I actually agree with pretty much everything Brian just said. To add to that though, I'd say that mp3-to-FLAC transcodes are a very real problem for, shall we say, illegitimate sources of material. (And that is a totally legitimate thing, in and of itself... er, what?)
- BW On Fri, Jan 7, 2011 at 5:22 PM, Brian Willoughby <[email protected]> wrote: > First of all, I am not aware of any official source of FLAC files > that provide MP3 sourced data. I meticulously check the music I > purchase, especially when it is 24/48 or 24/96 material, because this > is new technology, and sometimes people get it wrong. > > However, you should be aware that many modern producers use software > to create their music, and when the software stores sound clips in > MP3 format, what you end up with is music that sometimes looks like > MP3. I recently purchased a second release of an old download from > an artist who has his material re-mastered. Since he made such a big > deal about the re-mastering, I took a close look at the quality. For > some reason, the second track looked like an MP3 source, but I'm sure > it just has to do with the software that was used to create the music > originally. > > In other words, if you try to shut down the FLAC encoder based on an > FFT, you might have a lot of false triggers! > > I purchase a great deal of music, exclusively in FLAC format. I > purchase from LINN Records, Bleep.com, Warp Records, and also > directly from artists like Nine Inch Nails who provide FLAC files. I > have never seen anyone provide MP3 quality. > > For that matter, OggFLAC seems to be a format that has never been > used. Ever. I have simply never come across a legitimate source of > music for purchasing which used the OggFLAC format. I have seen FLAC > come and go and come back again. > > Various online record labels started out with FLAC for bandwidth > reasons. Then they seemed to switch over to WAV as bandwidth became > less of an issue, and I assume that their customers were confused by > FLAC because of the lack of support in iTunes and other highly > popular players. Meanwhile, hardware such as the Sound Devices 700 > Series, the Squeezebox, and many other professional products has > started with FLAC and stuck with it. The sites who switched to WAV > are now bringing back FLAC, but none of them have ever used OggFLAC. > > Finally, I think that people who are not embedded firmware developers > do not understand why the FLAC sources have stopped changing. What > we have here is a rare case of a professional set of sources which do > not have bugs, and which represents a solid standard that does not > need changing. People are selling hardware devices in droves, and > they cannot afford to change their firmware every time some random > change happens in the FLAC source. It's actually way better that > FLAC is not changing. > > Even when Apple came out with ALAC, their version of FLAC, I noticed > that they could not consistently beat FLAC on coding speed and file > size. Some audio turns out smaller with ALAC, other audio turns out > smaller with FLAC. Overall, the average performance is identical. > Apple hired some of the most amazing geniuses of physics to design > ALAC, and if they can't beat the performance of FLAC in all > situations, then what makes you think there is any reason to make a > single change to the FLAC sources? > > While I'm writing, I also want to respond to the question about how > to change FLAC so that all of the third party tools pick up the > change. Well, I don't think that is possible. Many tools run the > command-line flac utility behind the scenes. Others use the FLAC > library directly. The problem is that both of them often run with > out of date versions of the FLAC code, so no matter which way they > incorporate the official FLAC sources, you cannot make them update to > your anti-MP3 version. > > On that last note, I want to encourage you to experiment and have fun > trying to create an MP3 detector that could warn users about quality > issues. However, I believe it is extremely unlikely that you would > ever be successful in getting your code into the official FLAC > sources. This kind of change has nothing to do with the official > FLAC format, and thus I doubt there would be any professional > interest in changing things just for the sake of change or "newness." > > Brian Willoughby > Sound Consultinf > > > On Jan 7, 2011, at 12:56, David Richards wrote: >> Its really sad to hear thats happening but even more sad is the fact >> that flac is becoming a very common format for music on the interweb >> whilst at the same time the development has ceased. I've found some >> severe issues with OggFLAC that essentially make it a useless format >> for streaming, no one cared. >> >> On Fri, Jan 7, 2011 at 3:42 PM, Jørgen Vigdal <[email protected]> wrote: >>> Due to the fact that more and more users increasingly use MP3 < >>> 320kbps as >>> their source for encoding music, and publish it as flac files, I >>> suggest >>> that something is done in the flac encoder to possible avoid this. >>> My idea is kinda easy/stupid, but might work; >>> Implement a function that use a FFT to check if the input has >>> frequencies > >>> 16kHz, and informs the user that the file would not be encoded >>> unless a >>> -force parameter is specified (or at least ask the user if he or >>> she want to >>> do this :) ) >>> Hopefully, this will reduce the number of files released on the >>> internet, >>> re-encoded from a lossy file format. Unfortunately, many users >>> avoid using >>> flac, because they think the encoder is lossy due to the poor >>> sound on some >>> files released. >> >> > _______________________________________________ > Flac-dev mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.xiph.org/mailman/listinfo/flac-dev > _______________________________________________ Flac-dev mailing list [email protected] http://lists.xiph.org/mailman/listinfo/flac-dev
