Converted to FLAC

[DavidRoss]

I tried various other WLAN streaming players before I settled for the Logitech (among them multimedia hard drives and players for both video and audio - but I chose audio-only in the end). No other in this price range has the same quality of sound, nor the functionality. The connection between the free PC-based "SqueezeCenter" and the receiver works nicely, as long as the signal is strong enough (not too many walls between PC and receiver/router). Plus, people are constantly writing new plugins to expand the functions (such as one for a composer/conductor search option). It's great, too, as an internet radio.

Oy!  I had considered this gear but hadn't realized it would serve as a source for pumping internet radio to the main system.  What's the sound quality like used that way?

[sound67]

Depending on the quality of the stream the station offers (like 112 and above), crystal clear.

From the user's guide:

Squeezebox Duet plays Internet radio by connecting to SqueezeNetwork, an
always-on, 24/7 service that provides access to a wide variety of radio and
online music services, even when your computer is off.
There are thousands of Internet radio stations available immediately and
more are being added all the time. Many are streaming versions of terrestrial
stations, and others are dedicated online stations. Squeezebox Duet plays
these stations through your Internet connection, so you will need broadband
access to play any of them.

Thomas

[George]

Can anyone please answer this:

Just thought of a few questions:

Can a laptop be easily connected to an stereo through an amplifier? 20' long cord OK?

Is the SQ as good or better than a CD player (assuming FLAC/WAV files are stored on the computer) listening to music this way?

[sound67]

Is the SQ as good or better than a CD player (assuming FLAC/WAV files are stored on the computer) listening to music this way?

"A CD player"? Which CD player?

A €500 one? You betcha'. A €1000 one? Yes, that too. A €20,000 one?

[Tapio Dmitriyevich]

Any other fans of FLAC here? Anything else I should know about the format? Anything else it offers?

As for lossless, I use TAK. It's a better choice if you just play back on computers.

- much better compression speed and ratio than flac.
- also good decoding speed.

Currently, the most hopeful lossless format. And it basically has all things you typically need, like embedded cuesheets or embedded album art.

You can play it with plugins in e.g. foobar2000, winamp and xmplay.

Using lossless is in general a good idea. Also keeping album art in good resolutions. Simply because hard disk space is cheap. If you chose lossy today, you'd be pretty pissed off tomorrow and regret your decision. Especially if there's need to transcode to another lossy format. (lossy->lossy=evil!)

[sound67]

But for multimedia players, it's useless. The last thing we need are more formats. FLAC has been adopted by Samsung, T+A, Linn, etc.

BTW, FLAC transcodes to MP3 at 30x speed e.g. using the single processor of a regular Intel Core 2 Duo-based machine. That is with DB Batch Converter. Now, that's reallly sloooooowwwww. 

[Tapio Dmitriyevich]

But for multimedia players, it's useless. The last thing we need are more formats. FLAC has been adopted by Samsung, T+A, Linn, etc.

Another lossless format is not a problem at all and does not hurt anybody, because I could easily transcode to another lossless format without any changes to the audio material.
I'd never need flac simply because on mobile devices, but also on my living room notebook (120 GB disk, pretty limited) I convert stuff to vorbis at -q8. Vorbis lancer btw. --> Very high and optimized encoding speed, the fastest lossy encoder you've ever seen. For my car, Nero aac at lower bitrates.

Backups: I keep a copy (I regularly use totalcommanders sync tool) on another internal hard disk, which is a truecrypt drive; when it's full, I bring the disk to a relative.

[Tapio Dmitriyevich]

Can a laptop be easily connected to an stereo through an amplifier? 20' long cord OK?

Is the SQ as good or better than a CD player (assuming FLAC/WAV files are stored on the computer) listening to music this way?

I'm doing this. Thinkpad T22 -> A very special htpc fullscreen foobar2000 -> SB Audigy 2 ZS -> girder for remote controlling ... But realistically this is a pretty geeky solution and not easily adoptable.

The audio codec will not be your problem. Your soundcard probably neither. You won't tell a difference between a lossless file or e.g. lame mp3@V0 anyway.

A problem which has to be solved is the notebooks fan(s) noise.

[Renfield]

A problem which has to be solved is the notebooks fan(s) noise.

That's why I haven't attempted to link my notebook to the "open-air" speakers, and only use headphones with it. The fan is quite a nuisance.

[Tapio Dmitriyevich]

BTW, FLAC transcodes to MP3 at 30x speed e.g. using the single processor of a regular Intel Core 2 Duo-based machine.

Erm . When transcoding from one format to another, the speed depends mainly on the encoding process when piping, and only a bit from the decoding thread. IOW You get 30x because not because flac decodes fast, but because of the fast encoding speed of your mp3 encoder.

I can tell you about encoding speeds. On my P4/3GhZ, 1 (virtual) core used, I have the following encoding speeds with the same file:

Vorbis latest Lancer -q8: 29x
Lame 3.98 -V0 fast: 17x

TAK normal: 65x
Flac level 5: 60x

The encoding speeds of flac and tak are almost similar. BUT the FLAC file is 64300 kByte, the TAK one 57700 kByte.

[sound67]

TAK normal: 65x
Flac level 5: 60x

The encoding speeds of flac and tak are almost similar. BUT the FLAC file is 64300 kByte, the TAK one 57700 kByte.

Big diff.  And a 1TB external hard drive trades for ... 

Rival formats are no problem? Right. Because the war between BluRay and HD-DVD, or between DVD-A and SACD, that really helped the process of establishing hi-res video/audio along.   

[Tapio Dmitriyevich]

Rival formats are no problem? Right. Because the war between BluRay and HD-DVD, or between DVD-A and SACD, that really helped the process of establishing hi-res video/audio along.   

You understand me. You understand an easily 1:1 convertible lossless file format is something different than a decision for a specific data medium which requires a specific hardware device. Thanks for your understanding

[Mark]

Glad there's been a mention of Foobar2000 here. Just switched to the latest version and I'm enjoying it much more than MediaMonkey or Winamp (and certainly more than WMP). Handles more file formats than you can shake a stick at - FLAC, of course, being among these - and makes MP3s play gaplessly where they ought to without any additional plugins. Oh, and it's highly customisable, which suits people like me who enjoy tweaking stuff.

[Tapio Dmitriyevich]

Yup. I'd say especially for organizing (Tagging, renaming, converting) fb2k is a must-have. You may not see at first sight how powerful the "file operations", properties dialog and converter in conjunction with TAGZ are: VERY. You get a clue if you have a look into the titleformatting language.

BTW, this is a full screeny from my "playback Notebook" from my living room with fb2k on it. I love it :

[drogulus]

Can anyone please answer this:

Just thought of a few questions:

Can a laptop be easily connected to an stereo through an amplifier? 20' long cord OK?

Is the SQ as good or better than a CD player (assuming FLAC/WAV files are stored on the computer) listening to music this way?

     I thought I answered this, but anyway:

     Yes, you can easily connect your laptop to an amp 20' away. However just connecting the laptop this way may not sound good because the internal soundcard may not be up to it. In fact it may be terrible. So if you want good sound you should use a USB soundcard from the laptop that will give you a choice of a digital or analog connection to whatever kind of amp you're using. If it's an AV receiver or pre/pro you can use a digital connection. If it's a stereo receiver or integrated amp you can go analog.

     If you use a high quality soundcard like the M-Audio Transit the quality will be equivalent to a CD player using high quality source files.

     
   
    A 20' connection is not a problem. The problem with laptops is that they usually don't have good audio built in. Desktops have the same problem though many of them now have Realtek HD audio built into the motherboard which gives you digital connection at whatever bit/sample rate you want to your audio system.

     

[George]

Thanks!

[Iconito]

Speaking of foobar2000 (my favorite player by far), it has a pretty cool ABX function (at least in version 0.8.3 special. I’ve never upgraded...).

So I took this full-of-cymbal-crashes-and-hi-hat-nuances FLAC file and converted it to MP3 (LAME with the -extreme preset. That’s a VBR at around 246 Kbps) and run an ABX comparison between the two. I got tired after 22 trials, with a final score of 9 and foobar telling me there’s an 85.7% probability that I was guessing, as shown in the attached image...

So the good news is that my ears are forgiving enough for me to stick to the good old MP3s, which means smaller files, which means burning fewer discs, which means I have more time to spend on other things (like writing silly posts like this one), not to mention that any player on Earth can play MP3s.

Anyway, I just wanted to share this cool foobar feature for those who didn’t know it. Who knows? Maybe someone will try it and find out they can have an easier life with lossy compression...

[M forever]

Is it also possible to batch-edit files? So that the interpreter's names and album name etc gets written into a number of files while you give them consecutive track numbers?

So the good news is that my ears are forgiving enough for me to stick to the good old MP3s, which means smaller files, which means burning fewer discs, which means I have more time to spend on other things (like writing silly posts like this one), not to mention that any player on Earth can play MP3s.

Anyway, I just wanted to share this cool foobar feature for those who didn't know it. Who knows? Maybe someone will try it and find out they can have an easier life with lossy compression...

With storage as cheap as it is now, it really shouldn't matter that much anymore if the files are a little bigger or smaller. The advantage of lossless compression codecs such as flac is that it stores all the information, no matter whether you hear it or whether your equipment is good enough to display the quality differences. So if you ever get into a situation where you decide the lossy mp3s aren't good enough for your situation anymore, you have to re-rip everything. But with flac you don't need to because all the original information is still there.

[drogulus]

Speaking of foobar2000 (my favorite player by far), it has a pretty cool ABX function (at least in version 0.8.3 special. I've never upgraded...).

     This is an excellent idea. I'd still opt for a lossless archive for the reasons stated. This would allow you to determine just how low you could go with lossy compression before sound quality would be affected. If you upgrade your audio system and find that you now can hear artifacts that were previously inaudible you could go back and reencode your whole library at a higher rate without reripping anything.

[M forever]

That's basically exactly what I said.