Re: [slim] Apple lossless vs Flac
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 03/30/05 4:08 PM I want to maximize my sound quality and have started converting everything to apple lossless - basically it seemed the best bet given I use itunes all the time * I suppose I could use something like dbpoweramp to batch reconvert to Flac but based on previous mailings I'm getting confused*is converting to Flac actually going to bring anything it terms of sound quality? Or am I getting as good as it gets from apple lossless on sb2? (when mine arrives!) graham What happens when Apple Computer loses any court battle with Apple Records and is forced to either get out of the music business or give its music technology to Apple Records? I love Apple, but I hate their music distribution ideas and anything having to do with proprietary formats. Go FLAC, you'll never go back. Another good thing is that if you go with flac, the decode is happening on the sb2. With apple lossless, the decode is happening on the server. Paul ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Apple lossless vs Flac
What happens when Apple Computer loses any court battle with Apple Records and is forced to either get out of the music business or give its music technology to Apple Records? I love Apple, but I hate their music distribution ideas and anything having to do with proprietary formats. Go FLAC, you'll never go back. Another good thing is that if you go with flac, the decode is happening on the sb2. With apple lossless, the decode is happening on the server. But, what if you have a very large music collection and use an iPod where you interchange tracks often? This would mean that for every new track you want on your ipod, you'll have to go to your flac library, decompress the file, import it into iTunes, tag it in iTunes, compress it to the format of choice and then place the file on your iPod. I have no problems with FLAC (and the fact that the SB2 natively supports FLAC has me drooling), but the ability to keep all my music in iTunes in a lossless format keeps me using Apple Lossless (even if I have sold my soul to the devil). - Chris ps - I know someone is going to bring up the fact that there are alternatives to the iPod, like the iRiver. However, I've found that the iRiver for all it can do is nowhere near as good of a portable music player. In addition, iTunes is a great program for cataloging your music collection. pss - Aren't you being a little over dramatic in your scenario above? I highly doubt Apple Lossless is just going to disappear one day in the blink of an eye with nothing left on the planet to support it. ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Apple lossless vs Flac
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 03/30/05 4:37 PM But, what if you have a very large music collection and use an iPod where you interchange tracks often? This would mean that for every new track you want on your ipod, you'll have to go to your flac library, decompress the file, import it into iTunes, tag it in iTunes, compress it to the format of choice and then place the file on your iPod. I transcode to mp3 in a mirrored type of directory as a nightly cron job. MP3 is good enough for portable music (for me) and it's the only format that all my music exists in. I have FLAC for CD rips, and WAV for tape and vinyl. Everything gets put to mp3 so I can listen on my Archos. I've been thinking about an ipod, but refuse to use iTunes to manage the songs on it. I have friends that have ipods and use ipodlinux and love it. I have no problems with FLAC (and the fact that theSB2 natively supports FLAC has me drooling), but the ability to keep all my music in iTunes in a lossless format keeps me using Apple Lossless (even if I have sold my soul to the devil). LOL...that's funny. My only fear of going the ipod route is that one of the reasons for going there is I have an Alpine head unit in my car, and having the ability to control my portable music player from the head unit where I have a remote for my other passengers to fight over would be really cool. - Chris ps - I know someone is going to bring up the fact that there are alternatives to the iPod, like the iRiver. However, I've found that the iRiver for all it can do is nowhere near as good of a portable music player. In addition, iTunes is a great program for cataloging your music collection. I totally agree. There's a reason Apple hires lots of industrial designers. Their hardware is the coolest and just about the most well-designed stuff in the industry. iTunes is ok for keeping track of music. I've been thinking about using it for my mp3 collection, but can't bring myself to do it. pss - Aren't you being a little over dramatic in your scenario above? I highly doubt Apple Lossless is just going to disappear one day in the blink of an eye with nothing left on the planet to support it. Am I? Apple has already lost one battle in the courts and promised to stay out of music. If it weren't for Michael's distractions lately, who knows? Maybe Apple vs. Apple will be the next great Groklaw debate. If there's no corporation backing iTunes or Apple Lossless, how long do you think the format would survive? I don't see too many open source projects for DRM out there... (stirring the DRM pot again...) Paul ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Apple lossless vs Flac
Chris Glushko wrote: But, what if you have a very large music collection and use an iPod where you interchange tracks often? This would mean that for every new track you want on your ipod, you'll have to go to your flac library, decompress the file, import it into iTunes, tag it in iTunes, compress it to the format of choice and then place the file on your iPod. Not really. There are easier ways if you are willing to jump outside of iTunes. A bit of script can drive command-line tools to convert FLAC to formats that the iPod can play. Tags need not be lost in conversion. And if you have the storage space, keep both FLAC and lossy versions. This is perhaps sub-optimal, but is not as bad as the process you've described. Also, isn't it a bit wasteful to use Apple Lossless encoding for iPod playback? Doesn't it result in decreased music storage ability, longer transfer times onto the iPod and higher rates of battery consumption? Can you hear the difference when playing back through the chip-based amplifier in the iPod, into portable headphones, in often noisy listening environments? Unfortunately, iPod and SB2 have different capabilities when it comes to lossless. iPod doesn't do FLAC at all, and SB2 doesn't do Apple Lossless natively. And any lossless format makes more sense for high fidelity playback and archival purposes than it does for use in portables. I don't mean to criticize your choices, but did want to illustrate that there are trade-offs with either method that are independent of the open-source/proprietary arguments. I'm facing the same issue myself and will probably go the double storage route until a portable player comes along the changes the equation. --rt ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Apple lossless vs Flac
Chris Glushko wrote: But, what if you have a very large music collection and use an iPod where you interchange tracks often? This would mean that for every new track you want on your ipod, you'll have to go to your flac library, decompress the file, import it into iTunes, tag it in iTunes, compress it to the format of choice and then place the file on your iPod. ...or write a script to convert flac to mp3 automatically: http://robinbowes.com/filemgmt/visit.php?lid=5 R. -- http://robinbowes.com ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Apple lossless vs Flac
On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 15:06:14 -0800 (PST), Chris Glushko [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I don't use Apple Lossless for the iPod. I keep all the files in Appple Lossless on iTunes. When I want to put something on the iPod, I just convert the files to AAC in iTunes, transfer them and then delete the AAC files from the computer. I keep all my music lossless flac and keep a second directory with lame encoded versions of that lossless (I just use --preset standard) aac is allegedly better but I don't think the iPod has the sound quality to really tell the difference between aac and mp3 at the same bitrate. I could of course be wrong. I don't know where you live, but in the U.S. hard drives are cheap enough that it isn't issue keeping both lossy and lossless. For uploading to the iPod - I don't use iTunes, I use gtkpod - it's not quite as well integrated as iTunes is, but it also doesn't care how many computers I have set to sync with it - I can use the music withing gtkpod on any number of PC's, which is nice because I can play the iPod playlists from the iPod through the better sound card of whatever computer I happen to be using - and Apple's BS of only allowing the iPod to connect to one computer for one user doesn't get in my way of me playing my legally obtained music. I don't know how close they are, but there is a sourceforge project for a flac plugin for QuickTime. There exists one for ogg, which does let you play ogg in iTunes - last time I used it (year ago or so) it had a tendency to skip a lot and iTunes didn't understant vorbis tags. But maybe the tag thing is resolved, and maybe the flac plugin has been released - it's worth looking at if you really do want to use iTunes for your music. -- http://mpeters.us/ ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Apple Lossless vs. FLAC
Todd Larason wrote: Another option would be to run a server which speaks iTunes' sharing protocol. I haven't paid much attention to this space since doing the initial work figuring out the protocol, so I'm not sure if any of the pre-packaged servers would do quite what you want. The perl module 'Net::DAAP::Server' might be a good place to start looking, or daapd[1]. [1] http://www.deleet.de/projekte/daap/daapd/index.html Thanks for the pointer. I'm trying to figure out, though, why we need yet *another* network file system protocol, this one just to share music. Is there some essential functionality in DAAP that I can't somehow provide over NFS, AFS, SMB or even http? Or is this just Apple up to its old tricks? Maybe I was wrong when I thought that with Mac OS X, Apple had finally seen the wisdom of building on open platforms. Phil ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Apple Lossless vs. FLAC
On 13 March 05, Phil Karn wrote: Start here: http://www.xiph.org/ogg/vorbis/doc/v-comment.html Thanks iTunes has a GROUP tag that seems to be designed for this exact purpose, but it's not in the Vorbis comment conventions, no software supports it, and it's important enough that I wanted something that would be displayed by existing software like the Slimserver. iTunes Group is ID3's TIT1, a title level above TIT2, the normal song title tag. -- Todd Larason | PGP key: http://www.molehill.org/~jtl/public.asc | UIN: 7442303 -- Ayn's vision is _Russian_ libertarianism, in the same sense that Leninism is Russian Marxism. -- Joshua W Burton ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Apple Lossless vs. FLAC
Todd Larason wrote: Can you point me to documentation for the Vorbis metadata? I've scanned vorbis.com and xiph.org, and I'm just not finding it. Start here: http://www.xiph.org/ogg/vorbis/doc/v-comment.html I decided on Vorbis for my meta data partly because I have a large collection of classical CDs, and whoever defined the MP3 ID tags obviously just wasn't thinking about classical music. The Vorbis comment conventions aren't complete, but they're a big improvement over MP3 tags, and more importantly they're free-format and extensible. E.g., when ripping piano and violin concertos I easily added SOLOIST tags even though no software currently pays attention to them. I figure they're not that important right now, and support for it can always be added later. The other convention I strongly recommend when tagging classical music is to make sure each TITLE tag is self contained. If a work spans several tracks, I'll include the name of the work in each TITLE comment. For example, if a CD contains Beethoven's 9th symphony in 4 tracks, then I'll use TITLE tags that look like this: TITLE=Symphony 9 - I. Allegro ma non troppo un poco maestoso TITLE=Symphony 9 - II.Scherzo, Molto vivace TITLE=Symphony 9 - III. Adagio molto e cantabile TITLE=Symphony 9 - IV. Presto, Allegro assai This is important because many classical CDs contain several unrelated symphonies or concertos, sometimes by multiple composers. You can't use the ALBUM comment for this purpose, because it really ought to be the same for every track on the same CD, even if it contains more than one work. iTunes has a GROUP tag that seems to be designed for this exact purpose, but it's not in the Vorbis comment conventions, no software supports it, and it's important enough that I wanted something that would be displayed by existing software like the Slimserver. Because there's already a Vorbis COMPOSER comment, there's no need to include the composer's name in the title tags. I use it to contain the composer's complete name, e.g., Ludwig van Beethoven. The ARTIST tag contains just the composer's last name, which I also use to name the actual directories. (I make exceptions for names like Bach and Strauss, where there's more than one composer with the same surname.) The name of the orchestra goes into the PERFORMER tag, the conductor into the CONDUCTOR tag, and so on. The existing Slimserver software seems to deal reasonably well with all this except for my nonstandard SOLOIST tags, which aren't all that urgent anyway. The iTunes practice isn't that simple. For mp3 files, for most things, the definitive metadata is stored in ID3 tags in the file; the information is cached in a binary file and reflected in an exported XML file. The definitive volume adjustment, equalizer, star rating, and start and stop time information is stored in the binrary file and relfected in the exported XML file. The part of a compilation field is confusing: as nearly as I can make out, it is initialized from the nonstandard TCMP ID3 tag, and when changed through iTunes the TCMP tag is updated; unlike all the other ID3 tags, though, changes made outside iTunes post-import are never reflected inside iTunes. Thanks for this description! I've looked at the XML files on occasion, and I've wondered which files iTunes reads and which it writes. I have noticed that I can delete the binary database file and force iTunes to rebuild it from the XML file. You can also blow away the database entirely and re-import it from an imported XML file. I've done this a few times after making manual edits to the XML file for various reasons. --Phil ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Apple Lossless vs. FLAC
Todd Larason wrote: The iTunes practice isn't that simple. Speaking of the iTunes database structure, do you happen to know of any utilities that can scan a music folder and build the iTunes XML structure from the tags in the music files (other than iTunes itself, that is)? The reason I ask is that I have an Ogg Vorbis plug-in for iTunes that plays just fine, but it doesn't read the Vorbis tags into the database when I add an Ogg Vorbis file to the library. I'm also thinking of writing a NFS shim that would make my FLAC archive appear to iTunes as if it was full of WAV files, and WAV files don't have any metadata at all for iTunes to import. Phil ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Apple Lossless vs. FLAC
Michael Peters wrote: There are issues in other areas - for example, some CD's will have more than one artist - U2 for example, the album Rattle and Hum. In that case I'd just use a different ARTIST tag for each track, just as for a compilation album like Greatest Hits of the '70s. Unlike the ALBUM tag, which really ought to be the same for every track on the same physical CD, there's no reason that the ARTIST tags all have to be the same. If a particular track is a joint effort of several artists, then just list them all in the ARTIST tag for that track. Both iTunes and the Slimdevices databases do a pretty good job of indexing all this stuff so you can find what you want, and that's what really matters. That leaves just the question of how to name the directory that contains the album directory; iTunes' use of Compilations is as good as any. The Vorbis COMPOSER and PERFORMER tags give you even more indexing flexibility, if you need it. I don't usually bother to set the COMPOSER tags on popular music, but some songs are *so* widely covered that it makes sense to do so. E.g., I must have a dozen different versions of Dave Mason's song Feelin' Alright by a half dozen different performers: Dave Mason, Grand Funk Railroad, Joe Cocker, Three Dog Night, Traffic, etc. Phil ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Apple Lossless vs. FLAC
Phillip Kerman wrote: I have a proof of concept thing I built in Flash that parses iTunes's XML. What do you need to extract exactly? I'm pretty sure it'd be easy to adapt this thing I have to output a string (in any form you want) to your clipboard so that you can paste it into another tool or text file. Or, do you just want to view the data with something other than iTunes? No, I want to build the iTunes database by extracting FLAC and Ogg Vorbis tags (they're the same format). iTunes itself does this automatically when importing MP3 and AAC files, but when I import Ogg Vorbis songs with the iTunes Ogg Vorbis plugin installed, the Vorbis comments are ignored. I have to enter them by hand. There's a Sourceforge project that's supposed to be working on a FLAC plug-in for Quicktime/iTunes, but it doesn't seem to work. So while I'm waiting, I thought I'd build a simple shim for NFS that would make my library of FLAC files on Linux look like a network filesystem full of WAV files to my desktop Mac. I can then import them into iTunes and play them from the server onto my Mac. However, there wouldn't and couldn't be any meta information in iTunes' database, because WAV files don't have meta tags. That means I'd have to add the meta info manually to the iTunes database, or preferably use a tool to extract the tags from the FLAC files and build an XML file that I could then import into iTunes. I actually like iTunes. Although it doesn't have native support for my preferred formats, it has one of the best user interfaces of any music jukebox program around. And it's pretty stable. So when I want to listen to music while I'm at my computer, I'd much rather use iTunes than SoftSqueeze. I'd prefer to limit my use of SlimServer to just my Squeezeboxes, at least until it becomes a lot more stable. Phil ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Apple Lossless vs. FLAC
On 11 March 05, Phil Karn wrote: That said, the numbers I've seen tend to indicate that FLAC achieves somewhat better compression ratios than Apple Lossless. Also, FLAC supports Vorbis-style metatags, which I consider vastly superior Can you point me to documentation for the Vorbis metadata? I've scanned vorbis.com and xiph.org, and I'm just not finding it. to either MP3 ID tags or the iTunes practice of keeping all the meta information in a separate massive XML file. The iTunes practice isn't that simple. For mp3 files, for most things, the definitive metadata is stored in ID3 tags in the file; the information is cached in a binary file and reflected in an exported XML file. The definitive volume adjustment, equalizer, star rating, and start and stop time information is stored in the binrary file and relfected in the exported XML file. The part of a compilation field is confusing: as nearly as I can make out, it is initialized from the nonstandard TCMP ID3 tag, and when changed through iTunes the TCMP tag is updated; unlike all the other ID3 tags, though, changes made outside iTunes post-import are never reflected inside iTunes. -- Todd Larason | Half a pound of tupenny rice, half a pound of treacle That's 3500238865/p | the way the melody goes, pop! goes the weasle Half a pound of UIN: 7559924 | heroin, half a pound of treacle That's the way the story goes, AIM: AngelBr | out comes the evil ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Apple Lossless vs. FLAC
Chris Glushko wrote: If you are an iPod user and you like using iTunes to manage your music, wouldn't Apple Lossless be the most logical choice for your primary archive? Well, it might be -- if you're willing to spend all that precious iPod disk space on a lossless format. If you insist on lossless even on your iPod, then Apple Lossless is your only choice. I understand the preference to Open Source, but aren't you just adding extra work for yourself for nothing more than to spite apple if you are an iTunes/iPod user? Well, for one thing I didn't buy an iPod. Even though I have several Macs and do use iTunes, I bought an iRiver 340 specifically to get Ogg support. If Apple were to support Ogg Vorbis on the iPod, I'd buy one in a heartbeat. That said, the numbers I've seen tend to indicate that FLAC achieves somewhat better compression ratios than Apple Lossless. Also, FLAC supports Vorbis-style metatags, which I consider vastly superior to either MP3 ID tags or the iTunes practice of keeping all the meta information in a separate massive XML file. I invest a lot of time getting the metainfo right, especially on classical music, so the right tag format matters. Phil ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
[slim] Apple Lossless vs. FLAC
--- Phil Karn [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I don't see much reason to ever use ALE, though it's certainly nice to now have the ability to decode it if necessary. and then it makes the most sense to keep your primary archive in FLAC and convert to AAC for the iPod as necessary. If you are an iPod user and you like using iTunes to manage your music, wouldn't Apple Lossless be the most logical choice for your primary archive? I understand the preference to Open Source, but aren't you just adding extra work for yourself for nothing more than to spite apple if you are an iTunes/iPod user? ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Apple Lossless vs. FLAC
Yes - currently there is not a working flac plugin for QuickTime (which is needed to manage flac in iTunes) What I do is rip to flac, transcode via a shell script from flac to mp3 (lame 192VBR), and use mp3 on my iPod. iTunes doesn't know about my flac files, but it doesn't need to either. aac might give me better quality at same bitrate, but I'm not convinced - and even with faad, aac isn't as well supported generally - IE I can play mp3 CD's in numerous cars, can't play aac CD's ... so for me, flac + mp3 is the best combo for archiving/mobile ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
