Flac Vs Monkey's Audio

[Keith]

I'm thinking of archiving recordings and possibly CDs in a lossless format. Looking around on Google, I've found several comparison charts which seem to show that Monkey's Audio produces smaller files than FLAC in comparable times.

There are a lot of FLAC enthusiasts here so my question is - why did you choose FLAC over Monkey's Audio or any other lossless compression?

Keith

[bug80]

FLAC is probably more popular because it is more popular It is a circle. Furthermore, unlike Monkey's Audio a lot of effort is put into more hardware support for FLAC. Also decoding is more CPU friendly (that may also explain the hardware support). Finally, FLAC supports multichannel audio.

For a more or less complete comparison see here: wiki

EDIT: Forgot to mention FLAC supports ReplayGain, APE does not.

Edited June 25, 2005 by bug80

[atrain]

flac is imo more user friendly than monkeys/mpc audio. flac is about where ogg was a couple of years ago, people know about it, nerds use it, it just needs some continued attention by users & hadware produces.

http://www.ogghelp.com/ogg/about.cfm

http://wiki.etree.org/index.php?action=history&page=FLAC

[ozpeter]

Personally I use WavPack.

[Bananatree]

I don't tend to trust things with silly names. I.e "Foobar 2k" and "Monkey's Audio".

Would you buy a car from a guy named "Bobo"?

[dex Otaku]

I don't know where some of you formulate your opinions from but here's how I see things:

* Monkey's Audio is WAY friendlier in terms of user interface et al than any of the other lossless-packing formats

* FLAC compresses marginally better than the other formats I know of [including optimfrog, wavpack, shorten, monkey's, &c.]

* Monkey's Audio is free but not open-source

* FLAC is totally open-source

* Both support tags very well, but

* FLAC supports cuesheet data in the file itself; tags as well as DAO cuesheet data can be included as metadata, meaning you can have a single file that is an entire CD, contains trackmarks, accurate gaps, and indexes, as well as track titles, album name, &c.

* FLAC supports 24-bit audio [when using the --lax option] while I don't know about such support with the others

* FLAC has hardware playback support, though it's still rare. I'm not aware of any other lossless-packing format that has hardware support other than Apple's, which is supported only by Apple hardware, and WMA, which is just plain crap and I wouldn't touch with someone else's 10-foot pole, let alone my own. [This is excepting MLP which is part of the DVD-A standard.]

The last reason is my primary reason for sticking with FLAC; #2 is that it's totally open-source; #3 is that I can get encoding, decoding, and live playback support for it on virtually any operating system; #4 is that it does compress slightly better.

I don't tend to trust things with silly names. I.e "Foobar 2k" and "Monkey's Audio".

Would you buy a car from a guy named "Bobo"?

If it outperformed the rest of the cars, yes. I care give two sh*ts about the name. Function and efficiency are king.

I use FLAC exclusively for things I'm encoding myself. All my archival material is FLAC'd. For less-experienced users I recommend Monkey's for the simple reason that it has a friendly and functional frontend. FLAC's frontend sucks rocks, to be blunt.

I now do most of my transcoding right in Foobar2000, by the way. It transcodes to every format I use [except Sony's of course], and even passes tags between formats correctly.

Foobar2000 is too convoluted for beginners, but for power-users there's really nothing else that even comes within a few parsecs of it in terms of function. It will convert, tag, mass-tag, mass-rename, fetch FreedB info for albums, &c. .. it also has a decent EQ if you need it, full 24-bit decoding support from any format with good dithering, &c. &c. It also supports DTS, AC3, WAV, OGG, MPC, Shorten, APE, Wavepack, MP3, AAC ..

iTunes is left in the dust by it for the format support alone. Winamp is absolutely put to shame by it. Most of the utilities out there for tagging files are also put to shame by it. This is a true tool, not just a player.

[ozpeter]

* FLAC supports cuesheet data in the file itself; tags as well as DAO cuesheet data can be included as metadata, meaning you can have a single file that is an entire CD, contains trackmarks, accurate gaps, and indexes, as well as track titles, album name, &c.

That's my reason for using WavPack, coupled with its completely transparent operation in Audition / Cool Edit. You simply choose WavPack instead of PCM when saving, and when you open your Audition project, the WavPack files are automatically (and rapidy) decoded without user information.

Of course it's quite possible FLAC does that too.

VUplayer plays WavPack files FWIW - doubtless others - very neat player, that.

[dex Otaku]

That's my reason for using WavPack, coupled with its completely transparent operation in Audition / Cool Edit.  You simply choose WavPack instead of PCM when saving, and when you open your Audition project, the WavPack files are automatically (and rapidy) decoded without user information. 

Of course it's quite possible FLAC does that too.

VUplayer plays WavPack files FWIW - doubtless others - very neat player, that.

←

It's unfortunate, but I've yet to see any editor that supports opening or saving as FLAC. It seems odd to me that software companies refuse to support formats that cost nothing to implement and are known to work very well.

I have a personal bias against cool edit/audition; I've never liked the interface [in fact, I've always outright hated it].

Nero supports FLAC with cuesheets for burning CD images, btw.

[ozpeter]

I have a personal bias against cool edit/audition; I've never liked the interface (in fact, I've always outright hated it). 

S'ok, I'll get over it. With close connections there I'll admit to being a walking advert, but at the same time with all of these things, it's horses for courses and so forth.

It's unfortunate, but I've yet to see any editor that supports opening or saving as FLAC. It seems odd to me that software companies refuse to support formats that cost nothing to implement and are known to work very well.

In the case of the Wavpack/Audition connection, it's nothing to do with Adobe, it's simply a filter that downloads with the main Wavpack program and can simply be copied into the Audition program directory. So the Flac people could do the same if they wanted - or may even have done so, I simply don't know.

Update - http://www.vuplayer.com/other.htm has one. Good old Google. Now we've both learned something!

Edited June 26, 2005 by ozpeter

[greenmachine]

Update - http://www.vuplayer.com/other.htm has one.  Good old Google.  Now we've both learned something!

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thank you for this

[Keith]

Thanks for all the info and especially the link from bug80. I decided to use dBpowerAmp to convert wav to flac as recommended somewhere in another thread. Nice and simple. I can then copy files to CD for storage. Many thanks.

Keith

[Breepee2]

I don't tend to trust things with silly names. I.e "Foobar 2k" and "Monkey's Audio".

Would you buy a car from a guy named "Bobo"?

←

Hmm, that's a strange attitude. Foobar is the only program that supports kernel streaming (eg. bypassing that stupid kmixer in 2K/XP which mangles bits so that even a digital out ends up with other bits than the source).

FLAC is by the way one of the least best compressing lossless codec around, Monkey is king here.

The reason most people use FLAC is I think it's open source nature and its consequential broad acceptance (amplified by it's low decoding requirements which makes it well suited for (portable) hardware, in contrary to Monkey).

[dex Otaku]

FLAC is by the way one of the least best compressing lossless codec around, Monkey is king here.

Um. I've seen at least two tests that put FLAC at the head of basically all lossless-packing formats in terms of compression. I've also tested it myself, limited to between Shorten, Monkey's Audio, and FLAC, and FLAC is consistently the highest-compressing. So what are you talking about?

The reason most people use FLAC is I think it's open source nature and its consequential broad acceptance (amplified by it's low decoding requirements which makes it well suited for (portable) hardware, in contrary to Monkey).

I forgot what my real #1 reason was, which is also the reason FLAC is getting hardware support:

FLAC supports sample-accurate positioning. If you want to jump to a specific spot in a file, you can simply jump there and pick up the stream.

As far as I know, FLAC is the only format that supports this, which is how it can do internet streaming, positionable playback from hardware devices, and embedded cuesheets that actually mean something.

[Breepee2]

Um.  I've seen at least two tests that put FLAC at the head of basically all lossless-packing formats in terms of compression.  I've also tested it myself, limited to between Shorten, Monkey's Audio, and FLAC, and FLAC is consistently the highest-compressing.  So what are you talking about?

Show me the tests. I never ever had an .ape bigger than it's .flac counterpart. I've tested about a 100 single files, and my whole, at the time 80GB, archive as a total (in WMA Lossless too, FLAC was the biggest, altough the difference was no more than ~150MB. Flac at -5 and monkey at high compression). Also all tests I read on the web also come to the conclusion monkey is among the best compressors, flac among the worst. When looking at how the codec compress, that all makes sense.

Maybe you need to run some more tests, with some other music.

I forgot what my real #1 reason was, which is also the reason FLAC is getting hardware support:

FLAC supports sample-accurate positioning.  If you want to jump to a specific spot in a file, you can simply jump there and pick up the stream.

Yep, it was mine too Couldn't stand having to wait ~1 sec in monkey

[dex Otaku]

Show me the tests. I never ever had an .ape bigger than it's .flac counterpart. I've tested about a 100 single files, and my whole, at the time 80GB, archive as a total (in WMA Lossless too, FLAC was the biggest, altough the difference was no more than ~150MB. Flac at -5 and monkey at high compression). Also all tests I read on the web also come to the conclusion monkey is among the best compressors, flac among the worst. When looking at how the codec compress, that all makes sense.

I digress:

Um.  I've seen at least two tests that put FLAC at the head of basically all lossless-packing formats in terms of compression.  I've also tested it myself, limited to between Shorten, Monkey's Audio, and FLAC, and FLAC is consistently the highest-compressing.  So what are you talking about?

I'm completely full of sh*t there. Even the pages that I've looked back on [the ones I'd read over before] with comparisons are clear about how "average" FLAC is. I must have scrubbed that from my own memory.

My apologies for being full of sh*t.

I was going to do my own codec comparison, but I simply don't have the time. There are a number of them out there, including the following:

http://www.firstpr.com.au/audiocomp/lossless/ [oldish and doesn't include FLAC]

http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?ti...less_comparison

http://members.home.nl/w.speek/comparison.htm

http://www.lossless-audio.com/comparison.htm

http://flac.sourceforge.net/comparison.html

As you can see, even from FLAC's own comparison chart, FLAC is very much of "average" performance. It appears I convinced myself somewhere along the line that it's better in those terms than it actually is.

I'll note, and this is important:

Compression ratio is not actually the crucial element for me - especially when the difference between best and worst is usually about 5% [i'd call 10% a degree of magnitude, and if FLAC were consistently over 10% worse than the rest then we'd have a problem here]. Availability, cross-OS support , functionality/features, and tag handling, pretty much in that order, are what are important to me.

Speed isn't my primary criterion either; I -always- use L7 compression with FLAC, and have no complaints about its speed at that level [which is often redundant processing].

I had started off using Shorten because it was the dominant lossless codec used on archive.org; I looked at Monkey's Audio and have used it on and off, but ended up settling on FLAC primarily because of its open-source nature. Since then I've discovered its other features like embedded cuesheets, being able to use disc images directly in Nero, tagging, et al.

I don't have anything against any other format. I see advantages and disadvantages to any and all formats. As I said, I recommend APE to people who are less versed in computer and audio technology - FLAC especially lacks good friendly standalone frontends that support all of its options [especially --lax for 24-bit encoding]. My [very mild] prejudices against APE are mostly due to the fact that the standalone interface has more of a "toy" feeling than a "tool" feeling to it. This doesn't prevent me from using it by any means.

I am a big proponent of open-source software. I use Openoffice far more often than MS Office, my most-oft used video and audio players are open source, my most-oft used codecs for both are open source, and my preferred internet clients tend to be open source. Were it possible already, I would switch to using open source software and for the most part never touch another commercial product again - not because commercial products are inherently bad or software companies evil, but because my funds are extremely limited.

WavPack is pretty compelling. I might switch, I might not. It's also open source, and it appears to be better than FLAC at almost everything. FLAC fits well with my workflow [where anything that's being manipulated is WAV anyway] because I made it fit, and its old-style parser et al are the kind of tools I get along with.

In the end the choice was actually quite arbitrary.

[Breepee2]

The fun thing with these codecs is that it really doesn't matter which one you choose. They store precisely the same bitstream. In a whiff you can convert to any other lossless codec, sound quality will not degrade. You can choose which codecs characteristics you like most and go from there. I liked FLAC most (in everyday usage is works better I think and I don't really care about a few MB's).

[Keith]

Yeah I like the idea that no decision can be wrong. If I change my mind later, I can just convert to something else. All it will cost is time to convert the files.

Thanks again.

Keith

[dex Otaku]

I find there's more to it than that, since I distro recordings to the artists with:

1) A CDDA disc

and

2) A CD-ROM with FLAC'd image, cuesheet, FLAC software, FLAC plugins for winamp and Nero, and Foobar2000 with all the extras

Changing to another format midstream is almost like trying to quit smoking or something.

[Keith]

Yeah but I quit smoking overnight - no relapse in 6 years.

And my use is a lot less complicated than yours. I sometimes make CDs of my recordings for friends but that's about it.

Keith

[Guest NRen2k5]

Well, there is a drawback to APE but not to FLAC.

A corruption in an APE file can make the whole stream unlistenable.

Not so in FLAC.

[dex Otaku]

Having just discovered that FLAC encoding from Foobar2000 ignores 24-bit data [encodes as 16-bit] .. and that WavPack doesn't [encodes as 24-bit as it should] .. I'm now using WavPack.

Yes it makes a difference to me - I have once again changed my editing workflow. I'm working with 16-bit originals, editing in 24-bit, using Waves Ultramaximizer with its internal dither [i don't really use it for maximizing, but it makes "normalising" low-average level files easier to eyeball], saving edits as 24-bit WAV, tagging in Foobar2000, and then converting the tagged WAV files in Fb2k to both WavPack [for keeping] and MP3 [for internet distro].

The crucial part at the end there is that Fb2k passes tags between formats when you're transcoding. From a tagged WAV I can create WavPack or FLAC files along with OGG, MP3, and whatever else it supports - with tags consistent across all formats.

[ozpeter]

I think Wavpack even supports 32-bit float.

[dex Otaku]

FLAC supports >16-bit streams, it's just that Foobar2000's implementation of its encoder doesn't.

[bri]

If your holding back from Foobar2000 because of the name your missing out.

Bummer.

[Breepee2]

Indeed. It's the only software I know of any any OS that support kernel streaming. Well, sop in an audiocard with optical out, hook it up to your digital amplifier: instant perfect HiFi output.

[dex Otaku]

Indeed. It's the only software I know of any any OS that support kernel streaming. Well, sop in an audiocard with optical out, hook it up to your digital amplifier: instant perfect HiFi output.

←

Unless, that is, your sound card refuses to support that correctly [as my Revo 7.1 does].

[How do I know this? By trying to play a DTS or AC3 stream over SPDIF; from apps such as WinDVD or PowerDVD, it works fine, but from any other player, the stream gets munged regardless of whether all DSP including volume control are turned off. From Fb2k, DTS and AC3 over SPDIF are destroyed, whether in kernel-streaming mode or not.]