<br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">2007/3/29, Brian Willoughby <<a href="mailto:brianw@sounds.wa.com">brianw@sounds.wa.com</a>>:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
Hi Henry,<br><br>32-bit float has exactly the same precision as 24-bit int. I'm not<br>sure what the reference encoder does, but it would be possible to<br>write an encoder based on the FLAC library which converts 32-bit
<br>float to 24-bit int when creating a FLAC-compressed file. You could<br>also do the 32-bit float-to-24-bit int conversion with another tool<br>before using the standard flac encoder. There would be no loss of<br>data so long as the original audio does not exceed +-
1.0 in floating<br>point, in which case you'd need some way to handle clipping. 32-bit<br>float really only has an advantage for intermediate stages of audio<br>processing where it might not be a good thing to require clipping or
<br>peak limiting until a later stage.<br><br>32-bit int has more precision than 32-float, albeit less dynamic<br>range. However, there are no 32-bit A/D converters out there, and we<br>really only need about 18.5 bits in any listening environment, so 32-
<br>bit integer is not very useful. It shouldn't be difficult to write<br>an encoder/decoder which supports 32-bit integer. There is at least<br>one independent FLAC implementation, but I have no idea whether it is<br>
open-source or supports 32-bit.<br><br>As it stands, FLAC is perfectly suited for compression and archival<br>of all original recordings and all final masters of audio material.<br>Only engineers and experimental researchers would need 32-bit for
<br>their intermediate storage, and I believe it is typical to not<br>compress intermediate storage anyway. In other words, there's no<br>real point for this support in FLAC, which is why it isn't there.<br><br>Do you have a specific need? ... other than to see the support
<br>listed as a bullet item on the feature list?</blockquote><div><br><br>Hi,<br><br>I was just wondering why WavPack has implemented this feature (what the possible reason could be) and why FLAC didn't implement it.<br>
Can you give me some reasons WavPack has this feature?<br><br>thanks in advance<br></div><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
Brian Willoughby<br>Sound Consulting<br><br><br>On Mar 29, 2007, at 10:24, Harry Sack wrote:<br><br>Hi,<br><br>I have read this on a forum:<br><br>'FLAC supports 24-bit audio fine. My understanding is that the FLAC<br>
format also handles 32-bit ints, but the reference encoder does not<br>implement it, and FLAC has no support for float data. WavPack handles<br>all integer bitdepths up to 32-bit and also 32-bit floats.<br><br>Both codecs handle all sampling rates.'
<br><br>I was wondering if there are plans to support 32-bit ints and float<br>data in the future, like WavPack does.<br><br>thanks in advance<br><br></blockquote></div><br>