[Flac-users] questions about 1.1.0 release

[David W. Tamkin]

Thank you for the new release, Josh.  I've downloaded it, but some of the
details in the history file puzzle me, so I've not tried to use it yet.
Pardon my denseness here ...

First, as long as you don't use the --cuesheet option when you encode, are
.flac files encoded by 1.1.0 still readable by earlier versions?

Second, if the old default for seekpoints was -S100x and the new one is -S10s,
does that mean that, if you encode a 44.1-ksps WAV that was ripped from a CD,
the old default was to set 441 seekpoints per second and the new one is to set
one seekpoint every ten seconds?

One of the major reasons I preferred FLAC to APE, despite APE's usually
tighter compression, was that it sought with much more precision.  One
seekpoint every ten seconds is way too coarse for the default; surely I'm
missing something here.  Then again, 441 seekpoints per second would be
overkill.

Third, 4 KB of padding is now the default; isn't it needed a lot less often
than it is not needed?

It seems I'll need to use --no-padding and a specific seekpoint setting every
time I encode, but the bad part is that I'll have to ask others to do the
same.  Well, maybe not; I can always reencode with more seekpoints and less
padding, true?

Thanks for any help with these questions.
DWT