Which flac level

Storage is so cheap these days, seems like a no brainer to me… also Flac 0 is less likely to hiccup on a slower system since decoding it is less demanding to decode. So, Zac, have you any experience comparing the sound quality of FLAC files using different compression levels and is there an explanation for any differences, other than processing overhead when replaying the file?

Thanks for your comment. In my opinion, I think that the quality of the hardware decoding the FLAC will be more important than anything relating to the encoding process. To answer your question about comparing the sound quality of various compression levels, yes, I tried all of the ones mentioned in this article on my 2-channel system at home.

I was not able to detect any differences. There are no differences in FLAC, it is a bit by bit lossless format. We use it to master our audio files for our sound libraries and archive old game and movie projects that have a lot of files.

As a teacher of sound design and an audio engineer that has a mastering studio I can tell you that in the course of my teaching career, many students and colleagues also told me that they can hear differences between PCM-WAV and FLAC files.

You can do one yourself using the awesome ABX comparison plugin for Foobar Here you can see both files playing at normal volume together. I mark the phase reverse in one of the tracks. That being said, the information that you provided may help others. The links just contain simple screenshots of my experiment and are hosted in the known ImgBB. If that is a site-wide policy then no problem, the images are just for your information. There is a key misunderstanding about FLAC, you at the of your published writing may not be aware about.

FLAC is asymmetrical in terms of encoding and decoding time. When FLAC was developed one of the goals was to make a lossless encoder that is asymmetrical. Encoding times are longer, but decoding times near real-time.

With CPUs becoming more powerful, the encoding time is very low. In fact there is a project that helped spur greater compression and speed development in the main FLAC branch. Once again you can find more detailed information at hydrogenaud. So for archival purposes, there is no reason to encode a FLAC at level 0.

The time difference encoding between 0 to 8 is there but the space savings is there. CueTools is also set to encode into tracks and create both a cue sheet, and a m3u file. Produce a log file of its rip, along with AccurateRIP logging and extraction log.

This is done so I can recreate the cd if need be. For something I have purchased off a website like 7digital. I purchase in FLAC always. At this point I can run it through Cuetools set exactly the same, just to see if there is a difference in encoding levels. In fact, this is how I came across this post. I was doing some research into what encoding level 7digital does to its FLAC. I noticed a 40 meg difference between their version of an album and my re-encoding of the same album that uses their FLAC files a a source.

There is space savings. So you are basicly trading upfront time to encode a file to make an archive. Which is fine. I can run the encoding over night if need be. Thank you for your comment. You are correct about FLAC being asymmetric in terms of encoding versus decoding.

With processors continuing to get faster and storage continuing to get cheaper, the level is becoming less relevant altogether. As such, hopefully this post is still relevant today and can help people make informed decisions by reading the comments as well. Apologies if this has already been covered in the plethora of comments. Recently I did some ripping tests using dbPowerAmp. For me I would like to save hard drive space becuase it is a solid state drive at only Gb, but even more importantly I need to keep the files smaller to fit onto Micro SD cards.

Thank you for your feedback regarding your experience! Instead, if you want to encode a flac file with a different level, you would need to first decode it and then pass it to flac encoder again. As it happens, I had already chosen 3 previously down from 8 and I did actually notice a difference in sound quality. Those are very interesting findings. My guess is that the difference could be based on the decoding capabilities of the player. Tony, Our ears sometimes play tricks on us. Rest assured, the quality is exactly the same, unless your CD was scratched.

But in that case the ripping software would have shown some errors. If you do a blind test, the difference will go away. What is Compression ratio? Wich best compression ratio to converting to vorbis ogg format kbps, 16 bits sample, Hz sampe rate? The compression ratios indicate the file size as compared to the original, uncompressed audio track.

You can see more about the Ogg Vorbis compression levels here:. Below some explanation in detail. The short version is that compression levels seems not always to be correctly translated by some audio brands firmware. In my case Naim. When converting the files to uncompressed FLAC files, problem was solved. Nevertheless, above is still a great article and before the firmware upgrade, this worked brilliantly.

I had it too at compression level 3. Now the not so quick note on the compression levels. My entire cd collection mostly 16bit Although I cannot find anything on the Naim forums, it turns out that the software does treat compression levels badly. In anycase, this explained the decraded audio experience with the firmware upgrade, which after approx. Up till now I used my superuniti which I downgraded back 3 years ago when my music experience seemed to be worse with the newer firmware.

Thanks to my unitiqute2 newest firmware, which showed the actual perceived bitrate, I now know why. Naim claims the the UnitiServe is the best and maybe their only way to get exact rips. Anybody who understands a bit about machine language knows that any zero and one wrong can lead to a programme failure and therefore there are no errors if you rip with your computer. Thank you, Jon, for sharing your experience here! This is a reason that I strongly suggest a vendor-neutral approach to decoding.

Again, though, thank you for sharing your experience! I am in the process of rejuvinating older recordings in various formats to compile and burn as an audio CD and as flac is able to accept metadata editing, to include CD text and ISRC code, It seemed to me that converting all to lossless flac prior to burning as a CDA would not need any compression and set it to zero default was 5. Imagine my gratitude for the information provided in your post! By setting the compression to zero I am enjoying the benefits of much faster conversion time.

Computers are getting more powerful. Sure, USB sticks are getting larger, and the cost of a single GB flash drive is affordable, But music databases are ever increasing.

Truth be said, I have about DJ mixes of each 2 hours in length. WMA, and live with the minor artifacts. However, Opus is best at 96kbits. Much better than any other. Pretty transient. The meaning for WMA VBR Q0, is not to be transient, nor recoding, but to capture as much audio in as small of a space possible, without sounding overly annoying with artifacts.

Anyway, back to Flac; I would consider your future. Hard drives are not going to surpass much beyond the current 2TB disk size. It is expected that future devices like cellphones will compress music at the same speed as current desktops, so I would really try to give it your best in compression.

Thank you for your opinions regarding compression and storage space. I have USB in the car for sticks and Bluetooth from my phone. Of course with this much cheap storage available, no compression is likely to be an option for many. Thanks for your thoughts, Robby. Even if one can get a GB SD card it still takes a lot of space so every single bit tends to be important.

Mostly it takes ones time to do the names of the files. What exactly are you trying to do by changing the filenames? Nice to know. This is due to sharing the flac with my mobile device, where the savings, although small, adds up quickly. Thanks for your comments and questions. FLAC 0 will generate a larger file size, but will be decoded with less processing power. That should give you a reasonable set to use as a comparison. The page for abcde indicates that it calculates replaygain values, and abcde is for encoding.

Veri Master Contributor. Joined Feb 6, Messages 7, Likes 9, There is no quality difference whatsoever, the FLAC setting is used to set the compression level. BillG Major Contributor. Bamboszek said:. Click to expand Snarfie said:. BillG said:. The compatibility will be the same regardless of the compression level used.

What will increase with the level are the computational resources regarded to compress. You'll gain nothing by doing so. It won't magically increase the dynamic range of the source material. Not really. Today probably everything would handle level 8 without issues. Back in the days some portable players struggled with higher level FLAC.

Anyway, I would stick to 5. You will gain nothing more than wasted HDD space. Cosmik Major Contributor. I think someone needs to stress the idea behind FLAC compression: It is no different from zipping a text document. The source audio file is a sequence of numbers that is no different from, say, a Microsoft Word document.

FLAC compression as opposed to MP3 and MQA which are lossy merely removes redundancy in the numbers by, for example, substituting a token for patterns that might be repeating.

Upon replay, the original numbers are re-substituted in place of the token. Thus, upon replay, a FLAC file is an exact duplicate of the original audio; no better, no worse. There's no psychoacoustics involved, no assumptions, no compromises. The only issue is the small space advantage you might gain by giving the PC more time to do the compression, but this does not change the data in any way.

How to make the best FLAC. Convert, recoder and CD rip. FLAC 0 kbps is the best option. The information is the same , either FLAC 0 or 8, but the lower CPU load for decompression generates less noise, interference, jitter or whatever.

Years ago, with my second system much less optimized, that I am able to differentiate between different degrees of compression, as I left record in some notes in my blog.

The increase in size is very little , so just in case Joined Nov 6, Messages 1, Likes 3, Cosmik said:. The information is the same, either FLAC 0 or 8, but the lower CPU load for decompression generates less noise, interference, jitter or whatever.

I ask because I also use Audacity to record Vinyl - but this only gives the options 0 Fastest through to 8 Best no Uncompressed. I have mistakenly I think been using 8, thinking that was equivalent to uncompressed as it is labelled "Best". The good news is, that the compression level has no influence on the sound quality at all, and that you can convert between the different levels back and forth without any loss of quality.

Dat Ei. Originally Posted by Dat Ei. Originally Posted by mville. Level 8 is closer to uncompressed than Level 0, however it is still compressed. Spoon www. Originally Posted by Spoon.