On Wed, Feb 08, 2012 at 08:49:37AM -0800, [email protected] wrote: > On 7 February 2012 21:59, Martijn van Beurden <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Flake, another FLAC-encoders can use variable > > block length and has a algorithm to decide the length, but this is > > outside of the -0 to -8 presets, as these are all fixed block length. > > How much does the variable-block mode improve compression?
I did a lot of tests about a year ago, and Flake definitely has tighter compression at the higher presets (they go up to 11, probably because 11 is one louder). I don't have the exact results to hand, but I do remember that it wasn't as much of an improvement as I had expected, and it took a lot more time to compress. Playback compatibility is not guaranteed with any of Flake's additional variable-block preset levels. I tested playback, and most software that I tried wasn't able to decode the tightest Flake compression options. The dealbreaker for me was no support for audio above 16-bit/44.1k. I regularly re-compress files to save space, and I have noticed that a lot of distributed .flac files were not compressed to the maximum level possible using version 1.2.1 of flac/libflac (or an older FLAC version was used, or both). What I should really do is test battery life with different levels of compression, as for a lot of applications that will matter more than how full the storage device can get (per hour of stored music). Latest version (according to the flake-enc website) is 0.11 (2007) but at least the Flake maintainer is active on this mailing list :-) -- -Dec. --- "Mosaic is going to be on every computer in the world." - Marc Andreessen, 1994 _______________________________________________ flac-dev mailing list [email protected] http://lists.xiph.org/mailman/listinfo/flac-dev
