or your internet provider.

Not that it matters I suppose, but just curious: why the need to use command line. Why not use dbpa as designed and if you want to create uncompressed FLACS it can do it for you as part of the standard software.

[currter]

Re: Sorry, 2 Newbie questions: Purchase software for Mac and Windows&ripping uncompre

I tried to add this to the thread yesterday and it was blocked or censored...
trying again .. maybe this helps with my goal...

How to add options flac command line for uncompressed lossless 16 bit audio?
How to add options flac command line to generate a .flac file that
contains uncompressed lossless 16 bit audio similar to how dbpoweramp works?
Dbpoweramp has about 8 to 9 levels of compression one of them being no compression
at all.
The resulting file is a .flac file with meta data but is the same size as the .wav
file and thus making me comfortable that no data is lost and yet having the
benefits of a file with tagging and meta data.
flac.exe - .... is it -br %1412 or --bps=16 --channels=2 --sample-rate=44100 ?
or is it
flac.exe --disable-constant-subframes --disable-fixed-subframes -l0 somefile.wav

Thank you.

Here is what dbpoweramp states

Being a lossless codec there are not many options to set when compressing to FLAC: Compression affects how much effort goes into compressing the audio, all compression modes give the same decoded audio (it is lossless after all), the higher compression levels will give a small % file size saving, but will require more time to compress and decompress. Compression Level 0 requires the least compression time, whilst Compression Level 8 the most. Uncompressed is a special compression mode with stores 16 bit audio in an uncompressed state.

[currter]

Re: Sorry, 2 Newbie questions: Purchase software for Mac and Windows&ripping uncompre

Well i want to balance using dbpoweramp on Mac and use EAC on Windows (if the truth be told).
I think I need to get this information from the flac software developers or EAC how to change the
command line.
I was trying to balance how I responded to this issue since using a competitor software and
was just wondering if dbpa is doing something special or using its own modification of the
flac software to implement the lossless compressed mode...
If so, then I am wasting my time asking this question or addressing it to the EAC forum.
EAC is free and I wanted to take advantage of that on Windows while getting the same benefit
of dbpa's special feature.

so anyone knows the command line arguments to the flac app?


Thank you.

[garym]

Re: Sorry, 2 Newbie questions: Purchase software for Mac and Windows&ripping uncompre

I assume you understand that any FLAC file is lossess, regardless of the "compression" level. And this can be easily shown by converting a file to FLAC -8 (high compression) and then reconverting that back to WAV. the CRCs of this file will match the WAV file and the two will be bit perfect. "compression" in a FLAC file only has to do with file size. It has absolutely ZERO to do with whether the audio is bit perfect back to the file that was ripped from the CD.

And why do you need command line. If you want FLAC uncompressed (for some reason *other* than you want bit perfect file), why not just use dbpa?

[garym]

Re: Sorry, 2 Newbie questions: Purchase software for Mac and Windows&ripping uncompre

Well i want to balance using dbpoweramp on Mac and use EAC on Windows (if the truth be told).
I think I need to get this information from the flac software developers or EAC how to change the
command line.
I was trying to balance how I responded to this issue since using a competitor software and
was just wondering if dbpa is doing something special or using its own modification of the
flac software to implement the lossless compressed mode...
If so, then I am wasting my time asking this question or addressing it to the EAC forum.
EAC is free and I wanted to take advantage of that on Windows while getting the same benefit
of dbpa's special feature.

so anyone knows the command line arguments to the flac app?


Thank you.

understand, and makes sense. I can't help as I've never had the need to use command lines. I moved from EAC years ago to dbpa and have never looked back.

[currter]

Re: Sorry, 2 Newbie questions: Purchase software for Mac and Windows&ripping uncompre

understand, and makes sense. I can't help as I've never had the need to use command lines. I moved from EAC years ago to dbpa and have never looked back.

I guess I am "reinventing the wheel" with this... I am going through the same steps
and analysis you probably did years ago...



I am thinking dbpoweramp is using its own internal modification to the code
for that 9th "compression" method (outside the levels 1 to 8) for lossless compressed
and maybe there is no command line option to flac to do the same and EAC
cannot do this.
This may be dbpoweramp proprietary and that is fine... I will just have to buy
a 2nd copy for Windows (really want to get for Mac since Windows seems to be
better served as far as flac compatibility and ripping software). More choices for
Windows than Mac...
I guess this ends this... I will see what I can squeeze out of the Exact Audio Copy
team with this issue and if I cannot, I will move forward with my project using
dbpoweramp
Thank you