Best lossless codec?

[jfkaess]

I have ripped all my cd's to mp3 using lame with the "extreme" setting and have been happy with the results. They take up about 75 gigs on my iPod classic.

I am now considering whether I should make archival rips to future proof my collection. My main criteria is that I be able to maintain all the tag info and album art. I also want to be able to do something equivalent to what mp3gain does to the audio levels of each track to eliminate clipping and also normalize levels with a replay gain type of adjustment. I don.t mind doing the audio level adjustments as a second step. I know this means reripping my entire collection.

My question is, looking to the future, should I rip them to Apple lossless, FLAC, Monkey's Audio, or some other format? I want to do this using dMC.

[Spoon]

Re: Best lossless codec?

I would personally use FLAC, other than that they are all quite similar.

[garym]

Re: Best lossless codec?

FLAC is your best option unless you are for some reason tied to apple. But even in my case, I rip to FLAC and create a mirror mp3 directory for use on my ipods/iphone. I use FLAC for archive and for playing on my home system squeezeboxes.

[jfkaess]

Re: Best lossless codec?

I'm kinda leaning toward FLAC. My remaining question would be how to apply a replay gain adjustment in FLAC. I want to eliminate clipping, and try and end up with a bit of a more normalized sound level.

My goal would then be that I could covert my archival files to mp3 or whatever codec becomes the standard in the future and retain my album art, tag info and volume normalization.

Thanks for your help.

[garym]

Re: Best lossless codec?

I'm kinda leaning toward FLAC. My remaining question would be how to apply a replay gain adjustment in FLAC. I want to eliminate clipping, and try and end up with a bit of a more normalized sound level.

My goal would then be that I could covert my archival files to mp3 or whatever codec becomes the standard in the future and retain my album art, tag info and volume normalization.

Thanks for your help.

works perfectly with FLAC. I use the ReplayGain DSP when I'm ripping to FLAC with dbpoweramp. It creates album level and track level tags that can be used by many players in volume levelling.

[Arnold_Layne]

Re: Best lossless codec?

If you have a large capacity ipod, you could use ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec) which will import direct to itunes without conversion and is ipod compatable.

[Teknojnky]

Re: Best lossless codec?

ancient chinese proverb say:

there is no best lossless; there is only best lossless for you

if your in the apple walled garden (itunes etc), use ALAC
if your in the MS walled garden (WMP/WMC), use WMA lossless
otherwise, FLAC has generally has the support of most other 3rd party software and maybe even hardware.

worst case scenario, you could go with straight wave files, but you waste a ton of space and various metadata may not be compatible across different software/hardware.

[OldCoder]

Re: Best lossless codec?

Spoon,

Have you converted from using Monkey's Audio to FLAC?

If so, would you mind explaining why?

Just curious from your comment.

[Wayne]

Re: Best lossless codec?

Spoon,

Have you converted from using Monkey's Audio to FLAC?

If so, would you mind explaining why?

Just curious from your comment.

Could it because there are more users and continued support for FLAC? FLAC is also open source.

[Spoon]

Re: Best lossless codec?

It is a format which has momentum, from the Beetles collection released in this format, to any lossless online store (outside of WMA and Apple Lossless) they supply FLAC. Apple Lossless is proprietary to Apple, WMA Lossless to Microsoft, so FLAC is the only one which is non-proprietary.

Also is true of hardware playback devices, FLAC is becoming the standard, which is good.

[tommymul]

Re: Best lossless codec?

I personally prefer FLAC its loss is near null

[Thg6276]

Re: Best lossless codec?

FLAC its loss is near null -> not near null ... there is no loss with Flac

[Porcus]

Re: Best lossless codec?

There is a fairly good list of pros and cons over at http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index....ess_comparison . I'd recommend FLAC, as by far the best supported and documented. Furthermore it is optimized for decoding speed (and you encode once and decode every time you play).

Possible exceptions:

- if all you care for is the Apple or M$ universes, then maybe you should stick to their format(s). Don't say you weren't warned :-p

- if your hard drive is just a tiny bit too small and you need to squeeze the last drops of compression, then consider TAK. Not well supported by applications, no(?) hardware support, but is on par with OptimFrog on compression and on par with everything on speed -- like FLAC (but unlike Monkey's) it is also a quick decoder.

[jfkaess]

Re: Best lossless codec?

Thank you everyone for your help. I think I've reluctantly decided to go with ALAC due to my use of a 160 gb iPod classic. I was going to use FLAC and then rockbox my iPod, but the iPod classic is not supported by rockbox.

[Arnold_Layne]

Re: Best lossless codec?

Thank you everyone for your help. I think I've reluctantly decided to go with ALAC due to my use of a 160 gb iPod classic. I was going to use FLAC and then rockbox my iPod, but the iPod classic is not supported by rockbox.

I have same ipod classic. I also rip to ALAC for use with my Alpine IVA-W505 which decodes ALAC.

A_L