Squeezebox users question

Very easy question, which audio format do you use, WAV, AAC or FLAC, and why?
I don't see space being an issue now as it's dead easy to pick up a a massive hard drive now, meaning that I could store my whole CD collection in WAV format with a 250GB drives, so space is not a problem any more.

 

FLAC.

I don't think you can ever have enough disk space. I have nearly filled my 250G drive with music in 6 months!

 

FLAC - it's a no-brainer with Hard DIsks being so large and cheap.

Moreover, it's trivial to go from FLAC to MP3 as the need arises (copying to portable etc).

 

FLAC - no quality loss and smaller files.
FLAC also supports tags, unlike WAV IIRC.

 

I'm gradually switching over to ALE so that I can still play lossless files on iPod/iTunes. 320kbps mp3 proved itself unnacceptable with some styles particularly classical.

 

flac - why?
all the above reasons plus the openess of the format. no drm, you get exactly what was on the cd - gapless playback, good for those mix cd's and also for those crappy classical ones or so i;ve been informed
also the squeezebox can play flac's natively (i.e. transfer the compressed audio over the network and decompress at the squeezebox rather than decompressing to wav on the server and then haveing about twice the network traffic). useful for wireless networks or places where reception is sketchy.

 

Definately FLAC.

It's lossless, takes half the space of WAV's, can be tagged and is now supported by oodles of free software.

Because it's lossless, if something better comes along in the future, you won't have to re-rip your entire music collection.

 

i'm starting to use flac too - definitely a consensus here.

the only alternative i've seen compared to flac is wavpack - open source etc.

there also appears to be variances with flac encoders. i use switch from nch http://www.nch.com.au/switch/
(i had some shn files which i couldn't play - foobar didnt support - so used switch to convert them to flac)

i also had some wav files on my pc which for some reason yet undiscovered switch didn't like. i used xilisoft audio converter http://www.xilisoft.com/audio-converter.html to get them into flacs. as an experiment i then used switch to take the flacs back to wav, and then back to flac again. the flacs made with switch were smaller than the ones made by xilisoft, with the same settings.

 

FLAC.
As above.

 

I've never seen such a blatant consensus on a hifi forum before!

Dunc

 

Yes, close the thread...it's now become boring

 

I prefer Apple lossless to flac because there is no need to duplicate rips just to enable them to play on ipods, and there is no downside compared with flac. Any talk of not wanting to use ALE because of hypothetical future changes in DRM is just paranoid nonsense.

How's that for consensus

 

just wait til all that music you ripped gets crosschecked by itunes 17.0 or whatever against what you've bought and suddenly becomes encrypted after you play it once. it's coming. paranoid? maybe but true nonetheless once cd's sales really start to slip.
the only way you'll be able to play your ale files is by paying apple and by proxy the riaa their danegeld monthly subscription fee.
i say **** that give me flac and the minor inconvienience of transcoding to mp3 using foobar over being butt reamed every month.
hey we've got ourselves a convo....err argument here boys....

 

I'm sticking to WAV...

...but only because my Xen Touch only understands WAV and MP3 and I can't stand MP3.

If the Xen understood FLAC I'd be using it.

Having said that, I bought two 500GB hard discs for my music collection (one for backup) and having ripped 300+ CDs to WAV, the disc is only half full.

 

may not help you now chris, but if you ever feel like caving in to fashion but still give the finger to draconian drm policies then
http://www.rockbox.org/

might be helpful - new flash firmware for ipods and other popular players some of which can then handle flac. makes me almost want to buy one...

 

I'm a FLACer too

I still run CDs in the lounge but my kitchen/diner system is a squeezebox and a (hidden) PC and 300gig harddrive, which is about 3/4 full.

I tried the SB against my CDP but it lost.

 

Having just built a very impressive new PSU for the SB3 around a Paul Hynes PR3 discrete regulator module (£69 from www.paulhynesdesign.com ) I find the SB3 now matches my CD player as a transport, feeding digits directly into a Lyngdorf amp, so I shall probably be selling the CD player soon.

As for file formats, I use WAV, mainly because I like the convenience of iTunes as the front end, and I have had no problems with it. I did try Apple Lossless but that did not sound as good as WAV or AIFF. I know that FLAC is as good as WAV, because the SB decodes it in hardware rather than at the server, but having played around with the FLAC program, I can't be bothered to work it out! That's probably just me being dim.

 

If you use itunes, why not use AIFF as it allows tagging.

To try FLAC, I have a customized CDex which does everything for you: http://www.audiofi.co.uk/reviews/Setup.exe

 

If you think the SB is good check out the E-MU 0404 for $199 you might just crap yourself.This unit has been going through different systems in our club and embarassing alot of expensive CDP's.
With a 30 day MBG its a no brainer.
rollo

 

Andrew, one thing that puzzled me a bit was how to change the tag once the CD has been ripped to Flac?

Eg. if the ripped version comes up as, say "Soundtrack: Magnolia" but you want it to appear on the SB as "Aimee Mann: Magnolia", which file do you change/edit?

I tried a few things but I didn't figure it out.