[flac] decoding with -F

[Brian Willoughby]

If there are tens of thousands of silent samples, due to errors, then  
you might hear silence.  However, it's more likely to be short enough  
to sound like a glitch.  In fact, fewer erroneous samples will sound  
more like loud distortion than silence, depending upon the difference  
between the missing sample and zero.  This is all assuming individual  
samples.

What's more likely is that a given error will destroy everything from  
the current sample to the end of the block.  That's mostly why the  
documentation mentions silent sections.  If you have a bad FLAC file  
and use -F, you'll probably end up with silent blocks.  The default  
block size for a FLAC file is very similar to the block size of a CD,  
so glitches might sound roughly the same.  One difference is that  
many CD players have digital filters which chirp when there is bad  
data, while a FLAC will not have this same sound effect when errors  
are detected.

Brian W.


On Oct 24, 2007, at 07:57, Harry Sack wrote:
- the decoded sample is error-free and is added to the WAV file
- the decoded sample has an error but instead this sample is not  
added to the WAV file (so it's just thrown away)
- the decoded sample has an error but instead a silent sample is  
added to the WAV file (so you can hear in fact silence when there are  
a lot of samples of this kind directly after each other)

is this above correct or are there more situations that can occur in  
the case of corrupted flac files you want to decode using -F?