Wavpack

Originally Posted by pmonk66

please consider that I just starting using wavpack for the first time this Saturday but when using the command wavpack using options xhmd, is it a very slow process???

Try leaving out the x and just using -hmd.

[pmonk]

So version 3.97 is the only version that works fully with shntool.

Originally Posted by pmonk66

So version 3.97 is the only version that works fully with shntool.

Right, but it's now obsolete.

[wazoo2u]

OK, so I haven't really researched this, but please enlighten me. Why exactly do I want to adopt ANOTHER lossless compression format when FLAC seems to be doing a very nice job, hard drives are cheaper than dirt, and blu-ray DVD's are comin down the pike ??? Do I really want to transcode 7,000 shows ??

Seriously... I don't get it.

Originally Posted by wazoo2u

OK, so I haven't really researched this, but please enlighten me. Why exactly do I want to adopt ANOTHER lossless compression format when FLAC seems to be doing a very nice job, hard drives are cheaper than dirt, and blu-ray DVD's are comin down the pike ??? Do I really want to transcode 7,000 shows ??

Seriously... I don't get it.

Who said anything about transcoding? No one is suggesting you should transcode all your shows just because new formats keep coming out. I have hundreds of SHN files archived. I sure as hell don't plan to transcode them all just because of wavpack.

I think you are really missing the point. This site is dedicated to the distribution of live music via bittorrent. If there exists a format that's every bit as easy to use as FLAC and just as robust, but offers even better compression, why shouldn't we be allowed to use it here? If a seeder were to torrent some wavpack files here I can't for the life of me see why you would object to that because harddrives are so cheap, blu-rays are coming, and you have 7,000 shows already. What's that got to do with anything? This is a total red herring.

Btw, I've got a ton of dirt I have no use for but I sure could use another harddrive. Where do you get them for less than dirt? I'd love to know.

[wazoo2u]

Originally Posted by uhclem

Who said anything about transcoding? No one is suggesting you should transcode all your shows just because new formats keep coming out. I have hundreds of SHN files archived. I sure as hell don't plan to transcode them all just because of wavpack.

I think you are really missing the point. This site is dedicated to the distribution of live music via bittorrent. If there exists a format that's every bit as easy to use as FLAC and just as robust, but offers even better compression, why shouldn't we be allowed to use it here? If a seeder were to torrent some wavpack files here I can't for the life of me see why you would object to that because harddrives are so cheap, blu-rays are coming, and you have 7,000 shows already. What's that got to do with anything? This is a total red herring.

Btw, I've got a ton of dirt I have no use for but I sure could use another harddrive. Where do you get them for less than dirt? I'd love to know.

Well, I think you're taking my humor a bit too seriously, and I don't agree about the herring (although I do enjoy it once in a while). My point is that I don't see that Wavpack offers such significant space savings and benefits that it needs to be positioned to supercede FLAC as the compression flavor of the year. I've already read several comments speculating about the future compatibility of current file formats with future OS'es. Wouldn't it be wise for the trading community to REALLY establish a preference that's a reasonable choice and stick with it ? I think it would help to encourage development and insure future compatibility. Is Wavepack easier to code and work with ? Look at how hard it has been to get hardware FLAC support. ONE vendor (RIO) actually with product, and another (Neuros) screwing around with it for a year ? It's obvious to me that they just don't see a big market, and it's to everyone's advantage to concentrate interest on ONE compression format. FLAC seems to be pretty popular, so what's the advantage of something else that doesn't offer significant gain replacing it ?

I don't see storage size as a significant issue. I paid $450 for a 120 MEGABYTE hard drive 10 years ago, and just bought a 200 GIGABYTE drive for $100. DVD archive media costs have dropped to almost the same price as TY CD's. Will Wavepack REALLY save me a lot of money on archive storage ?

My point about transcoding (storage formats) was meant to illustrate the tremendous amount of work and time that the average collector needs to devote, just to archive considerations. I should've used the term CONVERT, cause it's obvious that you got upset at the thought of TRANSCODE . Of course I wouldn't convert everything to Wavpack. I'd couldn't, and would need to hire a staff, just to do the job. I already have a couple of hundred DAT's full of SHN's that I need to transfer to optical.

I've dealt with this issue many times before in the TV biz, where formats and hardware change significantly over time. Archiving and market compatibility are 2 of the most significant considerations that are discussed, and these hardware/format changes are NEVER taken lightly because they have marketwide impact. I think we need to be just as conservative in promoting changes to this hobby. Is a format change what's really NEEDED ?, or maybe the efficiency of the TRANSFER method (BT) could be improved. What about bandwidth, and the changes we'll see in upstream capacity in the near future ? All of these factors impact our judgement.

I respect your knowledge and opinion, but someone needs to paint a picture of Wavepack that illustrates SIGNIFICANT gains over FLAC, in order to convince me that it would be a benefit to add it to the mix.

[pmonk]

If you read this thread several posters already gave testimonials that wavpack is a great program.

I have no plans on using wavpack but at least I spent the time understanding it and how to use it without the use of a frontend program!

Who knows, by this time next year flac can be obsolete???

[ssamadhi97]

Originally Posted by wazoo2u

Why exactly do I want to adopt ANOTHER lossless compression format when FLAC seems to be doing a very nice job, hard drives are cheaper than dirt, and blu-ray DVD's are comin down the pike ???

...why not?

It's just a file format - you can convert back and forth between all lossless formats at will without losing anything anyway.


btw one significant difference is that WavPack preserves nonstandard RIFF chunks, as opposed to FLAC which just discards them and slaps a canonical wav header on decoded files. Not that this should matter for people who are into live music trading, but for people who actually make use of those chunks it's a selling argument (think radio stations). iirc. [that's just random info. I know it's not actually relevant for the decision on whether to allow WavPack here or not]

[wazoo2u]

Originally Posted by ssamadhi97

...why not?

It's just a file format - you can convert back and forth between all lossless formats at will without losing anything anyway.


btw one significant difference is that WavPack preserves nonstandard RIFF chunks, as opposed to FLAC which just discards them and slaps a canonical wav header on decoded files. Not that this should matter for people who are into live music trading, but for people who actually make use of those chunks it's a selling argument (think radio stations). iirc. [that's just random info. I know it's not actually relevant for the decision on whether to allow WavPack here or not]

I understand that it's just a file format, but it means that if I'm using FLAC as a portable device format, I'll be converting everything to FLAC, and then probably tossing the original Wavpack files, hardly a good idea when trying to preserve lineage.

I don't care if it's FLAC or Wavpack when I'm firing up Foobar. If Wavpack saves me 10% compression space, great, but it's not "the killer app" in the scheme of things.

I'm concerned with keeping FLAC in the forefront of potential portable music formats because at the very least, some development work has been done already. I think it would be in the best interests of most lossless collectors to have a really good portable device on the market, and so far, it seems that FLAC offers the most promising results (albeit slight) in achieving that goal. MP3 is dwarfing lossless usage. It seems like it's going to be difficult to develop even a niche market device. Why not encourage development by sticking with FLAC for a while and see if developers are encouraged to build hardware devices, and for that matter, the future development of FLAC to make it better ?

Your notes on radio station and iirc applications are duly noted, and that's great... for them. Are those features a benefit to lossless collectors, not according to you, and I would agree.

It dowsn't seem to me that FLAC has achieved mainstream popularity among collectors for more than 2 years or so, and it wouldn't hurt if it could live a longer life.

So again my question, and speaking from a standpoint of ENCOURAGING DEVELOPMENT, does it look to anyone else that introducing the popular use of Wavpack compressed files is taking "one step forward, two steps back" ?

see here:

http://www.thetradersden.org/forums/...ead.php?t=6262


i think FLAC is a fine format. but honestly, i've never gotten errors as bountiful with SHN/MKW (and never any error encoding/decoding with WavPack) as i have with FLAC. for whatever reason, i seem to get errors A LOT more frequently with FLACs than with any program... and mind you, it isn't a huge percentage of the time. but then again, i never have had any encoding/decoding errors with WavPack (in .WV or .EXE formats), and only very few errors with MKW - all of which were attributable to the file(s) sent not passing the MD5 checksum for the original sender either.

again, FLAC is a fine format and all. but i haven't had the same issues with the other compression formats i use. and, i could not care any less about any hardware players (portable or otherwise) that "can play FLAC files" because that's not a function i'd use. (FLAC files comprise the smallest amount of stored lossless audio data that i have in my collection. and i'm not about to convert the other shows to FLAC format.) as i've done since i started acquiring lossless Shorten files - if i want to listen on my computer, i can fire up WinAmp; if i want to listen in my stereo system or car, i simply convert and burn the files to CDR/DVDR. when i transfer a master or DAT clone to my hard drive, i compress it as an SFX .EXE file, so on any Windows platform computer, i know i can decompress the show and burn an audio copy and i don't have to have any special software installed on said computer.

[wazoo2u]

One problem that I can forsee would be the wholesale conversion of filesets already in the trading pool from FLAC to Wavepack. Yes, being able to distribute tracks as SFX.EXE's is very cool, but I'd be worried about the introduction of errors as people migrated existing files.

I dunno.. I think there's a lot of things to consider. I certainly wouldn't personally shun using a good format that I could decode to WAV, but the community needs to discuss these issues.

What kind of discussion has there been among the Hydrogen and etree folks ?

[diggrd]

Originally Posted by wazoo2u

... I think it would be in the best interests of most lossless collectors to have a really good portable device on the market, and so far, it seems that FLAC offers the most promising results (albeit slight) in achieving that goal. MP3 is dwarfing lossless usage. It seems like it's going to be difficult to develop even a niche market device. Why not encourage development by sticking with FLAC for a while and see if developers are encouraged to build hardware devices, and for that matter, the future development of FLAC to make it better ?

One reason for this dwarfage is file size, maybe a lossless format with the most compression is the key to success.

[Five]

Like Monkey's Audio?

[ssamadhi97]

Originally Posted by h_vargas

i think FLAC is a fine format. but honestly, i've never gotten errors as bountiful with SHN/MKW (and never any error encoding/decoding with WavPack) as i have with FLAC. for whatever reason, i seem to get errors A LOT more frequently with FLACs than with any program... and mind you, it isn't a huge percentage of the time. but then again, i never have had any encoding/decoding errors with WavPack (in .WV or .EXE formats), and only very few errors with MKW - all of which were attributable to the file(s) sent not passing the MD5 checksum for the original sender either.

You prefer programs that don't tell you about errors and potential issues? :P

It's really the same for all formats: if the file a program is working on is broken, problems are to be expected.

[Five]

I've also had the most errors with FLAC but I think that has something to do with the fact that 98% of all shows I get these days is FLAC format. I'm not sure that we can jump to the conclusion that FLAC is any less robust than any other format. Can we?