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I was doing some FLAC ripping recently, and I decided to play with the compression settings for fun. I had been using High always, assuming that it would produce the smallest files and converting time is not that big a factor. Well, for the few songs that I did extensive testing on (Rock, Reggae, Jazz, Acoustic, Classical) it seems that the Medium setting produced smaller files most of the time, and was significantly faster. The Low setting produced only marginally larger files and was negligibly faster than Medium. With my first test song, Medium came out nearly 2% smaller (not a big deal) but it converted in 4 seconds from Wave, whereas High took 1min 33sec !!! (:shocked: very significant) In another case, Medium converted 5% smaller and in 9sec vs. 3 min 18 sec on High. So, not only is the Medium setting making smaller (smaller is better) files, but it is ridiculously faster.
I might dig out my old FLAC converter (just does FLAC) and do some more comparisons when I get a chance. I seem to remember that it had more than three settings, and was more consistent in that each higher setting produced smaller files.
I realized that this knowledge could have saved me hours and hours of time over the last year. Has anyone done any more serious testing of the various conversion settings (lossless & lossy)? Does anyone know where to find any good info about what settings and which codecs sound the best?
I might dig out my old FLAC converter (just does FLAC) and do some more comparisons when I get a chance. I seem to remember that it had more than three settings, and was more consistent in that each higher setting produced smaller files.
I realized that this knowledge could have saved me hours and hours of time over the last year. Has anyone done any more serious testing of the various conversion settings (lossless & lossy)? Does anyone know where to find any good info about what settings and which codecs sound the best?
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