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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Hi,</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I've tried to find info about unofficial 32bit
float support in FLAC, and found several conversations. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Most of them were talking about a 24bit limit,
but from the manual I guess that this limitation is gone, as it supports up to
32bit integer.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>So my question is, what would be the best way, or
what is a common way to FLAC-encode floating point audio?</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>The first idea is obvious, we have a 32bit float,
FLAC supports 32bit integer, and it's lossless. So I'd just make it encode 32bit
float, it's lossless afterall. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>2 problems, first I would suspect it wouldn't
encode very well, since the data wouldn't be "audio" anymore, right? It would be
like trying to FLAC-encode random data. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>So I tried FLACing white noise, and comp ratio was
pretty poor, confirming this. Interestingly, it still did a better job than
ZIP!</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>T</FONT><FONT face=Arial size=2>he second problem
would be that no other tool would read them correctly anyway.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>The second idea is to truncate & use it as a
lossy encoder, which can be "audibly lossless" anyway. But what's a common
practice here?</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I would be tempted to leave 1 bit of headroom above
0dB, or maybe 2 bits. Normalizing before encoding could be an option, but
the gain would then have to be inserted in a tag. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>& finally, what bit depth? 24? 25, 26? 32?
</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I know there's no right answer, just asking if
there are common practices.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Thanks.</FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>