Two questions about S9

[mysticstryk]

Did a bit of research and finally got all the track names in order, just a couple questions.

1) Two albums are taking up just short of 1GB! I ripped the cd's into FLAC compression level 6 through mediamonkey. Maybe a higher compression level? Will it make a big difference?

2) The higher the compression level, does it reduce sound quality?

Thanks

[ultrauber]

1) Two albums are taking up just short of 1GB! I ripped the cd's into FLAC compression level 6 through mediamonkey. Maybe a higher compression level? Will it make a big difference?

Yes, higher compression will make a difference in size, that's flac. mp3/vorbis will get you smaller files.

2) The higher the compression level, does it reduce sound quality?

In theory, no, but some people can hear the difference on certain tracks.

[gcogger]

Originally Posted by mysticstryk

Did a bit of research and finally got all the track names in order, just a couple questions.

1) Two albums are taking up just short of 1GB! I ripped the cd's into FLAC compression level 6 through mediamonkey. Maybe a higher compression level? Will it make a big difference?

2) The higher the compression level, does it reduce sound quality?

Thanks

If you mean a higher compression level, but staying with flac, then no, it won't make a big difference (but it will also have zero effect on sound quality). I rip flacs at level 5 since the difference in size between that and the maximum level is negligible.

If you really want to reduce the size, you'll need to use mp3, ogg or similar...

[amit]

FLAC is just like a zip archive which compresses the WAV sound. It doesn't matter how much you compress it, on extraction it will always return the same WAV file. So whether you compress to level 5 or level 8, the only difference will be in size of the file & not in sound quality. But I think that higher compression level will result in more power usage (not sure abt it, maybe someone else can confirm or refute this point with certainty).

[ultrauber]

Originally Posted by amit

FLAC is just like a zip archive which compresses the WAV sound. It doesn't matter how much you compress it, on extraction it will always return the same WAV file. So whether you compress to level 5 or level 8, the only difference will be in size of the file & not in sound quality. But I think that higher compression level will result in more power usage (not sure abt it, maybe someone else can confirm or refute this point with certainty).

I can't say it with certainty, but it seem that that would be the case. Otherwise, nobody would use the lower compression levels.

[steagle]

i always compress in FLAC lvl 8 because it produces the smallest file sizes. sure it's kind of negligible but why not have smaller file sizes for the same sound quality?

[ultrauber]

Originally Posted by steagle

i always compress in FLAC lvl 8 because it produces the smallest file sizes. sure it's kind of negligible but why not have smaller file sizes for the same sound quality?

yes, if amit is right, then the only reason not to use the extremely compressed files is battery life. Otherwise, its the same sq for smaller size.

[Technex]

So many interesting questions .

[mysticstryk]

Thanks for the replies. I just started ripping all my music, so any suggestion on a different file type I rip my cd's into and still get the same good quality lossless sound? (but taking up much less space) (I will also try the higher compression FLAC to see if that makes a big enough difference)

Also, I forgot to ask this before-> If I'm correct, then cowon updated the s9 to have gapless playback. I have not tested this myself, so is there anything special I need to do to enable gapless, or is it like this automatically?

[dfkt]

The difference between FLAC L5 and L8 in size is incredibly tiny. L8 just takes longer to encode. Of course I use L8 too, even though I know the difference is negligible.

Gapless is gapless, nothing special to do. If you ripped your CDs properly, they should play gapless on the S9. Mediamonkey of course isn't the best solution for ripping CDs, so I can't say how that works.

[ultrauber]

Originally Posted by dfkt

Gapless is gapless, nothing special to do. If you ripped your CDs properly, they should play gapless on the S9. Mediamonkey of course isn't the best solution for ripping CDs, so I can't say how that works.

Well, when your talking about mp3, "properly" doesn't imply gapless b/c mp3 doesn't require that standard. But yes, most rippers like cdex or eac will be gapless. I know cdex uses lame. Flac/ogg is also gapless.

[dfkt]

With 'properly' I meant something that isn't WMP, iTunes, Xing, FHG, and so on. You never know what those sub-par apps and codecs do to the files.

FLAC or Vorbis (not Ogg, that's just a container) are by definition/specs gapless formats, but on most hardware players they also don't play gapless, just like MP3s. It still has to be specifically implemented in a firmware to get them to play gapless. Or, the firmware developers have to be smart and not mess up the specs, to phrase it differently. It's just that MP3s need a workaround to make up for the old, lacking MP3 standard specifications, while the more modern formats should theoretically be easier to implement in a gapless way.

[ultrauber]

Originally Posted by dfkt

With 'properly' I meant something that isn't WMP, iTunes, Xing, FHG, and so on. You never know what those sub-par apps and codecs do to the files.

The problem is that these sub par apps are used by 95% of the population. So you have to assume that people think that they are up to snuff, because if they're so popular they must be good right? No, these seemingly solid apps are causing misconceptions about lame, and encoding in general. But yes.

FLAC or Vorbis (not Ogg, that's just a container) are by definition/specs gapless formats, but on most hardware players they also don't play gapless, just like MP3s. It still has to be specifically implemented in a firmware to get them to play gapless. Or, the firmware developers have to be smart and not mess up the specs, to phrase it differently. It's just that MP3s need a workaround to make up for the old, lacking MP3 standard specifications, while the more modern formats should theoretically be easier to implement in a gapless way.

I see, I was under the impression that vorbis/flac developers demanded that any encoder take advantage of the gapless feature.

[gcogger]

Originally Posted by mysticstryk

I just started ripping all my music, so any suggestion on a different file type I rip my cd's into and still get the same good quality lossless sound? (but taking up much less space)

If you really want lossless encoding, you're not going to get significantly smaller file sizes whatever you do. The only option to reduce file size is a lossy compression type such as mp3 or ogg. I suggest you try a listening test between, say, high quality mp3 and flac and see if you can tell the difference.

[mysticstryk]

Originally Posted by gcogger

If you really want lossless encoding, you're not going to get significantly smaller file sizes whatever you do. The only option to reduce file size is a lossy compression type such as mp3 or ogg. I suggest you try a listening test between, say, high quality mp3 and flac and see if you can tell the difference.

I can hear a difference.

It's just that when I used to have a zune, I used WMA lossless, which took up much less space than FLAC.
About 25 cd's in WMA lossless took up 5 gb's. With FLAC, I'm gonna get about 10 cd's per 5gb's.

[dfkt]

Originally Posted by mysticstryk

I can hear a difference.

Have you ever tried a double blind ABX test? Foobar's ABX plugin is a good tool to evaluate these things without placebo effect and confirmation bias getting in the way, for example. I'm sure with a little testing you would find a size/bitrate of a lossy codec that you can't hear a difference compared to the original.

Originally Posted by mysticstryk

It's just that when I used to have a zune, I used WMA lossless, which took up much less space than FLAC.
About 25 cd's in WMA lossless took up 5 gb's. With FLAC, I'm gonna get about 10 cd's per 5gb's.

No way is the size difference between WMAL and FLAC that extreme. Difference between the codecs is about 2% on average, not 150%. Something obviously went wrong there, sounds like you either put uncompressed WAV files on your player instead of FLAC, or you used normal lossy WMA instead of lossless.