[Flac-dev] flac can occasionally be worse than shorten

[Mark Powell]

On Thu, 8 Feb 2001, Josh Coalson wrote:

> had to fix the subject... was getting under my skin!

Ooops. Sorry. I didn't mean it to sound like flac is worse than shorten. I
appreciate all the good work you are doing and hope my test results are
helpful.

> yeah, could you put up the FLAC version of the
> worst track that is less than 20 megs compressed?
> (I'll have to grab it with a 56k modem).  by worst
> I mean the one where shorten beats flac by the most.
> also:
> 
> 1. what version of shorten are you using?

v3.1

# shorten -h | head -1
shorten: version 3.1: (c) 1992-1999 Tony Robinson and SoftSound Ltd

> 2. what command-line options for flac and shorten
> did you use on this track?

Nothing fancy.

$ shorten file.wav

$ flac -V file.wav file.flac

I've just updated flac from cvs and have remade the flac files to make
sure they're up to date.

# l `which flac`
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  142426  8 Feb 23:33 /usr/local/bin/flac

That's GMT.
  The amount by which the flac file is bigger than the shorten file for
all the tracks is:

341166 Jazzbeat 2 ~  (01) Eddie Warner ~  ~ Devil's Anvil ~ Eddie Warner.wav
-425308 Jazzbeat 2 ~  (02) Eddie Warner ~  ~ Funky Kid ~ Eddie Warner.wav
-562009 Jazzbeat 2 ~  (03) Eddie Warner ~  ~ Brutas Drums ~ Eddie Warner.wav
-302234 Jazzbeat 2 ~  (04) Eddie Warner ~  ~ Shut Up ~ Eddie Warner.wav
561561 Jazzbeat 2 ~  (05) Eddie Warner ~  ~ Zone Y ~ Eddie Warner.wav
869148 Jazzbeat 2 ~  (06) Eddie Warner ~  ~ Titus ~ Eddie Warner.wav
514728 Jazzbeat 2 ~  (07) Eddie Warner ~  ~ Knock It ~ Eddie Warner.wav
590301 Jazzbeat 2 ~  (08) Eddie Warner ~  ~ Black Power ~ Eddie Warner.wav
271671 Jazzbeat 2 ~  (09) Eddie Warner ~  ~ Night Fight ~ Eddie Warner.wav
34914 Jazzbeat 2 ~  (10) Eddie Warner ~  ~ Check Point Charlie ~ Eddie Warner.wav
250768 Jazzbeat 2 ~  (11) Eddie Warner ~  ~ Electronic Track ~ Eddie Warner.wav
326376 Jazzbeat 2 ~  (12) Eddie Warner ~  ~ Come ~ Eddie Warner.wav
313358 Jazzbeat 2 ~  (13) Eddie Warner ~  ~ Hard Labour ~ Eddie Warner.wav
-152681 Jazzbeat 2 ~  (14) Eddie Warner ~  ~ Stop Stuttering ~ Eddie Warner.wav
-372400 Jazzbeat 2 ~  (15) Eddie Warner ~  ~ Organic ~ Eddie Warner.wav
269848 Jazzbeat 2 ~  (16) Eddie Warner ~  ~ Eccentric Trick ~ Eddie Warner.wav

Thus track 6 is the biggest difference.

# l *06*
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  27866540  7 Feb 20:29 Jazzbeat 2 ~  (06) Eddie Warner ~  ~ Titus ~ Eddie Warner.wav
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  16649273  8 Feb 23:36 Jazzbeat 2 ~  (06) Eddie Warner ~  ~ Titus ~ Eddie Warner.wav.flac
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  15780125  7 Feb 20:31 Jazzbeat 2 ~  (06) Eddie Warner ~  ~ Titus ~ Eddie Warner.wav.shn

  I'll take that into work tomorrow and let you know by private email how
to get it.
  Cheers.

Mark Powell - UNIX System Administrator - The University of Salford
Academic Information Services, Clifford Whitworth Building,
Salford University, Manchester, M5 4WT, UK.
Tel: +44 161 295 5936  Fax: +44 161 295 5888  www.pgp.com for PGP key