FLAC 1.4.0 released – added support for 32-bit audio
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Re: FLAC 1.4.0 released – added support for 32-bit audio
#2> Compression of preset -3 through -8 was slightly improved at the cost of a small decrease in encoding speed by increasing the precision with which autocorrelation was calculated (Martijn van Beurden)
Would love to see some benchmarks on this. Since FLAC hit 1.0 over 20 years ago, CPU speed has increased by ~100x, so a small hit on encode speed for better compression mostly doesn't matter. Then again, storage space has increased by the same amount, too.
Re: FLAC 1.4.0 released – added support for 32-bit audio
#3After reading "How Music Works" by David Byrne, it seem like FLAC is solving the wrong problem. No one needs over 4 billion discrete levels.
Re: FLAC 1.4.0 released – added support for 32-bit audio
#4After reading "How Music Works" by David Byrne, it seem like FLAC is solving the wrong problem. No one needs over 4 billion discrete levels.
Nyquist Shannon theorem, sure. There are situations where you'd use 32bit audio but not for mastered music you'd listen to at home really. Although people still won't believe you, hence the market for thousand dollar cables and other snake oil.
Re: FLAC 1.4.0 released – added support for 32-bit audio
#5After reading "How Music Works" by David Byrne, it seem like FLAC is solving the wrong problem. No one needs over 4 billion discrete levels.
I am a recording engineer and I will choose 32 bits over 24 any day when recording.
Of course you need the right (exceptionally good!) preamps to even make a difference here, but when you are manipulating audio 32 bits and upwards (for summing) are the default (for a reason).
Having something to store those files with a little bit of lossless compression is a welcome addition
Re: FLAC 1.4.0 released – added support for 32-bit audio
#6After reading "How Music Works" by David Byrne, it seem like FLAC is solving the wrong problem. No one needs over 4 billion discrete levels.
You're correct; lossless formats aren't needed by the average consumer. But the problem they solve is a very real thing. Think of the difference between a repeatedly edited JPG vs. a repeatedly edited PNG. Every save of the JPG destroys information irretrievably, whereas every save of the PNG keeps it all. It's the same with MP3 vs. FLAC: MP3 throws away information each export, but FLAC doesn't.
For an example, music artists/producers can't afford to lose information when they "bounce" a track. FLAC solves that. "People" don't need lossless, but for those that do, it's great.
Re: FLAC 1.4.0 released – added support for 32-bit audio
#7> Compression of preset -3 through -8 was slightly improved at the cost of a small decrease in encoding speed by increasing the precision with which autocorrelation was calculated (Martijn van Beurden) Would love to see some benchmarks on this. Since FLAC hit 1.0 over 20 years ago, CPU speed has increased by ~100x, so a small hit on encode speed for better compression mostly doesn't matter. Then again, storage space…
Btw there are alternative flac encoders, like FLACCL using GPU: http://cue.tools/wiki/FLACCL It compresses much faster than software libflac and gives smaller output files.
Re: FLAC 1.4.0 released – added support for 32-bit audio
#8Nice! I (ab)use FLAC to store waveform data that isn't audio, but compresses better using audio codecs than with general purpose compression algorithms. This will let me remove some hacks to compress 32-bit data as multiple channels.
Re: FLAC 1.4.0 released – added support for 32-bit audio
#9Nice! I (ab)use FLAC to store waveform data that isn't audio, but compresses better using audio codecs than with general purpose compression algorithms. This will let me remove some hacks to compress 32-bit data as multiple channels.
What data are you compressing?
Re: FLAC 1.4.0 released – added support for 32-bit audio
#10I had no idea FLAC didn't store 32-bit. I'll need to look over my library and make sure nothing strange is going on.
I'm curious if sites like Qobuz will suddenly replace some of their existing files with higher-bit copies if they already had them and just had no way to encode them as FLAC.