Lossless digital formats - FLAC vs WMA?

I'm diving headfirst into digital music and servers. I've already got a Squeezebox 3 to try and 1TB ReadyNAS NV+ from Infrant up and running. (What a nice box the NV+ is, by the way. The whole thing for under $1k, up and running in minutes, and pretty much self-configured in a couple of hours.)

I'm going to start playing around with various ways to rip my CDs, and I also picked up and downloaded some "Studio Master" music from Linn Records. Many of the experienced folks here recommed using the FLAC format, so I decided to try that as my base format. Since the downloads from Linn were in lossless WMA format, I converted them to FLAC. However, I was surprised to see, even with compression at the highest level of 8, that the size of the resulting FLAC files were about ten percent larger than the WMA forms. The size of their Studio Masters are about twice the size of the CD-quality WMAs, which were in turn about two and a half time the size of the MP3 forms. With the average size of the six CDs I downloaded at about 750MB, that can be significant.

So why is FLAC preferred over WMA by so many here? I understand that FLAC is open source while WMA is owned by Microsoft, but are there other significant reasons?

I use Microsoft media player and have a Zune so I use WMA for my lossless storage. I have no experience with FLAC so I can not comment on this.

Just as an FYI.

A 10% savings seems kind of high. I was noticing about 1 to 1.5 MB per file but I never bothered to look any further. Still this can be very significant if you have thousands of songs in your library.

From a technical standpoint there is no reason to choose one over the other unless you want to save that extra space. Of course WMA is owned by Microsoft and they could conceivably change or manipulate the format at any time, I doubt they would do this since it doesn't make any business sense.

For me it is because I do not want to support a company that supports DRM. That 1 MB per song is a small price to pay if it means I can protect my fair use rights.

Give me liberty or give me death.

PS. There is a new version of FLAC out now. Maybe they have closed the gap with WMA.

Cherian said:

I use Microsoft media player and have a Zune so I use WMA for my lossless storage. I have no experience with FLAC so I can not comment on this.

Just as an FYI.

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How do you like the WMA lossless format?

I have a Zune as well.

I like the WMA format very much. If I run digital out from my computer to my pre-amp I cannot tell the difference between WMA and a CD. I have done many blind tests and no one has gotten it right. It is that good in my opinion. It sure beats fussing around with 300+ CDs. I can make play lists and just rock out.

Oh, I love my Zune. I was just sick of seeing everyone with an iPod. I wanted to be different.

socialxray said:

A 10% savings seems kind of high. I was noticing about 1 to 1.5 MB per file but I never bothered to look any further. Still this can be very significant if you have thousands of songs in your library.

From a technical standpoint there is no reason to choose one over the other unless you want to save that extra space. Of course WMA is owned by Microsoft and they could conceivably change or manipulate the format at any time, I doubt they would do this since it doesn't make any business sense.

For me it is because I do not want to support a company that supports DRM. That 1 MB per song is a small price to pay if it means I can protect my fair use rights.

Give me liberty or give me death.

PS. There is a new version of FLAC out now. Maybe they have closed the gap with WMA.

Click to expand...

Where can I down load FLAC?

Cherian said:

I like the WMA format very much. If I run digital out from my computer to my pre-amp I cannot tell the difference between WMA and a CD. I have done many blind tests and no one has gotten it right. It is that good in my opinion. It sure beats fussing around with 300+ CDs. I can make play lists and just rock out.

Oh, I love my Zune. I was just sick of seeing everyone with an iPod. I wanted to be different.

Click to expand...

I got the Zune for the screen. It's a great first effort and I hope some of the idiosyncratic parts of it can be fixed with firmware upgrades.

The fact that you can't record a show with Windows Media Center and play it on the Zune is bizarre. I do like the Zune integration with the XBox360.

Never used WMA lossless, but I have FLAC.

FLACs good and I burn CDs into FLAC.... you can download some FLAC from certain sites on the web... I dont want to divulge as it's not good for the site.

socialxray said:

A 10% savings seems kind of high. I was noticing about 1 to 1.5 MB per file but I never bothered to look any further.

Click to expand...

To give you an example, I got the "Studio Master" download of Barb Jungr's "Walking in the Sun", which has 13 tracks (WMA files) and is a total of 596MB. Using dBpowerAMP, I converted the files to FLAC with level-8 compression, it took 6 min, and I got 661MB, a 10.5% increase. Going to default level-5 compression only took a 1 min 50 secs and was just slightly larger at 666MB for a 11.7% increase. (Just for grins, level-0 took 1:31 and was 748MB for a 25% increase, and level-3 took 1:38 and got 719MB for a 20% increase. Level-5 sure seems to be the sweet spot.)

socialxray said:

PS There is a new version of FLAC out now. Maybe they have closed the gap with WMA.

Click to expand...

Could be. The new FLAC version is 1.1.4, while the codec in dBpowerAMP is version 1.1.3.

Ok, since I was just sitting here playing, I decided to fiddle around a bit. I found that the original WMA to MP3 conversion were only 65MB in size (more or less expected). What I found odd, however, was that when I converted the MP3s to level-5 FLAC they were 291MB, but converted to WMA-10 were only 80MB! Those are pretty significant differences. Of course, any compression scheme will do poorly for certain data structures, and the Studio Masters may be one of those here. I think its more likely I've got some encoding parameters wrong.

Edit: Please note that I was just playing with conversions here to examine file characteristics. Many of the conversions don't make any sense in the real world, especially the lossy MP3 to the lossless WMA or FLAC.

The size of FLAC when converted from any compressed format is anyone's guess. The format was developed to losslessly compress uncompressed music. It was not made to re-compress music that has already been compressed by a lossy encoder.

Converting MP3 or other lossy formats to FLAC or other lossless formats does not make sense.

Simply go back to the originals and compress those: Order shall return. FLAC from original CDs compresses down to on average 60% of the size on CD.

The reason why I use FLAC instead of Microsoft's or Apple's lossless formats is that with FLAC I will not be at the mercy of these companies regarding DRM.

ralflar said:

Converting MP3 or other lossy formats to FLAC or other lossless formats does not make sense.

Click to expand...

I didn't mean to imply that even made any sense. I was just creating sources in the various formats to see what their file characteristics were. You're right, I should have posted a disclaimer that the lossy to lossless conversions were pointless.

(and I did)

Joey_V said:

Never used WMA lossless, but I have FLAC.

FLACs good and I burn CDs into FLAC.... you can download some FLAC from certain sites on the web... I dont want to divulge as it's not good for the site.

Click to expand...

Joey,

OK, can you send me a private email then? [email protected]

Thanks

Rudy

rtagle said:

Where can I down load FLAC?

Click to expand...

http://flac.sourceforge.net/ This is the home site for FLAC. You can always get the latest version and all of the documentation from here.

FLAC does not compress as well as WMA, but uses much less computing power on playback.

FLAC is also not restricted in the use of the codec, anyone can build a FLAC player and does not have to pay royalities.

Since mid 2000 ALL Microsoft file formats are 'active' (a Microsoft term, that means that programming or macros can be embedded into the data) This means if you download a legally published file to play, it can scan your computer and phone home while the music is playing and you will never know. I know this from an MS confrenece where they were teaching us to write such blind applications and bind them to media files.

Insert anti DRM rant here.

FLAC wins. Period. I love it! Oh....that reminds me....HDD is almost full of FLAC again.

rtagle said:

Joey,

OK, can you send me a private email then? [email protected]

Thanks

Rudy

Click to expand...

Joey,

I know a couple of sites too, but it wouldn't hurt to know a few more if you don't mind sending me an e-mail as well.

[email protected]

Thanks,

Z

Burke said:

http://flac.sourceforge.net/ This is the home site for FLAC. You can always get the latest version and all of the documentation from here.

FLAC does not compress as well as WMA, but uses much less computing power on playback.

FLAC is also not restricted in the use of the codec, anyone can build a FLAC player and does not have to pay royalities.

Since mid 2000 ALL Microsoft file formats are 'active' (a Microsoft term, that means that programming or macros can be embedded into the data) This means if you download a legally published file to play, it can scan your computer and phone home while the music is playing and you will never know. I know this from an MS confrenece where they were teaching us to write such blind applications and bind them to media files.

Insert anti DRM rant here.

Click to expand...

Burke,

What you described is called spyware. Are you sure that whoever gave that presentation or course at the conference you attended was teaching how to implement spyware features in media files.

Not that I would be surprised...

I simply don't buy downloadable music. Trust no one. I'd rather buy the disc and do my own encoding in FLAC.

Attach my own anti spyware/DRM rant here.

Audiophiliac said:

FLAC wins. Period. I love it! Oh....that reminds me....HDD is almost full of FLAC again.

Click to expand...

Then you must buy extra space . CompUSA have an advertised special for an AcomData 160GB Firewire external drive for $60 after $20 instant and $20 mail-in rebate. I hate mail-ins, but 80 bucks would still be a good price. Offer is good until Saturday.

I bought the 250GB USB2 model tonight. AcomData advertise silent yet cool operation and encryption as well as mobile desktop features.

The drive is quite silent although not totally silent. I believe that it will do well in the living room. It certainly runs very cool. I am impressed. It also look good in aluminium, except that it has a too large and bright blue LED.

It might be worth checking out.

ralflar said:

Burke,
What you described is called spyware. Are you sure that whoever gave that presentation or course at the conference you attended was teaching how to implement spyware features in media files.

Not that I would be surprised...

Click to expand...

Absouletly, I was shocked by some of the examples, doing a directoy of the file system and gathering email addresses, were two examples of the kinds of ActiveX controls that you could build.

Then confrence was the Microsoft TechEd 2000, held June 2000 in Orlando FL.
The topic was embedding ActiveX controls in Media files.

Digital is a cold hearted bit*#

I must make a confession...digital has ruined me. The fast paced life and portability of digital in many ways can kill the true fidelity of music, but with this said it also has the ability to open doors and opportunities that never before could have been experienced. I've had a few ipods and as many say, life sure is better with a soundtrack. Being able to take music with you where and whenever you are out and about is just fantastic. Being in the city taking busses and L all over is almost painful after a while but with some screamin tunes it becomes tollerable.

I digress.

Having backed up most of my collection and some others, 3 half terrabyte external drives later and 1 internal 300gig and another 200gig internal and space is still an issue for me. If you have a huge collection of cd, etc and back it all up to digital you have to balance out quality/vs/quantity. as I'm sure you already know. I have used lames' mp3 encoder with much success, as well as wma, and some flac. When its coming through some apple ibuds you probably wont hear a diff at least i dont between formats (wma excluded, ipod will have nothing to do with this format)

Hope this helps. Don't let space hold you back either, external drives are soo cheap nowadays, and even portable music players are allowing up to 80gig of space, so embrace it to an extent.

I have used a FLAC plugin for WinAmp with good success.