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Try FLAC instead of mp3 music files

By Ian Waugh

If you rip CDs to your hard disk or create sound files, you may use the mp3 file format. It’s undoubtedly the most common file format around.

You probably know that there are several other formats - all with their pros and cons. The biggest disadvantage is that not all players support all the formats so if you want the widest audience, most people play it safe and stick to mp3s.

However, if you’re just creating or ripping music for your own use, you can use whatever format your devices can play.

The biggest disadvantage of mp3 is that it’s a ‘lossy’ format which means that it throws out data which it reckons your ears won’t be able to hear. It’s generally fine for mp3 players but if you want to archive your CD collection, for example, or play music on a quality hi fi system, you probably want to preserve as much of that CD quality as you can.

FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) is a good option.

A ‘natural audio’ Wave (.wav) file contains all the data of the original – but it’s large. Instead of storing the actual sound data, FLAC simply stores information that ‘describes’ the sound to the playback system, allowing it to recreate the sound.

As an example, a CD consisting of a just a single note would still rip to .wav format as a full CD’s worth of audio. However, the FLAC format would store the same information in a far smaller file.

So if you want to preserve the quality of your audio, you may want to consider switching to FLAC. You may also want to make sure that any new hardware you buy such as an mp3 player, can play FLAC files, too. Most can but do check.

External Links

http://flac.sourceforge.net/

Contributed by iantrader on March 17, 2009, at 5:22 PM UTC.

PLEASE VISIT THE CONTRIBUTOR'S WEBSITE
Making Music
Hi tech computer music software & hardware
www.making-music.com

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