FLAC or WMA lossless?

FLAC is generally better supported beyond Windows Media Player.

For that reason, unless you are wanting to use WMP as your player, I would go for FLAC on a PC.

quote:

Originally posted by Fraser Hadden:
Any preferences out there?

Basically, it depends on what you need and how you plan to use your music files. Flac has the advantage of supporting tags, where Wave files are just, well, files with a name and nothing else. Using Wave files in a media player will result in displaying a long list of files with no further info regarding the composer, year, genre and so on. So much for sorting your music then. From a quality point of view, both should sound absolutely equally as not a single bit of information is lost when storing (and loading) the Flac file. Both formats are very well handled in a multidude of systems, too, not only in Windows. Still, Wave is a straightforward way of storing audio: bit-per-bit copy of your CDs on the hard drive, end of the story. No need to compress when storing, no need to rebuild when listening. I like this too Hope that helps.

{OdS},

Er...

In the nicest way, it doesn't help. I didn't ask about Wave, I asked about WMA lossless vs FLAC.

Eloise,

Thanks for your input.

Thus far: FLAC 1 WMA Lossless 0

Fraser

Three big payoffs with FLAC are a) it is lossless, b) tracks can be tagged however you want, c) you can save a lot of storage space. With products like dbpoweramp FLAC files can be converted (or ripped simultaneously) to other formats in any case, so you are not committed. Saving storage space is arguably not that big a deal as mass storage is so cheap, but it still costs money that could otherwise be spent on music. There is quite a good discussion about rippping strategies on the computeraudiophile website.

FLAC, no hesitation at all if you are a PC user.

wma doesnt hold meta data.

I don't use them anymore, but I believe WMA and WMA lossless do support metadata.

However, I would agree with Eloise's recommendation of FLAC. Furthermore, there are more possibilities for playing FLAC on a Mac (should that be relevant now or in the future) with Play, Songbird and even Fluke/i-tunes coming to mind. I could be out of date, but I believe the only current route for WMA on a Mac is Flip4Mac with Quick Time.

quote:

Originally posted by Fraser Hadden:
{OdS},

Er...

In the nicest way, it doesn't help. I didn't ask about Wave, I asked about WMA lossless vs FLAC.
Thus far: FLAC 1 WMA Lossless 0

Fraser: WMA files are actually Wave files renamed in Windows Media Audio files. They are plain Wave files, though and you can play them on any platform that can play back Wave files.

quote:

Originally posted by {OdS}:

quote:

Originally posted by Fraser Hadden:
{OdS},

Er...

In the nicest way, it doesn't help. I didn't ask about Wave, I asked about WMA lossless vs FLAC.
Thus far: FLAC 1 WMA Lossless 0

Fraser: WMA files are actually Wave files renamed in Windows Media Audio files. They are plain Wave files, though and you can play them on any platform that can play back Wave files.

{OdS} ... I don't think you're right there ... to Quote from Wikipedia (not always the most accurate I know ...

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Windows Media Audio 9 Lossless is a lossless audio codec by Microsoft, released in early 2003.
It compresses an audio CD to a range of 206 to 411MB, at bit rates of 470 to 940 kbit/s. The result is a bit-for-bit duplicate of the original audio file; in other words, the audio quality on the CD will be the same as the file when played back. WMA Lossless uses the same .WMA file extension as other Windows Media Audio formats. It supports 6 discrete channels and up to 24-bit/96kHz lossless audio.

Which is pretty much was I understood too...

Eloise

So much for me then! Flac should definitely be the default choice then, since it does what WMA does but not only in Windows systems.

Carefull here as neither WMP nor Itunes plays FLAC without help. Mac has limited aftermarket player support so I would just use ALAC for APPLE computing. It's an interesting situation as the most commonly used media players don't support the audio geeks favorite Lossless format. I know that you can get FLAC playback in WMP with a DCBassSouce download and there may be an app somewhere for Itunes. If you're a PC user, there's plaenty of FLAC friendly players out there. Flac is the least universal because most computer owners don't have an installed program to play it. It is however the least proprietary and those that care, can find a way to use it.

Thanks to all contributors.

FLAC it is then!

Fraser