All i want is a serious answer to this question before anyone starts slagging me off for asking it and saying, 'not another flac vs mp3....'
I appreciate that people don't want recordings converting from flac to mp3, but apart from playing the concerts on your computer, is there any other way for a flac concert to be played elsewhere?
I, like a lot of people, play music in my car.
Listening to a Queen concert sure passes the time when you are stuck in a traffic jam on the M62 or M6 motorway. The only option i have to do this, as far as i can see, is to convert a flac concert to mp3.
Any suggestions?
I am afraid you are somewhat missing the point that is being made here.
- MP3 (or lossy of choice) is OK for personal listening;
- FLAC (or lossless) should be THE ONLY ACCEPTED for trading;
which means:
- no-one will ever complain if you turn flac into mp3 for listening to it on your audio system of choice;
- serious traders will complain if you turn flac into mp3 for trade, because lossy compression unrecoverably discards part of the information content of the recording.
- you will be rightly labelled a fraud if you trade "fake" FLAC sourced from lossy (= the back-conversion can not restore the information that was discarded in the first place);
- both the latter result in "polluting the trading pool" with material of inferior quality, that someone unscrupolous might later trade as superior to their own advantage.
Of course it's all a different story for:
- recordings that do no exist originally in lossless (because of the recording device or procedure that was used);
- possibly, people who can not manage large size files because of their equipment limitations (a minority I hope);
but the collective goal should be:
- circulate the material always in the best quality available (preserving the lineage information);
- keep inferior versions of the material to yourself if possible, clearly mark them as inferior if you pass them on.
I can't see why anyone should have a problem with that.
I can't see why not to give the guy answer which he's looking for instead of lection.
Yes, it's possible. Some mp3-players have support for FLAC, like BBK OPPO Blast, Cowon iAudio 7 etc.
Thanks for the info.
As concerts from the 70's and 80's would have been recorded onto tape, are FLAC files the best way to save the file, or are there even better formats than FLAC?
Serry... wrote: I can't see why not to give the guy answer which he's looking for instead of lection.
Yes, it's possible. Some mp3-players have support for FLAC, like BBK OPPO Blast, Cowon iAudio 7 etc.
My apologies, Serry - I did not know that at all.
Unfortunately, I am not very up-to-date with technology in general.
So, the only suggestion I could give was "convert to MP3 but keep it for yourself", and I tried to explain why.
Thank you very much for giving a more useful answer.
As for the car audio: there's Russian device called 'Ural ConceRt CDD', that supports FLAC and PCM.
I guess you don't speak Russian, but you'll see those magic four English letters in the list of the supported files: link
gnomo, that's okay, you've made it in the polite way, but if I'd weren't in another brutal fight about Paul Rodgers in Serious forum, I'd come here to fight for my mp3 rights, which is something that Andy didn't want to happen :)
Cheers, Serry - I do not want to cause fights, either.
I forgot that flac/mp3 discussions can get very heated sometimes - I should have been more careful!
:-)
Guys, both your comments are very useful. I am afraid my only knoweldge of the Russian language is from the film The Hunt For The Red October with Sean Connnery as Capt Ramius!
THE solution is to download db power amp (or another converter, but this one is great) and you will be able to convert basically anything to anything.
Including FLAC to WAV. Just right click on the item and chose 'convert to' and then click whatever you wish.
Convert FLAC to WAV and you can make a normal audio cd that can be played anywhere.
andyhwood485 wrote: As concerts from the 70's and 80's would have been recorded onto tape, are FLAC files the best way to save the file, or are there even better formats than FLAC?
For this purpose, I'd say no. FLAC is equivalent to WAV in every way, except that the file is smaller. It's like a WinZip file, in the sense that you can convert back and forth a million times and the quality won't change.
Of course anyone is welcome to do what they want with files for their own use. It's only a problem when people start spreading these compressed versions of what used to be clean files.
Hope this helps.
