thebreakfast.info
Breakfast Babble => Score! => What The Funk => Topic started by: davepeck on September 03, 2003, 12:46:38 pm
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Originally posted by crimsonknuckles
i never tried flac. alot of my pb shows have digital farts or weird sounds(static). do other people have these problems? maybe because i have to transfer shn to wave?
Everyone has to go from shn > wav to burn audio discs, thats the only way to do it. do you hear static when you listen to the files on the computer, or just on audio discs that you burn? either you have just had bad luck and are picking shows with errors or you are doing something stupid thats causing bad burns.
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by the way i hate being called a newbie. it,s been three years of dedication!!!!
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i never tried flac. alot of my pb shows have digital farts or weird sounds(static). do other people have these problems? maybe because i have to transfer shn to wave?
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Thanks to all for helping to bring me up to speed on the flac topic, it is fairly new to me, and I do not know anyone other than you guys who are using it....as a fellow addict with a fire hazard masqerading as a CD collection, a disc here and a disc there less than what I had before really adds up, not only in space, but $$$. Anybody out there using the Mac version? You all are making flac sound so good that I want to upgrade computers now and start flac, not to mention the fact that BT is also available for OSX. This gets better all the time!! Kev
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Originally posted by davepeck
has there been an explorer shell implementation of flac yet? one thing i love about shn (mkw) is the fact that you can do anything you need with shn/wav just by right-clicking on the file in explorer...
If there is it is on this page http://flac.sourceforge.net/download.html
I dont know about the other programs listed but I think the dBpowerAMP Music Converter adds right clicking for various formats. I had it before i last reformatted my hard drive. I think i uninstalled it because you need the Power Pack for it to support SHN too, but its shareware so you have to pay for it to get the full version.
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Originally posted by kindm\'s
I made the switch to flac and have not looked back.
mike, you should head over to the GROUP FREESTYLE FLOW thread with that one. :D
in all seriousness, you\'ve all mentioned some very good points. mike hit the nail right on the head with the advantages of embedded signature files, and the fact that they\'re automatically seekable.. i\'ve downloaded a LOT of shows in shn lately that haven\'t been seekable, and that\'s definitely annoying..
has there been an explorer shell implementation of flac yet? one thing i love about shn (mkw) is the fact that you can do anything you need with shn/wav just by right-clicking on the file in explorer...
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I made the switch to flac and have not looked back. In my experience I find the encoding of the flac takes a little bit longer than SHN when I am on the highest compression schemes. I like it for several reasons. It is much harder for people to **** up the MD5 files because they are embedded in the file. They can be played back in winamp and scrolled through without adding any additional files (.skt that needs to be in SHN) AND most importantly flac supports 24/XX wav files. I record every PB show I go to in at least 24/48. I don\'t trade them simply because no one has asked me for them. Most of us tapers / Audiophiles will eventually have a soundcard that supports 24/XXX playback. flac allows me to archive not only the CD quality but also the original 24 Bit file (although the compression is minimal at best).
I vote FLAC. Also with the amount of Bit Torrent trading that goes on here it just speeds things up. I am only seeding in flac. If people want to encode the original flac files to shn then fine but I will only be using flac until something better comes along.
There are 2 (at the very least) active laptop tapers in this community so the higher Bit rate support must be taken in to consideration in my opinion.
Smaller files size = easier Archiving (in digital relm), quicker distribution of files (BT) and possible less physical CD-r\'s than SHN.
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Originally posted by Captain Video
Just out of curiousity, how hard is it to go from flac to shn and vice versa?
It is no harder to encode FLACs than it is to encode SHNs, so that is not even an issue.
Originally posted by Captain Video
It seems that more people are doing shn right now, so at leadt for the time being it makes sense to use it as that will get better distribution on the shows.
I think anyone who uses SHN is computer literate enough to make the switch. (Its not really even a switch unless you are a taper. If you trade often you will be dealing with both formats from now on) Anyone who wants the show will not care if it is in FLAC or SHN just as long as they get it. Pretty much everyone who trades online must have come into contact with FLACs at one point or another. About half of the dead shows i have downloaded from this summer were FLAC and LivePhish switched to FLAC. FLAC is already very popular, its not like APE was. I am sure there are some people who are ignorant and dont download a great show only because its in FLAC instead of SHN, but there are also people who say "wow this show is in FLAC. I am going to download this one first," so that pretty much balances everything out as far as distribution goes.
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Originally posted by Captain Video
In reference to doing both, I was thinking more of distribution, not archiving. Chris could do flac for those who want it in that format and the shns that you guys have been making would work for the rest.
Its kind of dumb to have the same show in SHN and FLAC. And Matt or Dave could just as easily encode FLACs as i could.
I was just on the SHNapster hub seaching for random 2003 stuff like the dead, phish, widespread panic, bonnaroo 2003, ect and about 25-30% of the files that came up were FLAC. WSP was actually mostly ass FLAC. Thats not bad considering that SHN has been the only format used for trading shows online for about 4 or 5 years until recently. If even more people switched over then everyone eventually would.
There are no aspects that make SHN better than FLAC, but there are several that make FLAC better than SHN. Its maily the smaller size that i like and being able to fit some shows that would fit on 2 shn discs on one flac disc. That is very important when your collection of live music is practically a fire hazard. It is also very convienient with the plug in for Nero, so i can burn an audio cd from flac files without needing to decompress them to wav first. That comes in handy when i have 40 gigs of shows that are mostly flacs that are not yet burned. Its saves many hours and makes it so i can burn about 20 gigs or more in one sitting. That only happened twice, but i know i would not get as backed up as i have in the past with my SHNs since i always archived them on data discs and then burned audio as well.
The Kenwood Music Keg supports FLAC, so you can listen to FLACs and all the popular lossy formats like mp3, wma, and ogg vorbis in the car. The new RIO Karma mp3 player now supports FLAC and Ogg Vorbis formats along with mp3 and any other formats that might have been supported in previous players. Before Rio came out with their original mp3 players no one even listened to mp3s in any other way than on the computer. Now portable mp3 players have replaced portable cassette players, and all of the new portable cd players support mp3 CD-Rs except for the cheap store brand ones you can find in stores like wal-mart.
its only a matter of time before more companies start supporting flac and we will only have to burn flac discs instead of both flac and audio. that means we will use about 60% less CD-Rs, so buying a CD player that supports FLAC will pay for itself if you do a lot of trading.
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Just out of curiousity, how hard is it to go from flac to shn and vice versa?
It seems that more people are doing shn right now, so at leat for the time being it makes sense to use it as that will get better distribution on the shows.
In reference to doing both, I was thinking more of distribution, not archiving. Chris could do flac for those who want it in that format and the shns that you guys have been making would work for the rest. You are absolutely correct that it makes no sense to archive in both.
I don\'t see any simple answers, there are strong cases for both.
I think I personally would still favour shn, but who can say what will happen when I give flac a try? On that train of thought, how long will it be before we are trying to decide whether or not to go with flac or the next thing that comes down the pike?
"Curiouser and curiouser" said Alice.
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kev - if by \'doing both\' you mean keeping all shows in shn and flac, no thanks.. doesn\'t seem like there\'d be any point in that, other than taking more time...
i\'ve been liking what i\'ve seen from flac so far. with nero 6 and the flac plugin, i\'m burning flac as audio in the same time it takes to burn wav > audio... and for some reason, i can\'t get the shn plugin to work with nero 6... i had the shn plugin going on 5.5.9.17, but the process took a long time...
it also doesn\'t help that MKW runs really slow on my new pc.. wayne, maybe you could possibly shed some light on this.. i set the program compatability mode to win98, then win2k (due to errors running mkw in XP), and the program takes much longer to do anything on my new p4/800fsb/2.6ghz/1.25gb than it does on my p4/1.5/1gb.... :confused:
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Just out of curiousity, what would be the ramifications of doing both SHN and FLAC? Chris seems to have a great handle on the FLAC end of things, and the SHN format is well covered by the majority of the group. It seems to me that before SHN is replaced, it should be a fairly certain thing that FLAC will actually be the medium that does so. In the meantime, we would have both bases well covered. I personally am not doing FLAC because it is only available for Mac OSX and I am currently running 9.2 with plans to upgrade in the not-too-distant future. I can\'t honestly comment on using FLAC, but it certainly seems to be more than a passing fad...:)
I vote for definitely keeping SHN, but planning for FLAC.
Kev
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Food for thought:
Everything that can be invented, has been invented.
---Charles H. Duell
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FLAC
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matt I don\'t think shn will ever be a "bad decision" but there WILL be something to come along better than both and probably something to convert shn/flac to this new mega format...gotta love technology!!!
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The main prob is what wstielau pointed out about the plugin deficiency(sp.) I don\'t find much difference between quality...Go with what you are good with...Either or don\'t matter as of yet!!!
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SHN is in...this is a simple choice. I agree with the points made in the previous post. Makes sense to keep what works.
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I say we stay shn. Here\'s why:
1. Most people are familiar with shn and how to decode and check md5s. For some, a new format creates confusion.
2. The entire pb database is in shn format. The shn format works for us.
3. The difference in compression ratio or time saved on encoding and decoding is negligible (if at all) and does not warrant a change in format.
4. Unless there is a transition to 24bit 48/96 in consumer audio players i can\'t see a need for flac. 16/44.1 for many of us is here to stay. (ie. I still use my first cd player, bought in 1989.)
In other words, if it ain\'t broke don\'t fix it.
My only question is, sometime in the future, will there be a reason that we regret not having made the change-over from SHN to FLAC?
Matt Vallo
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Originally posted by wstielau
"The only people who dont like it are the people who rarely trade and people who barely understood why SHN was even used."
Actually I trade quite frequently, and I\'m probably one of the more knowledgable people with shn. I invented seekable Shorten. I did the V3.1 command line (shortn32.exe) program that some folks mucked up (IMO) by using CygWin runtimes for the next version, and I wrote both the WinAmp2 and WinAmp3 players (ShnAmp) .
And I still prefer shn over flac. Another problem with it is, at least last time I checked, was lack of a WinAmp3 plugin.
Well i can understand why you would not want to stop using SHN if you spent so much time working with it. And who even uses winamp 3? Its so slow. i have winamp 2 on all my computers because it is much faster and never crashes.
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"The only people who dont like it are the people who rarely trade and people who barely understood why SHN was even used."
Actually I trade quite frequently, and I\'m probably one of the more knowledgable people with shn. I invented seekable Shorten. I did the V3.1 command line (shortn32.exe) program that some folks mucked up (IMO) by using CygWin runtimes for the next version, and I wrote both the WinAmp2 and WinAmp3 players (ShnAmp) .
And I still prefer shn over flac. Another problem with it is, at least last time I checked, was lack of a WinAmp3 plugin.
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I archive every SHN or FLAC show i get on CD-ROMs and there were many times when a show will come to about 720 mb in SHN if its one long set, but it would probably only be about 680mb in FLAC. So it will fit on one disc in FLAC, but two in SHN. You can set the level of compression you want for FLAC, so you can choose to use more or less compression if fitting the show on one disc is an issue. its also cool if you are on dialup because a large download will be done about a day sooner if its in FLAC.
I have tested FLAC on a p4 1.4 ghz with 256mb ram and a p4 2.7 ghz with 512 mb ram and encoding/decoding time is about the same as SHN when you set the FLAC compression level in the middle. Verifying does take a little longer, but its not a big deal. Everything else is about the same speed.
When i would trade shows that were in ape and i had to make audio copies it sucked because it took over a half hour to extract those shows to WAV and i think thats the reason everyone hated it. I wasnt going to encode any of my PB shows in FLAC because i thought people would have trouble with it, but after live phish switched to FLAC i figured that some people would know how to use it by now and it probably would be a problem. So everything i record will be encoded in FLAC from now on.
I have been using the FLAC plugin with nero, so i can burn FLAC files as audio without decompressing to WAV first. I have a 48x CD burner and it takes twice as long to burn a FLAC show in audio as it does for WAV, but in the long run it does save time overall. I know SHN plugins exist, but i have never used them, although i have heard it takes 30 minutes to burn an 80 minute audio disc using the SHN plugin with a 32x CD burner, so that would make it pointless.
Everything should be in FLAC from this point on. it is easier to use and everything you need comes with the FLAC installer including the plugins for winamp and nero. FLAC is already widespread unlike ape was so a lot of people are familiar with it and prefer it. The only people who dont like it are the people who rarely trade and people who barely understood why SHN was even used.
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I don\'t know much about this stuff, but let\'s stick with what has worked well in the past: SHN
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Personally, I prefer shn. In my experience, the flac codec is actually substantially slower than the shn code since the compression/decompression algorithms are more complex. At least the last version I tried was. The verification process is also slower. Since the flac md5 hash (fingerprint) is based on the audio data rather than the compressed data, the audio data must be decoded in order to properly perform the validation.
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hello all,
wondering what peoples\' thoughts were on the SHN vs. FLAC debate, and ultimately, how do you want future PB shows distributed.
SHN has been around for a long time, and a lot of people are used to it. it\'s easy to use, and offers good lossless compression of audio files. however, there\'s not much else left for SHN. it\'s not open-source, hasn\'t been updated in forever, the best front end for SHN (mkw) never left Beta, as the author of the program is/was very sick (he might have passed, i don\'t know).
FLAC hit the scene not too long ago, and has been embraced by many. a lot of people are ditching SHN for FLAC, as it offers (slightly) better, faster compression, and is open source. just as easy to use as SHN when using the FLAC front end. FLAC seems to be the way of the future in lossless audio compression.
the question is, should we (matt, chris, and i) embrace this format as the way to archive and distribute all future PB shows? i know that chris has already dabbled in FLAC a little bit.. i have as well, but not for PB shows (yet)...
the only thing that leaves me with some doubts is the ape incident... monkey\'s audio is a great tool, but never really caught on, and no one really uses it anymore.. FLAC, on the other hand, already seems to be much more widespread than APE ever was...
your thoughts??