Format War: Your Favorite Lossless Format

We all know MP3 is easily the dominant lossy format (with WMA, AAC, OGG and MPC far behind), but amoung the lossless it's a slightly different story. Lacking any widespread mainstream adaption, it's at best a 2-4 way war. Which comes to the question, what (if any) is your preferred lossless format? Give some explaination, what makes you choose Real Lossless (probably not ) over FLAC?

Monkey's Audio is by far my favorite format. I've heard people whine about decoding time and seeking, but what other lossless format encodes so quickly and with such high compression raitos (the 'fast' mode compresses just as good as FLAC under almost any circumstances)? MAC was designed as a syncronous codec, meaning it compresses/decompresses equally fast. This may sound bad for decoding, but 10x encoding/decoding is not bad on a 1st generation Athlon, especially considering that FLAC (at its best compression settings), spits out files larger in size and takes an extremely longer time to encode.
Yes seeking on APE files is slow (especially in APE/CUE files compressed with settings greater than "High"). Even the argument that FLAC is better because it can be played on more platforms is slowly starting to be untrue (with the somewhat loose closed source nature of the program).
So while I'll accept a FLAC file from someone else, MAC is my cup of tea for my lossless needs.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

WavPack does everything FLAC does and more. The only drawback is that it's not supported on many devices. But I mean, if you want to listen to it off your computer you can burn it to CD-R as audio or transcode it to 320 (which contains as many frequencies as the human ear can hear).

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by Eleo

WavPack does everything FLAC does and more. The only drawback is that it's not supported on many devices.

Rockbox supports FLAC and Wavpack. Rockbox is alternative firmware for a number of portable audio players. I got it on my iRiver H140 and it's awesome.

They wanted to include the Monkey's Audio format but they stumbled on these problems:

Quote:

Problem: The Monkey's Audio license is not open source compatible, since you are not allowed to use it without express written permission from the author. Discussions have been held about relicensing under LGPL, but no progress since may '04. -- BjornStenberg

The codec is heavily x86-centric with lots of x86 assembly to speed up parts of the code - particularly a neural network. Unless it's very heavily optimized for 68K, it won't run real-time. And some compression modes (Extra high, Insane) probably won't run no matter how much you optimize it - RobertoAmorim

That's a good reason not to like Monkey's Audio, i'd say.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

I voted for FLAC, since it's the only one I have used that I have liked. It's also the most common lossless format people are using, in my experience...

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FLAC, because in a comparison done some time ago (on HA, I think) it was found to be the best lossless codec overall - good compression, low CPU usage, fairly robust......

Another nice thing about FLAC is that you can put it in an OGG container.

I was speaking idiomatically.

I chose FLAC, mainly because other people use it over APE and those other formats. I rip CDs in FLAC as well and so I hope other people will be able to play and enjoy them to the max.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

For those wanting to know how almost all known lossless formats stack up, check this comparison.

Also of particular interest to FLAC users: use the attached FLAC compressor. It's known to compress/decompress faster and produce smaller FLAC files, while maintaining 100% compatiblity with all FLAC decoders.

FELIPE NO

Which Flac encoder from that comparison is that? "Flac - CVS" or "Flac - Garf"?

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Originally Posted by Slogra

Which Flac encoder from that comparison is that? "Flac - CVS" or "Flac - Garf"?

The Garf encoder. The CVS one is unstable (based on latest builds) while the Garf encoder is stable. While CVS gets more compression than Garf, the difference is so extremely tiny (less than 500KB on all but the slowest settings), it doesn't even matter.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Slogra

Rockbox supports FLAC and Wavpack. Rockbox is alternative firmware for a number of portable audio players. I got it on my iRiver H140 and it's awesome.

Although I still don't know why you would want to put any lossless file directly onto a portable device when you can transcode to mp3 and save space.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Maybe because you value audio quality on the go or use the thing as a portable hard drive for a car audio player or something? There would be many legitmate uses for lossless on the go, Eleo.

And FLAC is by far the superior format. Sure, it takes longer to encode than it does to decode, as mentioned above, but that's good because most of the time I'm only encoding something ONCE, and listening to it a lot.

And encoding really doesn't take that long anyway in my experience. You're not really wasting much time with the medium settings.

I wonder who voted for OFR?

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

But the audio quality of a 320kbps mp3 is audibly identical to a lossless file; ie no normal human can hear the removed frequencies. Thus I can think of no reason why you would want to place lossless audio on a portable device when mp3s accomplish the same ends and save disk space.

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Originally Posted by nananananananana Flacmaaaan

I can think of no reason why you would want to place use lossless audio on a portable device at all when mp3s accomplish the same ends and save disk space.

Oh hey look, that's my rationale

I was speaking idiomatically.

Originally Posted by ArrowHead

FLAC, because in a comparison done some time ago (on HA, I think) it was found to be the best lossless codec overall - good compression, low CPU usage, fairly robust......

Another nice thing about FLAC is that you can put it in an OGG container.

Those are also reasons why I use it, that, plus it's open source IIRC...

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Originally Posted by Cal

Oh hey look, that's my rationale

So which lossless format did you vote for?

FELIPE NO

Originally Posted by Eleo

But the audio quality of a 320kbps mp3 is audibly identical to a lossless file; ie no normal human can hear the removed frequencies. Thus I can think of no reason why you would want to place lossless audio on a portable device when mp3s accomplish the same ends and save disk space.

Actually, there are plenty of instances where a lossy encoding will sound very different from the original. To put it really simply, these are cases where the encoder screws up.

Search HydrogenAudio and you'll find a list of "problem samples" which are known to give encoders trouble.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

"Plenty of instances", or "a small chance that"?

Jam it back in, in the dark.

If I recall correctly, LAME (and the mp3 format itself) has trouble handling audio data above 16kHz. 320kbps is a waste of space for me, VBR or Lossless.

And since Monkey's Audio is slowly picking up again (with Linux decoders working), I see a bright future for it. All I want now is native ReplayGain and better seeking, and I'll never need to see FLAC on my HDD ever again. Though I'm curious about MPEG-4 lossless as well, the tests I saw had good compression with fast decoding, a lossless standard would help get more lossless rips out there (we badly need an mp3 of lossless).

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Good luck getting many to make the move from FLAC to APE...

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

If you're referring to mac, I've barely gotten that thing to work, and no player I'd consider using (Musik or MPD exclusively) supports it. mac was also the biggest pain in the ass to get installed, since the usual make chain didn't work for me with it (much less a lacking of documentation); this was all about one month ago, by the way.

I voted FLAC, for the simple reason that my players support it, and the decoder on Linux works perfectly. Add to that the really low decode time compared to APE when both run with high compression, and I find it to be the winner by leaps and bounds.

The only reason I even have mac installed anymore is to rip things from APE and dump them to FLAC so my players can use it.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Originally Posted by Eleo

"Plenty of instances", or "a small chance that"?

A very real chance.

Originally Posted by Kaiten

If I recall correctly, LAME (and the mp3 format itself) has trouble handling audio data above 16kHz. 320kbps is a waste of space for me, VBR or Lossless.

Correct.

Quote:

And since Monkey's Audio is slowly picking up again (with Linux decoders working), I see a bright future for it. All I want now is native ReplayGain and better seeking, and I'll never need to see FLAC on my HDD ever again.

Never gonna happen. That's how APE squeezes the extra 1 or 2% out of its encodings: by completely neglecting to have the kind of structure that makes fast seeking possible.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Originally Posted by Eleo

So which lossless format did you vote for?

Black people are hilarious.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

i know this is off-topic but what's the difference between ALAC and FLAC?

FELIPE NO

Originally Posted by nyvremzurc

i know this is off-topic but what's the difference between ALAC and FLAC?

Main difference (besides for lossless encoding): ALAC is a proprietary format, only officially decodable on iTunes and iPods. This is in contrast to FLAC which is open source and is decodable on nearly any media player (if not directly, then with plugins), but since FLAC is not officially decodable on an iPod (or many other hardware digital music players), it has an uphill battle.

Furthermore, though I've noticed I'm the only person saying anything positive about Monkey's Audio, it's still in 2nd place with six votes. While it's dwarfed with FLAC's 22 votes, it still crushes the nearest competition threefold.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

ok, thanks for the clarification kaiten.

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