FLAC Support?

[Maxis]

Originally Posted by EnzoTen

They have added open source Xvid so i don't see FLAC as out of the question.



From having discussions with development teams its not about evil corporations pushing their own DRM format- its about putting finite development resources into features that customers want the most. Its sort of like you say "until customer pressure gets too intense", but its more like they will add it "when enough people care about FLAC". Sure i agree that FLAC is the standard for lossless audio, but as of now, not enough people care to warrant allocating development resources to this feature. Enough people cared about Xvid so it was added. Currently Xvid metadata handling needs to be fixed and i would rather see development resources put into fixing these issues rather than into adding FLAC support.

Im sure not enough people cared about putting a proper equalizer in the zune.. Yeah .. that thousand plus post petition on their own forums was just something made up. The outrage when they killed the presets going from the 30 to the 80 was all made up...


sure...

[CrowdAds]

[bullseye]

I don't think it is so necessary for the Zune HD to support FLAC. Nonetheless it would be a nice addition. I have some albums in FLAC I don't feel like converting to mp3-V0, even if I won't be able to hear the difference between them.

What would be most useful would be a 5 or 7 band EQ. It might even be able to support parametric EQ (kind of like the Ultracurve Pro DEQ2496

[McDougal]

I used to think that it was necessary for the Zune HD to support FLAC, but now I don't think so. I think that while FLAC is great for stereo systems, it is kind of unnecessary for PMPs. On all of my headphones, I can't tell the difference between the highest quality MP3s and FLAC, and FLAC takes up so much space compared to MP3, I just don't think its worth it. What the Zune HD really needs is a CUSTOM EQ!

[Zuniq]

Originally Posted by McDougal

I used to think that it was necessary for the Zune HD to support FLAC, but now I don't think so. I think that while FLAC is great for stereo systems, it is kind of unnecessary for PMPs. On all of my headphones, I can't tell the difference between the highest quality MP3s and FLAC, and FLAC takes up so much space compared to MP3, I just don't think its worth it. What the Zune HD really needs is a CUSTOM EQ!

We have discussed it millions of times...it doesn't matter that someone can't hear the difference on the road...personally, i don't care using mp3 inside my ZuneHD but the problem is visible for people who already have big music libraries in flac and want to sync them and organize them with Zune...It's simply impossible right now because Zune software doesn't support it and conversions take days to finish! This is awful...I can't use the 4/5 of my library because of this...the last time i tried to convert the 1/5 of my albums to use them with zune, it took me over 7 hours with a i7 pc. So, yes, i still want that flac support to be able to use my flac library like everyone else does with mp3s.

[Marvin the Martian]

Originally Posted by Zuniq

We have discussed it millions of times...it doesn't matter that someone can't hear the difference on the road...personally, i don't care using mp3 inside my ZuneHD but the problem is visible for people who already have big music libraries in flac and want to sync them and organize them with Zune...It's simply impossible right now because Zune software doesn't support it and conversions take days to finish! This is awful...I can't use the 4/5 of my library because of this...the last time i tried to convert the 1/5 of my albums to use them with zune, it took me over 7 hours with a i7 pc. So, yes, i still want that flac support to be able to use my flac library like everyone else does with mp3s.

Jeez....how big of a collection do you have? Or for that matter, what app are you using to convert? I presume you would be using one that can take advantage of multi-core systems, right?

I just threw 11 albums by one artist I have in FLAC (4.22GB) to be converted to LAME V2, and it took eight minutes, 38 seconds. To be fair, I didn't have art included with the FLACS, but still, if my Core2Duo machine can convert that fast, your i7 rig should be faster...so you must have one huge collection!

[McDougal]

Maybe he just needs to tune up his computer a little, even with an i7, the computer still needs to be tuned up every once and a while. And the software you're using is also important. I just converted my entire library (about 3GB) of low quality MP3s to high quality LAME MP3s using MediaMonkey (not Gold) and it took me maybe two or three hours on my Core2Duo laptop.

[Marvin the Martian]

Originally Posted by McDougal

Maybe he just needs to tune up his computer a little, even with an i7, the computer still needs to be tuned up every once and a while. And the software you're using is also important. I just converted my entire library (about 3GB) of low quality MP3s to high quality LAME MP3s using MediaMonkey (not Gold) and it took me maybe two or three hours on my Core2Duo laptop.

I do hope you weren't converting MP3-->MP3, and that you were re-ripping,as discussed in the other thread right?

And all Core2Duo's are not created equal, of course.....the clock speed of mine is about three times that of yours.

[McDougal]

I technically wasn't converting MP3 to MP3, I backed up all of my music on CDs (because I needed to backup anyway, and have a crap load of blank cds, just waiting to be used ), and then re-ripped them. And yes, all Core2Duo's are not equal, mine is at 1.3GHz, which probably makes a huge difference compared to what yours is clocked at .

[Marvin the Martian]

Originally Posted by McDougal

I technically wasn't converting MP3 to MP3, I backed up all of my music on CDs (because I needed to backup anyway, and have a crap load of blank cds, just waiting to be used ), and then re-ripped them. And yes, all Core2Duo's are not equal, mine is at 1.3GHz, which probably makes a huge difference compared to what yours is clocked at .

3.924GHz
So you put bad MP3 rips onto CD's and then re-ripped the CD's you had just burned? I hope not.....that would be as bad as converting mp3-->mp3.

[McDougal]

No, the majority of my music is downloaded, and only backed up onto my second computer. I put the music that I had not written to a CD yet on a CD (which is most of my collection), and ripped that, and then I took the music that I already had on CDs (either previously burned, or the original CD) before and re-ripped that. So I didn't write the music to CDs that I already had on a CD, I only wrote the music that wasn't on a CD yet to a CD. I suppose we're getting somewhat off-topic here, maybe we should get back on topic before the admins notice .

[jmerrey]

If I had a collection, and that collection was 3/4 flac, I would not purchase a device that doesn't support flac...

[Zuniq]

Originally Posted by Marvin the Martian

Jeez....how big of a collection do you have? Or for that matter, what app are you using to convert? I presume you would be using one that can take advantage of multi-core systems, right?

I just threw 11 albums by one artist I have in FLAC (4.22GB) to be converted to LAME V2, and it took eight minutes, 38 seconds. To be fair, I didn't have art included with the FLACS, but still, if my Core2Duo machine can convert that fast, your i7 rig should be faster...so you must have one huge collection!

I'm collecting albums since i was i little child..it's a BIG collection and it keeps growing almost every 1-2 months! Before 3-4 years i managed to digitize everything in almost 8 months, so now i have almost all of my music in flac. I'm a sound engineer so i know how to setup my pc to be more efficient, but sometimes this is not enough. Yes, i have all the cover art inside the tags for backup and extra support for some programs which don't read cover art in the folder.

I'm using dbPoweramp converter, which, AFAIK is the best for audio conversions on the fly and it makes use of all the cores...

[lestatar]

Hey Zuniq, just outta curiosity, throw out some numbers on the size of your music collection. Always looking to see where I stand in the scheme of things

And your comment on dbpoweramp will make at least one ABi-er proud lol [btw, I happen to agree as well]...

And back to the thread [sorta], your comments on large existing FLAC libraries has much merit. For sure, those people whose libraries are all in FLAC should be able to find devices which natively support such an excellent lossless product. I still personally feel that FLAC is wasted on portable devices for all the usual reasons discussed ad nauseum, but would never presume to debate this with a sound professional as yourself as I personally cannot tell the diff between FLAC and well encoded HQ LAMEs under nearly any listening condition [well, OK, maybe at home with good gear and great cans I might stand a chance].

But for me, who started aeons ago with HQ LAME and my library is medium-large at 14k+ tracks, it is too late for me, unless i want to hire some kid to re-rip all my stuff in FLAC [plus do all the tags and album art and naming convention just the way I like it].

cheers!
-lestatar

[McDougal]

Oh man u guys make me look so bad with my small collection......bout 3GB of music ....come on Zuniq, we're all waiting .

[Marvin the Martian]

Originally Posted by McDougal

Oh man u guys make me look so bad with my small collection......bout 3GB of music ....come on Zuniq, we're all waiting .

Right now I've got about 85GB of FLAC and 70GB of lossy files, most of which are LAMEV2. But of course, many of the LAme V2's are dupes of the FLACs, for portable use. I'm just over 9,800 songs now, although more are on the way......I suspect Zuniq is going to really wow us with his total.

[lestatar]

Originally Posted by Marvin the Martian

Right now I've got about 85GB of FLAC and 70GB of lossy files, most of which are LAMEV2. But of course, many of the LAme V2's are dupes of the FLACs, for portable use. I'm just over 9,800 songs now, although more are on the way......I suspect Zuniq is going to really wow us with his total.

pffft....I am at 110GB [plus 20GB unsorted] the old fashioned way - lossy LAMEs...

[Marvin the Martian]

Originally Posted by lestatar

pffft....I am at 110GB [plus 20GB unsorted] the old fashioned way - lossy LAMEs...

Well, I do have 22 more albums on the way....lol.

[The DarkSide]

Originally Posted by lestatar

pffft....I am at 110GB [plus 20GB unsorted] the old fashioned way - lossy LAMEs...

Originally Posted by Marvin the Martian

Well, I do have 22 more albums on the way....lol.

PFFT,...........2 slackers. I have over 156GB in mp3's, and I don't bother to count FLAC files, as I always convert them to lossy LAME VBR for computer usage/transportable listening.

[WalkGood]

^^ And I thought this thread was about FLAC support on the zune

[The DarkSide]

Originally Posted by WalkGood

^^ And I thought this thread was about FLAC support on the zune

Sorry: