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Old 2005-04-16, 09:05 PM
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ssamadhi97 ssamadhi97 is offline
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Join Date: Nov 2004
Location: Old Europe
Re: Why is FLAC supposedly so bad?

Quote:
Originally Posted by uhclem
I'm not an expert on this, but here's what I have personally noticed about wavpack that seems to make it as good as, if not better than, flac:
I took the liberty to break your list up little and comment on it
  • slightly better compression ratio
Gotta give it that much.

As for the rest, it's pretty much a tie.
  • much faster compression speed
  • APE2 tags
Much faster? No, definitely not in any case. If you let flac operate at its sweet spot (regarding the compression speed / efficiency tradeoff), which is -4, it only takes ~20% longer than WavPack at default settings. Of course at higher settings flac is pretty damn slow

Also note that WavPack decodes a bit slower at standard settings - and its decoding speed actually decreases if you use better compression settings (as opposed to FLAC)

As for tagging, FLAC uses VorbisComments for metadata, which are just as powerful as ape2 tags.
  • fast seeking
  • stores wave md5 signature just like flac fingerprint
  • full FB2k support
I'd say it's obviously a tie between wv and flac for these too

Quote:
Originally Posted by uhclem
I don't know of any portables that support it
There's no hardware support for WavPack whatsoever.

As for other pros/cons and supported platforms, check this out:

http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index....ess_comparison


Generally both FLAC and WavPack are feature-rich and widely supported formats. Personally I see nearly no reason why only one should be allowed here.

Of course, despite being an excellent format it's not very well known among consumers yet, meaning that we'll probably see quite a lot of "omg wtf how do I play wv files?" posts here after introducing wv to the masses.

But I'm all for supporting it, wv sure deserves to be more well-known.
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