Conversion .wav to FLAC

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triodes4ever

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Joined 2010
#1
Just got myself into the squeeze/flac business with the purchase of a Logitech Touch fronting my AudioNote DAC. Results quite OK,
My question is how to convert my existing CD's for the highest possible FLAC quality? I found Foobar2000 which in anty case seems to do the job. Are there better converters or doesn't it matter that much? How to set the compressing parameter? Defult is middle, at the ends of the selectable extremes we find high compression, long process time and small output file, versus light compression, fast process time and large output file. I opted for the latter as storage is no concern (sofar) and I was hoping for a better output file. But hey this isn't MP3 right? So lossless means what it says right? How then can you have differerent filesizes at the end? I didn't compare but isn't that weird? And what to choose if the difference is there indeed?

Anyone able to shine some light on this?

Thanks Leonard
 
#2
The FLAC codec in Foobar is 'genuine', afterall, it's free to use so any FLAC converter will use the same source code. With mp3, there are several converters, notably the original Fraunhofer one (license fees to use) and the free LAME converter. The resultant sound quality from these can and does vary, the two previously mentioned are great but I have heard some produce abysmal results at the same output bitrates.

Anyhow, the good news is that FLAC is FLAC, it's lossless and it always decompresses to an exact copy of the originally coded wav. The compression levels have no bearing on sound quality at all. Simply, the higher compression will reduce file size by employing more sophisticated algorithms, this will increase your CPU load as you playback or trans-code. The lower compression uses simpler algorithms which makes it easier to decompress the file.

So, it's up to you, if you have limited space and a decent CPU, use higher compression, if you have lots of space and don't want to unduly load your CPU, use lower compression levels. I just leave it on the default 5, typically reduces file size to 60-70% of original, though it is extremely content dependent (I have tracks encoded at level 5, the lowest I've seen is 320kbps, the highest 1120kbps! both still lossless). 🙂
 
#4
Did you tried DbPowerAmp ? ( Not free ! )
Some options, with DbpowerAmp CD Ripper, to rip Bitperfect your CD's and convert "on the fly" to Flac, mp3...etc
and DbPowerAmp Batch converter, if you already have a large amount of CD .wav tracks
to convert . very fast, uses multi-processing/parallel tasks
 
#6
+1 for dBPoweramp - I've tried a number of software packages, but it seems to be the most frequently updated with new codecs etc, plus has some great upsampling options which you can add to the ripping process. Like JRiver, it's relatively inexpensive (compared to other software packages) - and it's worth supporting these innovative software companies.
 
#8
Ditto what Dr_EM says. Don't worry with FLAC. Just leave it on default and go for it. You'll save about 50% in disc space.

I've ripped 100s of CDs with dBPoweramp and many dozens with JRiver Media Player and other software.

If you have a lot of CDs to rip, (>100) it's worth paying for dBPoweramp. It's fast, it's accurate, easy to use and goes a good job tagging the files. Every new CD that comes into the house goes to dBPoweramp before it even gets played. 🙂
 
#15
One other thing that you might want to consider - Some players that will play flac with the default compression setting (believe it is 5 out of 10) will not with the setting to max compression. May not run into this, but it has happened to me.
 
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