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Flac is a great format. I've been making music for years and I often work with samples. Luckily, Ableton Live accepts .flac files. It's important to have high

by bbx 13y ago

Flac is a great format. I've been making music for years and I often work with samples. Luckily, Ableton Live accepts .flac files. It's important to have high quality samples considering manipulating the sound (especially time-stretching) can easily alter its quality. Unfortunately, it's still hard to obtain music in Flac format. Few online music stores offer tracks in that format. [1] It's maybe a marketing issue. Everybody knows what an Mp3 is. It also took me some time to learn that such a format as Flac existed. But it's also a size issue. Although the compressing algorithm is incredible, people prefer to download (legally or illegally) a 80 MB album rather than a 500 MB one, regardless of its quality, because they either won't hear the difference or just don't care. And considering iTunes doesn't support Flac (only their own Alac format that is even less known), Flac isn't meant to be widely adopted yet. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_online_music_stores http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_online_music_stor...

thirdsun 13y ago
I think these days it's pretty easy to buy lossless audio - if you just look a little bit further than iTunes & Co. you'll find Qobuz, Boomkat, HDTracks, Bandcamp and similar stores. I pretty much find everything I need, including rather obscure music.
- bdz 13y ago
  Bleep! They also offer 24bit wav versions.
samolang 13y ago
I know you're probably looking for a legal solution, but private torrent sites like what.cd offer a very large selection of .flac files. If only the music industry would do the same.
e12e 13y ago
A few artists on soundcloud.com also make their music available as flac (and as lossless wav).
conradfr 13y ago
That's why I like buying from bands in Bandcamp.
mpyne 13y ago
I'm in the camp of people who literally can't perceive the difference, so why would I download the much larger audio? In fact I can't even tell the difference between 128kbps MP3 and the CD it's encoded from, let alone superior formats like Opus or AAC or higher-bitrate MP3.
- hadem 13y ago
  What are you listening with/on when you perform these comparisons? You probably won't hear any difference when listening with set of standard ear buds that come with your smart phone or laptop speakers. If you have a nice pair of headphones/speakers, the difference is easier to hear. Who knows, maybe any differences I think I hear are just placebo effects :-)
  - Puer 13y ago
    Exactly this. The most astounding difference between MP3 and FLAC I've ever heard was Teen Spirit by Nirvana. In the opening riff there's just such a huge difference in depth and clarity. On the MP3 everything sounds flat and lifeless, on the FLAC recording you can hear each individual thrum, every single vibration as the song spins into life. There's nothing quite like listening to lossless Nirvana through some nice headphones/speakers.
- kinleyd 13y ago
  I was too. Now I find the superior formats sound better, but more importantly I find they hurt my ears less. I found mp3 and lower formats really hurt my ears, frequently causing uncomfortable numbness.
- dmm 13y ago
  Flac is future proof. You can always take losslessly compressed audio and convert it to another lossless or lossy format. You can convert lossy formats but there is no way to tell how the artifacts will interact.
  - mpyne 13y ago
    And yet we save movies to h.264 or WebM and save photographic images to JPEG. Lossless formats do have their place but it's not as if lossy formats literally sustain bit rot; they lose information one time and that's it. Unless, of course, you convert lossy formats, but you should know not to do that. If you do have to convert between lossy formats or absolutely need every bit of data (e.g. RAW photography) then that's one of the places you might find lossless archival storage useful. But most uses don't need it at all.
dangravell 13y ago
7digital have a few too, I made a list here: http://www.blisshq.com/music-library-management-blog/2012/02/14/why-i-still-buy-cds/ http://www.blisshq.com/music-library-management-blog/2012/02...
desireco42 13y ago
Flac is genuinely great, but I don't see the problem with people using mp3. I use Flac for my meditation sounds because of binaural tones encoded into them, otherwise for music mp3 is just fine, I am just enjoying it, not producing.

by bbx 13y ago

thirdsun 13y ago

I think these days it's pretty easy to buy lossless audio - if you just look a little bit further than iTunes & Co. you'll find Qobuz, Boomkat, HDTracks, Bandcamp and similar stores. I pretty much find everything I need, including rather obscure music.

bdz 13y ago
Bleep! They also offer 24bit wav versions.

samolang 13y ago

I know you're probably looking for a legal solution, but private torrent sites like what.cd offer a very large selection of .flac files. If only the music industry would do the same.

e12e 13y ago

A few artists on soundcloud.com also make their music available as flac (and as lossless wav).

conradfr 13y ago

That's why I like buying from bands in Bandcamp.

mpyne 13y ago

I'm in the camp of people who literally can't perceive the difference, so why would I download the much larger audio? In fact I can't even tell the difference between 128kbps MP3 and the CD it's encoded from, let alone superior formats like Opus or AAC or higher-bitrate MP3.

hadem 13y ago
What are you listening with/on when you perform these comparisons? You probably won't hear any difference when listening with set of standard ear buds that come with your smart phone or laptop speakers. If you have a nice pair of headphones/speakers, the difference is easier to hear. Who knows, maybe any differences I think I hear are just placebo effects :-)
- Puer 13y ago
  Exactly this. The most astounding difference between MP3 and FLAC I've ever heard was Teen Spirit by Nirvana. In the opening riff there's just such a huge difference in depth and clarity. On the MP3 everything sounds flat and lifeless, on the FLAC recording you can hear each individual thrum, every single vibration as the song spins into life. There's nothing quite like listening to lossless Nirvana through some nice headphones/speakers.
kinleyd 13y ago
I was too. Now I find the superior formats sound better, but more importantly I find they hurt my ears less. I found mp3 and lower formats really hurt my ears, frequently causing uncomfortable numbness.
dmm 13y ago
Flac is future proof. You can always take losslessly compressed audio and convert it to another lossless or lossy format. You can convert lossy formats but there is no way to tell how the artifacts will interact.
- mpyne 13y ago
  And yet we save movies to h.264 or WebM and save photographic images to JPEG. Lossless formats do have their place but it's not as if lossy formats literally sustain bit rot; they lose information one time and that's it. Unless, of course, you convert lossy formats, but you should know not to do that. If you do have to convert between lossy formats or absolutely need every bit of data (e.g. RAW photography) then that's one of the places you might find lossless archival storage useful. But most uses don't need it at all.

dangravell 13y ago

7digital have a few too, I made a list here: http://www.blisshq.com/music-library-management-blog/2012/02/14/why-i-still-buy-cds/ http://www.blisshq.com/music-library-management-blog/2012/02...

desireco42 13y ago

Flac is genuinely great, but I don't see the problem with people using mp3. I use Flac for my meditation sounds because of binaural tones encoded into them, otherwise for music mp3 is just fine, I am just enjoying it, not producing.