raintheory Posted January 28, 2006 Report Share Posted January 28, 2006 Need some advice from anyone that is familiar with both formats... Just recently I encoded some of my recordings in WMA Lossless format. Up until now I have always archived our recordings as FLAC files, and have been very pleased with them for the most part. However, now having tried WMA Lossless, I am stuck trying to decide if I should stick with FLAC, or move to WMA... Not only was the compression ratio slightly better with WMA, but I can also import WMA files directly into various programs (SonicStage, Cubase, etc.) without having to decode to WAV first, as I have always had to do with FLAC. Does anyone know, preferably from experience, some pros and cons of these formats side by side? WMA seems that it may be the more "software friendly" option, but FLAC is tried and true for me, as well as open source... Any thoughts? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zerodB Posted January 28, 2006 Report Share Posted January 28, 2006 I'm not too sure, but I've opted for WMA Lossless in the past - as you pointed out it's definatley more "software friendly", place nice with SonicStage and a whole host of other applications. FLAC support is somewhat limited.Though I hear that FLAC decoding is somewhat less resource-intensive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dex Otaku Posted January 28, 2006 Report Share Posted January 28, 2006 I'm not too sure, but I've opted for WMA Lossless in the past - as you pointed out it's definatley more "software friendly", place nice with SonicStage and a whole host of other applications. FLAC support is somewhat limited.The main reason I don't use WMA lossless [i use WavPack and FLAC in combination for different destinations] is because SS is the only program I use that can handle it. Not even Sound Forge can encode WMA lossless [i use the Sony/Sonic Foundry editors all the time, but I have to say I hate their file format support: no lossless formats other than Sony's old PCA, which is incredibly slow to encode/decode, and no add-on format filters that I'm aware of]. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raintheory Posted January 28, 2006 Author Report Share Posted January 28, 2006 I'm used to using FLAC for all my needs, but as I stated I've always had to decode to WAV first before importing into SonicStage or Cubase (can be time consuming when you have very long recordings). For most of my music editing, I have always used GoldWave which will let me work with either one of these formats just fine. I think I may try out WMA Lossless for a little while and see how it goes. I like the idea of not having to decode all of my stuff to WAV to get it to HiMD again, or into Cubase to work with it.The fact that FLAC is open-source, and WMA Lossless is closed still kind of puts me off though.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Syrius Posted January 31, 2006 Report Share Posted January 31, 2006 If all you use WMA for is for import and transfer to SS (and I assume you later delete it) try installing JetAudio 6. It's free and it can encode and transcode from any of the supported formats to any other. (Except to MP3, which requires registration.) I convert my FLACs to WMA-L, import, transfer and then wipe them out. That's the only use I have for WMA. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raintheory Posted January 31, 2006 Author Report Share Posted January 31, 2006 (edited) The reason I'm debating sticking with WMA instead of FLAC... Aside from the fact that I can import to SonicStage, Cubase SX3 which I use regularly can read the WMA lossless files directly. Initially I had the audio from Cubase converted to FLAC, but then I had to go in and convert the FLAC files to WAV before working with the project. Converting from FLAC to WAV can be time consuming when you are trying to open up recordings of 7.5 hour jam sessions. Edited January 31, 2006 by raintheory Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jadeclaw Posted February 4, 2006 Report Share Posted February 4, 2006 The problem with WMA-Lossless and WMA in general, it is a proprietary format, controlled by a convicted predatory monopolist.For that reason, WMA is completely unusable for long term archiving.We all know, what chaos Microsoft produced in their Office-formats.The same thing could happen here as well, that the old files end up unplayable after a Mediaplayer update.Plus, WMA is MS-Windows only, when moving to a better platform, you have a problem. FLAC is open and available on a multitude of platforms, so moving away from MS-Windows is so much easier. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tekdroid Posted February 4, 2006 Report Share Posted February 4, 2006 Not only was the compression ratio slightly better with WMA, FLAC has different levels of compression, depending on your needs. If you use the official FLAC front-end (or even if you encode from the command-line) you can specify the level of compression. Just in case you didn't try that. Personally, I find FLAC techically the best, overall. It's also truly multi-platform and open-source, like Ogg Vorbis (which, incidentally, also has growing hardware support). I prefer saving stuff to open formats rather than relying on one vendor's format on one vendor's platform (Windows). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brian10161 Posted February 4, 2006 Report Share Posted February 4, 2006 i like FLAC, in my opinion, it compresses faster, has smaller files and just is better to work with. plus i like how winamp can play the files (i know winamp can play wma lossless, but i like flac better) also, i dont like storing my audio in a format that is microsoft based. i never really like wma (any versions of it) just because of the fact that it uses more power to decode on portable mp3 players. so thats a main thing for me. i use mp3 for my creative zen nano and flac on my desktop when ripping an audio cd. ill use md simple burner for copy cd's to my minidisc player. so that rules out having to use a lossless encoder for sonicstage. also, i dont record live sessions, but i do copy audio from vinyl to my computer. so theres where i use flac. i just like flac, mainly because of the name Free -brianWHOO 60 posts! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raintheory Posted February 4, 2006 Author Report Share Posted February 4, 2006 Thanks for all of the input guys. I think I will be sticking with FLAC after all. Not only because we use multiple platforms for our music production, but also because it seems more versatile, and I hate Microsoft. Seriously though, very good points, and I don't want a future update of WMA to not be compatible with files that were encoded previously. Open-source is the way to go.Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brian10161 Posted February 4, 2006 Report Share Posted February 4, 2006 definatley. open source is the best, like ogg vorbis and flac arent vorbis and flac made by the same group? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raintheory Posted February 4, 2006 Author Report Share Posted February 4, 2006 definatley. open source is the best, like ogg vorbis and flac arent vorbis and flac made by the same group?They are both from xiph.org, yes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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