[flac-dev] Higher compression modes from Flake

[Brian Willoughby]

On Mar 14, 2013, at 13:24, Declan Kelly wrote:
> I want the tightest possible compression, while remaining 100%
> compatible with the subset that all known FLAC decoders can  
> successfully
> stream or play now in cars, Hi-Fi units, "MP3 players" and cell  
> phones.
> The out and out most widely supported lossless audio format could (and
> should) have a better "bang for the buck" to the average user (who has
> possibly been tempted away from MP3 or WMV or some Apple format).

I have a vague recollection that going beyond -4 is incompatible with  
certain hardware players. Sorry I don't have a reference for this,  
but it seems like even -8 or --best are not 100% compatible with all  
decoders. Going beyond that to -9 or even -12 seems like it would be  
far less than 100% compatible.

Of course, the logical approach is to look into why these decoders  
can only handle some FLAC encodings, and work within those restrictions.


> I buy a lot of music on Bandcamp (and similar sites) and usually get
> smaller files (for long term storage) when recompressing (flac -8).
> A common sentiment I have seen online is "my CPU time is too  
> valuable to
> bother with maximum compression", but that ignores the fact that  
> all of
> the copies made of those files are going to add up to something  
> bigger.

I buy nearly everything in FLAC. I do not re-compress, and as far as  
I know there is no easy way to determine how the originals were  
compressed. Download speeds are faster, and I figure that my backups  
are already small enough using the original FLAC that I don't need to  
experiment with re-compressing in the hopes of getting the files even  
smaller.

For original recordings, I use --best, but I'm not concerned with  
direct playback on all devices. If I have a problem with playback,  
I'd probably decode and re-encode. Also, my original recordings are  
raw and unmastered, so I rarely listen to them without mixing and  
processing. I then compress the mastered audio (for CD or HD audio)  
using FLAC again, as a backup of the final product. Again, I use -- 
best and --no-padding because it's convenient, but I wouldn't mind  
learning a better default command line.

Brian