the best loseless format?

[bamsan]

Just a couple of questions. What is the best loseless format available? Where can I find comparison about those loseless format?

[kagekonjou]

The best one is Ogg Vorbis, but a few problems surround it. The biggest one is it's relatively unsupported on most major MP3 players, and if I remember correctly, the exact same song in the same bitrate is larger in Ogg Vorbis than it is in MP3 (am I wrong on this?).

Keep in mind, NO format is truly lossless (unless you use WAV). There is always some loss of quality, especially as your bitrate decreases. The actual question should be which format sounds the best and has the least loss of quality at lower bitrates and file sizes. To that question, I'm just going to stick with MP3.

[gaekwad2]

@kagekonjou: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lossless_compression

@bamsan:
http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Lossless_comparison
(and http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=TAK (not listed in the page above because it's still in development))
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showforum=69

[Benski]

Originally posted by bamsan
Just a couple of questions. What is the best loseless format available? Where can I find comparison about those loseless format?

http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Lossless_comparison

I would recommend using FLAC unless you have a specific need to use something else. It might not be the best in every category, but it's likely to "win" the lossless format wars due to wide support and easy implementation.

[Rocker]

i like monkeys audio, but its pretty much unsupported and doesn't compress that much more than flac.

so flac is the way to go. (and its more or less an ogg format hint at kagekonjou)

alac and wma lossless are both rubbish.

[RejZoR]

What about Windows Media Audio Lossless (WMAL) ?
I know, MS format blablabla, but how does it fare compression wise? WMA itself isn't all that bad and is one among the best lossy compressors.

[Sawg]

Link above, read the giant table.

And remember, what really matters a lot with format acceptance is how nice it plays with others. It's why MP3 is so widely accepted and new formats with slightly better compression ratios have failed to make ground. And all the Windows Media formats never played well with others.

[Rocker]

compression isn't bad, but thats not whats annoying about the format.

[kafkef]

after alot of testing i have found flac to be the best in quality and compatibility with my needs. i recommend you try out different formats to see which one suites you best.

[Skinjob]

"Best" depends on what you consider most important.

I recently archived about 2000 CDs. The most important consideration for me was a stable, open, widely accepted format that would hopefully be around for a long time. FLAC has been around for years, is widely adopted and supported, and being open source, should presumably be around indefinitely.

I was nervous about investing that much time and effort into a proprietary, closed format like WMA. Microsoft's recent ventures into DRM didn't give me a very warm and fuzzy feeling about using their formats for archival purposes.

[bamsan]

Is it true that loseless still means lose a bit?

If it is, then I think wav is the best way to archive cd -- in terms of quality. Perhaps someone should develop a tagged wav format. And to save space, a zipped tagged wav

[Sawg]

The quality of any lossless compressed audio file will be the same as the WAV and the same it was on the CD. And with a Zipped WAV you really can't play them back.

-less means "without:
Without Loss.

[gaekwad2]

Originally posted by bamsan
And to save space, a zipped tagged wav
That's what lossless formats are, essentially.

Except they use other compression techniques (http://www.monkeysaudio.com/theory.html) that work better on audio signals.
(And if you use the latest WinZip your zipped wav will actually be compressed using WavPack.)

[Skinjob]

Originally posted by Sawg
The quality of any lossless compressed audio file will be the same as the WAV and the same it was on the CD. And with a Zipped WAV you really can't play them back.

-less means "without:
Without Loss.

To be more specific, if you take a wav file (Wav1), compress it with FLAC, then decompress the FLAC to another wav (Wav2), You will end up with two identical files (Wav1 = Wav2).

When you play a FLAC file in a media player, the decoder is actually decompressing it back to the original wav file for playback.

Note that the above is true for any lossless format (or it wouldn't be lossless).