I do know that transcoding to WAV is not insignificant; and am skeptical of the overhead
requirements for FLAC. Regardless, the bandwidth requirements for a FLAC transmission is greater
than that of ogg.
While this is true, bandwidth / size is not really an issue any more in any kind of stationary setup. Harddisk sizes are such that even encoding your CDs in a lossless codec is hardly worth the effort anymore - if it weren't for tagging support I'm sure some people would just rip to .wav and be done with it. As for bandwidth, it's a hardware and not a codec issue. Most people I know run a 100mbit network, I have my server and one workstation on 1gbit. The squeezebox1 is a stationary 10mbit (or 5.5mbit for wireless) device with, as far as I can tell, a 256k audio buffer. You are not getting dropouts because raw PCM is so incredibly high bandwidth, you are getting dropouts because your squeezebox1 is on a slow link. Either that or your server is not configured correctly.
Squeezebox2 solves these problems by widening the pipe to 100mbit (22mbit wireless) and a much larger buffer. Dropouts should be impossible, even for raw PCM.
The way I see it, lossy compressed audio has become irrelevant for everything except portable applications. Even there, they are only needed because both storage capacity and battery life are severely limited. Now while capacity is increasing fast, with 2GB flash players and 6GB mini drive players around, battery life is not. I have not heard of any portable where ogg decoding does not consume much more power than mp3 decoding, because vendors don't optimize the ogg decoder much.
- For the Squeezebox you can just as well use .flac as .ogg
- For your portable mp3 ist still superior because of better battery life. You can transcode those from lossless at your convenience.
Don't get me wrong, I like .ogg - I just see no point in implementing a portable format directly on the squeezebox. I'd have no objections even if they moved .mp3 decoding to the server and supported only .flac and .wav directly on the box.
C.
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