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RE: OMG - The Emperor Has No Clothes!

. . . flac is not a good choice for us.

The URL carcass posted didn’t work for me and I can’t recall the argument. However, using Task Manager, I just “monitored” a 1.1 GHz Atom pulling a long flac-format file over a network, decoding it and then playing it using cPlay.



The screenshot shows the first two segments of a track (about 20 minutes of a 30-minute total) arriving. They take under 20 seconds to transmit and, though not visible in the pic (finger trouble), under a minute to decode.

If there were an audible loss of quality due to this decoding, it would presumably be manifest as a small but instantaneous improvement in the sound as decoding ends.

If there's one thing that is readily perceived, it's sudden transitions (aka contours) in a percept. I don't have golden ears nor did my kit cost its weight in gold but it's not too bad at that and I am an experienced listener. Even so, I hear no "step change" at the end of decoding though I've tried often enough.

To set context, I can, on my desktop machine using its on-board audio (though with a fair amplifier and decent speakers), hear a very slight difference between flac and wav when using Foobar. (With cPlay, I can’t.)

I do not see what is wrong with the flac format if it is used with properly-designed software. If there is a quality difference compared to wav, it’s all but inaudible and typically far too short-term to worry about.

I accept I’m motivated to like the format. Compressed, my music collection needs about a TB of storage. I keep three backup copies (one off site) because, even costing my time at the national minimum wage of approx £5/hour, the data are far more valuable than my car. (That might not impress if you've seen my car but you get the idea.)

If the data were uncompressed, I’d either need about eight TB more storage or to waste hours of computer time compressing new/altered data and probably days decompressing them if needed. It isn’t practicable and, in any case, I’d rather spend the money on new recordings.

YMMV but, for me, cPlay handles flac very well. Hopefully, others players can either do the same or soon will.

I suppose all this puts me down there with the low life in Bill's $200 camp. Ah well, needs must.

Dave


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