3 ms·

> Fast forward to today, and internet speeds have grown exponentially. A song in a more modern format like AAC or FLAC might be double or triple the size of an

> Fast forward to today, and internet speeds have grown exponentially. A song in a more modern format like AAC or FLAC might be double or triple the size of an MP3, but who notices? You can stream a full album in lossless quality without buffering. You'd think so, but somehow this doesn't stop Jellyfin from choking whenever it starts streaming a FLAC. With no actual knowledge, I speculate that they don't bother starting to decode the upcoming track until the current track has already finished.

bscphil 2y ago
> A song in a more modern format like AAC or FLAC might be double or triple the size of an MP3 That's a bizarre statement regardless. Most streaming services that use AAC are 256 kbps, same as most MP3 downloads. Spotify's paid tier is supposedly 320 kbps MP3. Tidal free-with-ads is only 160 kbps AAC.
CobrastanJorji 2y ago
Not sure I'd call FLAC "more modern." There are college graduates younger than FLAC. I mean, sure, it's a decade younger than MP3, so you're technically correct, but it's not exactly the latest hot format.
koito17 2y ago
FLAC allows embedding a seektable but encoders rarely emit one in practice. Since FLAC boils down to a mix of verbatim subframes and linear predictive coding (specifically, polynomials with warmup samples or Rice coding), non-verbatim subframes are variable-length, and the samples for a given interval of time may even span between two blocks. It's a tricky problem, but doable, and FLAC implementations IME (libflac, libavcodec, etc.) have varying levels of accuracy when seeking without a seektable. I assume the choking described depends largely on the medium of transport (e.g. HTTP servers without support for Range headers makes streaming practically impossible), followed by some delay to "guess" the correct block to jump to then figure out which frames contain samples closest to the requested timestamp.
- progmetaldev 2y ago
  I appreciate this look into FLAC! I think MP3 is just such an industry standard at this point, which means nobody is really putting work into making streaming music better. There isn't enough of an audience to push for ever higher quality, especially since most people have moved away from stereos to computer speakers, and mostly listening through their awful cell phone speaker!
- corysama 2y ago
  Not that long ago I got in a lovely HN argument over Why bother with the complexity of FLAC for 2X compression at best vs. the absolute stupid triviality of RIFF containing PCM? The only swaying feature was standardized metadata :P
tombert 2y ago
I'm actually curious; I use Jellyfin to stream FLAC all the time and it doesn't seem to have any issues for me. I'm not sure what you're doing differently. I do have pretty fast internet (2 gigabits up and down), so maybe that's it?
- thaumasiotes 2y ago
  Well, I tried to demonstrate the effect I remembered, which was basically a pause every time one track ended and another was supposed to begin. I didn't succeed. This might be for any of a few reasons: - I've updated Jellyfin between then and now. - I'm using a LAN connection instead of a transoceanic connection. - I might be doing something subtly different than what I was doing before. This is pure speculation.

bscphil 2y ago

> A song in a more modern format like AAC or FLAC might be double or triple the size of an MP3 That's a bizarre statement regardless. Most streaming services that use AAC are 256 kbps, same as most MP3 downloads. Spotify's paid tier is supposedly 320 kbps MP3. Tidal free-with-ads is only 160 kbps AAC.

CobrastanJorji 2y ago

Not sure I'd call FLAC "more modern." There are college graduates younger than FLAC. I mean, sure, it's a decade younger than MP3, so you're technically correct, but it's not exactly the latest hot format.

koito17 2y ago

FLAC allows embedding a seektable but encoders rarely emit one in practice. Since FLAC boils down to a mix of verbatim subframes and linear predictive coding (specifically, polynomials with warmup samples or Rice coding), non-verbatim subframes are variable-length, and the samples for a given interval of time may even span between two blocks. It's a tricky problem, but doable, and FLAC implementations IME (libflac, libavcodec, etc.) have varying levels of accuracy when seeking without a seektable. I assume the choking described depends largely on the medium of transport (e.g. HTTP servers without support for Range headers makes streaming practically impossible), followed by some delay to "guess" the correct block to jump to then figure out which frames contain samples closest to the requested timestamp.

progmetaldev 2y ago
I appreciate this look into FLAC! I think MP3 is just such an industry standard at this point, which means nobody is really putting work into making streaming music better. There isn't enough of an audience to push for ever higher quality, especially since most people have moved away from stereos to computer speakers, and mostly listening through their awful cell phone speaker!
corysama 2y ago
Not that long ago I got in a lovely HN argument over Why bother with the complexity of FLAC for 2X compression at best vs. the absolute stupid triviality of RIFF containing PCM? The only swaying feature was standardized metadata :P

tombert 2y ago

I'm actually curious; I use Jellyfin to stream FLAC all the time and it doesn't seem to have any issues for me. I'm not sure what you're doing differently. I do have pretty fast internet (2 gigabits up and down), so maybe that's it?

thaumasiotes 2y ago
Well, I tried to demonstrate the effect I remembered, which was basically a pause every time one track ended and another was supposed to begin. I didn't succeed. This might be for any of a few reasons: - I've updated Jellyfin between then and now. - I'm using a LAN connection instead of a transoceanic connection. - I might be doing something subtly different than what I was doing before. This is pure speculation.