From the days of way back.

TerraEpon wrote:

I'm sorry Judo, but anyone who uses WAV over FLAC or even APE is a an idiot.

Maybe a bit harsh, but there's definitely a point there. Jodo, why are you using WAV instead of for example FLAC? Its the exact same thing, only compressed and thus taking up much less space. Lossless formats (unlike mp3s, for example) don't suffer from any downgrade in audio quality.

APE and FLAC are still a lot more underground for most people, compared to WAV.

I just don't feel the need to take the time or effort to learn about all those file formats that most people don't use...if I spend anymore time trying to maintain my music collection than I already do, I'm going to go insane...

Cost > Benefit

Maybe when I get a servant to re-encode my entire music collection into these esoteric new file formats...

Last edited by Bernhardt (Nov 12, 2009)

Bernhardt wrote:

I just don't feel the need to take the time or effort to learn about all those file formats that most people don't use...

What would you need to spend time on? You rip them and play them in the same way that you do with mp3s and other formats. You make it sound like rocket science.

We've discussed this before, Bernhardt, and it seems your only argument can be boiled down to "it confuses me, and besides most people don't use it, so why should I?" If you're always trying to stay within the confines of "normal" behaviour, what are you doing on a game music discussion forum anyway? Convention is a poor excuse.

Crash wrote:

And if there is even the slightest chance that you might have a hiccup when playing back a compressed format (due to decoding the file in real time), why take that chance?

I've never heard of that happening. If we're taking about "slightest chances", then nothing is safe, even WAVs can get screwed up. If you use a good program like EAC to rip into FLAC, the chances of a screwed up file are very small.

As for what format will dominate in the future, you do have a point. We can't know. I guess it depends on whether the mindless legions of idiots that make up the vast majority of digital music listeners/consumers finally open their eyes to the deficiencies of the lossy mp3-format (really, anything that prolongs the life of the mp3 is evil). If the shit hits the fan for FLAC or APE and they don't survive long, you can always burn them straight to CDs without any loss in quality (which definitely doesn't work with mp3s). Besides, the "underground" status of especially FLAC is very exaggerated - sure, if you count every single user of digital formats, then mp3s have a huge advantage, but among the people who are more tech-savvy and truly love their music in a more-than-casual sense, the percentage of listeners choosing FLAC over mp3 is bound to be much higher (don't ask me about concrete figures here, its just a hunch I have, but I think its a safe assumption to make). Another thing bound to work in the favour of lossless formats is the development of portable music devices such as iPods and mobile phones. They're most probably going to move away from mp3s sooner or later as their capacity grows, but I'm guessing it will be a long time before they start adopting WAVs (since those are huge).

What I find interesting about this is that Jodo is often priding himself on his logical and efficient-minded thinking, but then he still wastes a lot of space on WAVs, when lossless formats offer the exact same audio quality. If you've got the space to spare, sure, fill it up with what you want, its your call. But if all other factors are equal, why choose the more wasteful alternative?

Jodo Kast wrote:

There will be more albums in the future, such as Insector X... Double Dragon II Arrange....

Jodo, you introduced me to Insector X back when you had a VGM review site with album scans. Anyway, it's still one of my favorites. Double Dragon II is also golden.

Jodo Kast wrote:

I need the wav files for making regular audio CDs, which I use in my Marantz cd player. It's much more convenient to keep music stored in wav, because if I keep it in ape or flac and want an mp3 file, then I have to convert it to wav first. The advantage of wav is it's ready for anything. I must have mp3 files (car & pc speakers) and I must have wav files (headphones). I've been using the ape format for the past 6 years and it irritates the hell out of me to have to decompress it back to wav to make mp3 files. It's easier to keep things in wav. Now, consider this. Let's say some company makes an affordable car stereo head unit with 500 GB of storage and ape compatibility. Well, of course, I'd just keep everything in ape! The problem is that if I want to move my music just 10 f---ing feet I have to change everything. I want to strictly use ape or flac. But I can't!

OK, I guess you're excused this one time.

These discussion get a little bit too abstract at times... We often forget that we all have different listening habits, and therefore different formats that suit us best. The motto should be "whatever works", I guess.

Are so many people really using FLAC and APE when iPods don't support them yet? I have no statistic or such, I'm actually a bit surprised as I thought FLAC and APE were almost exclusively used among the P2P networks and once you got a pirated file, you'd quickly encode it in any other format.

As I'm fortunate enough to have bad ears that don't detect the difference between something lossy and loseless, when I purchase a CD nowadays, I rip it as ACC or mp3 at a decent bitrate, and am fine with it.

Jodo Kast wrote:

I need the wav files for making regular audio CDs, which I use in my Marantz cd player. It's much more convenient to keep music stored in wav, because if I keep it in ape or flac and want an mp3 file, then I have to convert it to wav first. The advantage of wav is it's ready for anything. I must have mp3 files (car & pc speakers) and I must have wav files (headphones). I've been using the ape format for the past 6 years and it irritates the hell out of me to have to decompress it back to wav to make mp3 files. It's easier to keep things in wav. Now, consider this. Let's say some company makes an affordable car stereo head unit with 500 GB of storage and ape compatibility. Well, of course, I'd just keep everything in ape! The problem is that if I want to move my music just 10 f---ing feet I have to change everything. I want to strictly use ape or flac. But I can't!

Much of what you describe is a failure of the software and/or process you are using and not of any particular format.

I agree with the others that is doesn't make sense to keep files in raw PCM(WAV) format. As an example it really doesn't make sense to keep a 600MB WAV image output from a rip of a soft piano album when you could easily encode it reducing its size by 40-50% with absolutely no audio quality lost. The savings on chiptune music is impressive as well.

My own preference is in FLAC. FLAC makes sense because it's open source, has the best encode/decode speed ratio of the all lossless codecs, and has been developed/tested over almost a decade.

As for formats on music players I'd like to use Ogg Vorbis but no nice hardware supports it (would kill for Ogg support in the Zune 120GB model).

Indeed. My player had FLAC (though granted I bought it because of that), but more importantly pretty much any computer player that isn't iTunes or WMP supports it.

But even iPods and iTunes support ALAC, and WMP and Zunes support WMA Lossless. So there's STILL options no matter which way you go.

I dunno Mike, you'll probably garner a lot of flak for that idea.

I had to lol, then go reset my password and login when I saw this thread...I've always used either CD's or mp3's. About two weeks ago, I decided to dabble in FLAC. Man, my ears are far from perfect and I don't really consider myself an audiophile (if someone looks hard enough, they'll find an old post of mine saying 128kbps mp3's were 'just fine'...lol), but the difference between FLAC and mp3 is like night and day. Just...BOOM! It was like slapping a shiny coat on an already sexy car and getting that extra 'oomph' out of it. And CD's generally don't support Replay Gain, so that is a sweet addition of switching over (and a large reason I stopped listening to CD's altogether).

Anyway, I had the storage (and can add more as needed...1TB drives and 500GB drives are surprisingly similar in price and very reasonable), plus I still own a lot of my original CD's, so I'm making an attempt to convert over to FLAC entirely now. The size is an issue, of course, but Cowon's D2+ PMP supports SD cards (they integrate with the library) and FLAC, so I just have to swap cards. Worth it for the audio difference.

Ashley Winchester wrote:

Then I must be a real idiot, being satisfied with 128 kbps mp3's. Really, they sound good enough to me.

If you're satisfied with 128 kb/s mp3s, good for you. What you should be aware of though, is that the music you love in 128 kb/s can sound even better (really, a lot better, 128 is a shadow of lossless quality). I hope you have at least tried the alternative before dismissing it.

Ashley Winchester wrote:

TerraEpon wrote:

I'm sorry Judo, but anyone who uses WAV over FLAC or even APE is a an idiot.

Then I must be a real idiot, being satisfied with 128 kbps mp3's. Really, they sound good enough to me.

That's completely different, and unrelated to using a format that takes up twice as much space with less features.