Flac

Harkat

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What is FLAC?
What does it do?
How is it better than MP3 and why does my MP3 not play it?

Thanks in advance guys :grinthumb
~Harkat~
 

LG

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FLAC = Free Lossless Audio Codec.

It was invented by a smart American engineer who hated the Lossy compression codecs like MP3, AAC, Nero etc. So he invented one of his own that when you "Expand" it back to full size doesn't suffer any loss of integrity.

WAV files = 1411 KBS

FLAC files = 900 KBS depending on how small you want to compress them.

MP3 = 320 KBS

AAC = 256 KBS

My Sansa plays anything, FLAC, WAV, AAC, MP3, Ogg Vorbis so if you can update the firmware on your MP3 player you might be able to load a FLAC app and play them Harkat. I know many i-pod owners use many of the free available apps to get around Apples insane closed system and can play anything they want.

Google Foobar 2000 and download it if you like, it is a great little freeware app. and you can play or convert FLAC to WAV with it on your computer at least.
 

Harkat

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I have a Creative Zen X-Fi2
and it comes with this stupid Creative Central which is so slow to do anything >_>
And it simply is a pain so far
But apparently I have to let Creative Central put the FLAC files on my MP3 =\
 

LG

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^^I don't know much about any other players except Sansa, but I ignore all the synch/upload stuff and manually load my player, and I have a micro SD memory card that I preload and just insert it into the player and I'm good to go.

I am sure there must be a way to get around the roadblocks that Creative has put in the way, you just have to look around to see if someone has found a solution.

Still download Foobar 2000, I use it to play files on my PC rather than Windows, it is a much better app and has a small footprint as well. There is a large fraternity of people that like to play outside the box that all the big companies want to keep you in, so if I can find an alternative that works then I will use it instead of the MS or Apple or other programs.
 

Magic

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VLC media player is a fantastic free application.

VLC Media Player - Free Download of our VLC Media Player Software



VLC supports any media/audio file type you throw at it without having to search for codecs. It will play broken files and zip files, too. One really cool feature it has that other media players dont have is the technology to preview files as you are downloading them.

I highly recommend it :tup:


flac is a lossless file format. What this means is when a CD is ripped in this format you do not lose any data, it is an exact copy of the original. There are other lossless formats as well.......This Wiki page compares all the lossless file formats and is an excellent information source.



Q: Can you hear the differences in lossless vs. lossy formats like mp3?

A: Depends on what playback equipment you use and your own ears. In some cases it is very difficult to tell the difference between a 320 kbps mp3 and a flac file. If you look at the data images of both, there are only minor sound losses:

comp1ek1.png
 

LG

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^^Yep I can tell the difference and have said so many times. Also I don't play music on my PC very often, they are okay for watching Youtbubes in the forum etc., but when I want to really Hear what a CD/Band is playing I use my proper system. My Sansa, I load with FLAC's and preview them using my 7.1 system, not the earbuds.;)

I like using Foobar because I have installed a bunch of great utilities that make it a very useful toolkit when I am messing around with my music.
 

Harkat

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Alright, I had a look and played around.
I can get the Creative Central program to do what seems like encoding files onto the player as FLAC =\

Thanks guys, I shall get ontop of this and experience some REAL music! :grinthumb
 

LG

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Remember the Golden Rule, you can never go from Lossy(MP3 etc.) to Lossless(FLAC, APE, Apple Lossless, WAV) without losing file integrity, it's called "Transcoding". But if you have a genuine FLAC file you can compress it to whatever format you want or expand it back to it's original form, that is the Codec I use to keep all of my CD's on four HDD's in case something happens to the CD itself.

If you want to know the best ripping software available, check out EAC, and there is a link to Hydrogen Audio's "How To" thread that will guide you through the installation, very complicated but once you set it up, you can make 100% perfect copies of any of your discs in case of fire or theft or an "Act of God". It's free and it's excellent.:tup:
 

Magic

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LG is right, though. Once you rip a CD to MP3 you have compressed the data and that data can never be recovered in the file no matter what file format you try to use.
 

Harkat

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So what exactly do I do with all my mp3 files? xD

I guess I just leave them and make sure that my next stuff gets compressed into FLAC
 

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