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Lance

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  1. I got that 16KHz upper limit from years of research in audiology and linguistics. Some sources show 17KHz, others less. It's an exponential change in that there are only 12 keys of a piano between 10KHz and 20KHz (mathematically speaking, not on any real piano). Human hearing begins to fall off at the high end starting at age 8! By age 20, that 20KHz limit is a myth. Many casual statements are made about that 20Hz-20KHz range because one source heard it from another. They can't all have actually tested human hearing and found that the average is exactly 20,000Hz, not 19,000, not 21,000. From http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2003/ChrisDAmbrose.shtml "The highest frequency that a normal middle-aged adult can hear is only 12-14 kilohertz." Before I entered academics, I was in electronics and can tell you that your grandfather may hear a whine from a CRT set. That is typically caused by a leaky capacitor and may produce a sound anywhere in the range of 8KHz to 16KHz. Even though the FLAC developers have found a way to make it lossless (in theory), we have a range of compressions available for it as well as VBR. If all of these compression levels and VBR result in a lossless file, why not use the max compression and VBR? What would be the reason for creating a larger file than necessary? I argue that FLAC is pointless is because it doesn't fit the definition of the purest, uncompromised form of computer sound file format. That would be WAV or AIF since they are uncompressed and required for nearly every professional application. For an archive of a precious, unreplaceable CD, I am choosing AIF. I didn't say FLAC is lossy or faulty. I said it isn't needed. Those who want something that is the paragon of uncompromized computer sound file have WAV and AIF. Those who want compression, but not a loss in audible quality have AAC 256K. We don't need sixteen different formats or even six for that matter. The biggest limitation of FLAC is that it isn't compatible with a very wide range of hardware. Sure, it works on a dozen portable players that most of us have never heard of, but it doesn't work on the most popular one without altering the firmware. I agree that an iPod is not an audiophile's dream, but who doesn't like to hear music on the go? If we have a format that has "perfect" sound (by that I mean you can't hear any fault in it), and that format makes a file that is 25% of the uncompressed AIF, and we can't hear any difference, and it plays on virtually any portable MP3 device, well, isn't that as good as it needs to get for all but archiving? We are chasing the FLAC, trying our best to justify clutter up our computers with first one utility and then another to enable use of this thing. We just heard it through the grapevine that it is our panacea.
  2. Thanks, Bob Stern. XLD is just the ticket (what we used to say for "rules"). The problem was that many of the FLAC files created by others are faulty. They have as much as ten seconds of dead air at the end of the music. I suppose this comes from a full CD conversion followed by editing to get individual songs. I can delete that excess silence with QuickTime Pro, but it doesn't have a FLAC save option except "Share" which is a direct attachment to email. That works, but is not exactly fast or simple. I haven't yet tried to figure out how to edit in XLD, but I can edit in QT Pro, export as AIF, and then convert the AIF in XLD to get an improved FLAC result. Now I can share these FLAC files with the folks who can't bear to think about huge AIF or lossy AAC.
  3. "...but your counsel of keeping only the lossy version truly sucks." As others have suggested, you have to believe your own ears, not the FLAC promoters. If you can't assure me that you have actually listened to a music CD and an AAC 256k extract of it and found the latter to sound different, you are simply buying into the FLAC lovers dream. It's not reality. Submit to a blind test: put someone else at the controls and switch between a FLAC and an AAC 256k version of a dynamic piece of your favorite music. If you can tell the difference (not one lucky guess, but a statistically significant success), let us know. Don't simply chomp on the words "lossy" and "lossless". You don't listen to these terms. You listen to music. Decades ago "audiophiles" claimed they could hear a difference in music that was missing inaudible content, such as tones above 16,000 Hz. Blind tests proved them wrong again and again. It's the same with FLAC. It's a theoretical advantage, not a really audible one. I'm not suggesting that anyone stick with or ditch iTunes. I'm saying 85% of portable MP3 players can't play FLAC. That's a fact. To cling to FLAC means either you give up the iPod or you use two different files, one for your $30,000 home audio system, and another for your iPod. If you know of a way to make iPod play FLAC, fine, but give the details, don't just assume "it can be done". Even then you are buying into that imaginary difference in audible quality between FLAC and AAC 256k that you can't verify.
  4. Three comments: * No reason to convert FLAC to AIF. That will make the file about 30% larger and not improve the quality. Use Xiph.org component and Set OggS.app to enable QuickTime and iTunes to use FLAC files. http://www.simplehelp.net/2008/06/12/how-to-play-flac-files-in-itunes/#longer http://downloads.xiph.org/releases/xiph-qt/xiph-qt-0.1.9.dmg http://people.xiph.org/~arek/flac_import/set-OggS-0.1.dmg Alternate scripted process: http://code.google.com/p/flukeformac/ * Why all the fuss about FLAC? Both WAV and AIF are uncompressed and lossless. If one wants uncompromized quality, go with one of them. On the practical side, if you can't hear any difference between AAC 256k and FLAC, why use FLAC and achieve no better listening experience than one gets from AAC 256kbps? Either you are a no-compromize nut or you are practical, but FLAC fits neither goal. After all, this FLAC thing is incompatible with 85% of all MP3 portable players in use today (iPod). Do we really need two versions of every music file, a FLAC version for the home system and AAC for the iPod? For the folks using some outdated Windows Media Player or whatever that can't play AAC, they can use 320k MP3. Although not as efficient as AAC, it is still a small file compared with FLAC and is compatible with iTunes and iPod. * I thought I would at least be open minded and try out this FLAC phenom, but Max has never worked for me. It always gives the error "The file does not contain an embedded cue sheet". Until people can embed this cue sheet thing in their FLAC files, we in the Mac world are back at square one.
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