Talk:FLAC

Android Support

The line "The Android operating system has supported native FLAC playback since version 3.1." Seems to imply that 3.1 was the first Android version to support FLAC. However, my current phone is running gingerbread (version 2.3x) which I assume is earlier than 3.1 and it supports native flac perfectly fine. Am I missing something here? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.229.105.189 (talk) 22:10, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

This may solve your doubts. --189.187.242.53 (talk) 02:51, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Apple products...

Just added a line about Apple compatibility, as it's the number one question asked in all music/audio forums anywhere ever! So a simple line clarifies the position to help end the repeated question, and is important enough for inclusion on this site. Jimthing (talk) 04:54, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

It's not important enough for the lede section. You should work it into the hardware and software compatibility sections, as appropriate.—Chowbok ☠ 05:43, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

+1 - Please remove from the first paragraph! (And I don't think alac is mp4-based.)--Regression Tester (talk) 10:14, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Disagree completely. Apple's products dominate the market almost entirely in the West, and this is the number one issue people keep wanting to know about FLAC; thus lead-section is appropriate and allowed. Jimthing (talk) 06:42, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

I agree with the opponents. This is an article about FLAC, the lead section in any article should mainly describe the topic (in this case, FLAC), generally and briefly, without explaining some specific details, especially when it's very detailed information about unrelated 3rd parties. This stuff just does not belong in the introduction. And since it's 3:1, we seem to have a consensus here, so I am boldly removing it again.—J. M. (talk) 22:02, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Maybe Apple should get off their iHighhorse and start supporting it. --blm07 06:18, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

More detail needed

How is it that the Q&A section on the Metallica website can tell me more about FLAC files than Wikipedia? I don't suppose someone in the music field could contribute some insight here... Brazekool (talk) 14:06, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Problem in Design section

"FLAC supports only fixed-point samples, not floating-point. This is to avoid the imprecision of floating point arithmetic so as to ensure the encoder is fully lossless." There is no citation for this being the reason to use fixed point samples. Use of floating point samples is mainly to ease in the editing process. All though its also generally more accurate due to its higher dynamic range. FLAC uses fixed point because it is mainly a playback format and fixed point DSPs are cheaper.

http://www.dspguide.com/ch28/4.htm

I'm a junior in computer engineering at the University of Kansas 24.124.49.149 (talk) 20:57, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

More detail, continued

In my experience, FLAC files convert to cda files when ripped to a CD-R, but then 'bounce back into shape' and become FLAC files again (and thus lossless the whole time, I assume) when copied back to disc. If someone could explain that process a bit, that would be great. See the Compact Disc Audio track article, which should have similar info added to it. Thanks in advance. Anarchangel (talk) 23:39, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Quality parameter

The article says: "FLAC allows for a Rice parameter between 0 and 16." I don't know what this means -- and it will be very obscure and unhelpful to the average reader.

It is important to offer readers a practical understanding of the quality parameter in common usage:

• stackoverflow.com/questions/14655678/does-the-flac-audio-format-have-multiple-quality-settings

"The quality parameter for FLAC refers to the quality of compression, not audio. The audio will stay lossless but you get a better compression with higher quality. Higher quality will take more time to compress however.

See docs http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Encoding_Settings

Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC): FLAC is a popular lossless, freely available open source encoder. [2] Quality Settings: 0 - 8. Sets the quality of compression (and not sound, which is lossless), 8 meaning most compressed/time/effort."

These resources are relevant and helpful:

• www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=94187

What differences among CUETools outputs? libFlake/libFLAC/flake/FLACCL, Moderation—derailed into a verbose discussion about compression levels

• www.cuetools.net/wiki/CUETools_FLAC_encoders_comparison

" Compression levels

libFLAC has compression levels 0..8, where 0 is the fastest and 8 provides the best compression ratio. libFlake and FlaCuda are tuned differently, so libFlake -5 might in fact compress better than libFLAC -8. They also support additional compression levels 9-11, however their use is not recommended, because those levels produce so called non-subset files, which might not be supported by certain e.g. hardware implementations.

FLAC specifies a subset of itself as the Subset format. The purpose of this is to ensure that any streams encoded according to the Subset are truly "streamable", meaning that a decoder that cannot seek within the stream can still pick up in the middle of the stream and start decoding. It also makes hardware decoder implementations more practical by limiting the encoding parameters such that decoder buffer sizes and other resource requirements can be easily determined. flac generates Subset streams by default unless the "--lax" command-line option is used."

In sum, readers need to understand that the quality setting will affect how long the compression takes, will generally lead to a relatively small difference in compressed file size, have very little impact on decoding time, and not impact the "lossless" aspect at all -- unless taken to such an extreme that incompatibilities might arise. -96.237.4.73 (talk) 15:16, 12 February 2013 (UTC)