[[email protected]]

I am going to rip a bunch of cds and a fair amount of concerts on
cassettes to my computer. My question: If time and disk space were of
no importance, which format is the best way to go? My goal is to be
able to make sure in 5 years I have made the most adaptable choice for
future technology while also keeping audio quality as high as possible.
What are the positives and negatives for the two? Am I missing another
format (not interested in any mp3 format)?
Thank you in advance for your help.

[Steven Sullivan]

wrote:
I am going to rip a bunch of cds and a fair amount of concerts on
cassettes to my computer. My question: If time and disk space were of
no importance, which format is the best way to go? My goal is to be
able to make sure in 5 years I have made the most adaptable choice for
future technology while also keeping audio quality as high as possible.
What are the positives and negatives for the two? Am I missing another
format (not interested in any mp3 format)?
Thank you in advance for your help.

well, it's that same answer you got on rec.audio.pro: if space
is not an issue, use .wav.

___
-S
"As human beings, we understand the world through simile, analogy,
metaphor, narrative and, sometimes, claymation." - B. Mason

[[email protected]]

wrote:
I am going to rip a bunch of cds and a fair amount of concerts on
cassettes to my computer. My question: If time and disk space were of
no importance, which format is the best way to go? My goal is to be
able to make sure in 5 years I have made the most adaptable choice for
future technology while also keeping audio quality as high as possible.
What are the positives and negatives for the two? Am I missing another
format (not interested in any mp3 format)?
Thank you in advance for your help.

There's also shn, which is about equivalent to flac in size, but it
looks like flac is gaining more ground at a faster rate in terms of how
its being adopted. Flac seems to be a pretty good choice, because while
you say disk space isn't a factor, wav does takes up about twice as
much space as flac, so that could end up being a consideration.

The main consideration would be whether or not the player would support
the file, obviously. That would need to be looked at on an individual
basis. Squeezebox supports flac, but it's not an industry standard, as
of yet. Apple lossless might be worth looking into, if you wanted to go
the mac route. http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,63751,00.html -
Those guys do everything, if you're willing to make the switch.

[Walt]

wrote:

I am going to rip a bunch of cds and a fair amount of concerts on
cassettes to my computer. My question: If time and disk space were of
no importance, which format is the best way to go? My goal is to be
able to make sure in 5 years I have made the most adaptable choice for
future technology while also keeping audio quality as high as possible.
What are the positives and negatives for the two? Am I missing another
format (not interested in any mp3 format)?

If disc space is of no importance, why screw around with FLAC?

Audio quality is basically limited by the 16 bit 44.1 choice (or your
cassettes' quality). FLAC is irrelevant - it just losslessly compresses
the sound file.

Seems to me that the best bet for longevity would be a redbook
compatible CD. It's a popular format, say, as popular as 78 rpm records
were in their day. Since you can still find players for 78's 50 years
after their heyday, I would expect that CD players will be around for as
long as you and I, even if they're no longer the format of choice.

The alternative is to keep the .wav files on your harddrive, which we
all know will fail in 5 to 10 years. So you need to make backups. How
to backup your harddrive? CD, right? So why not use redbook instead of
copying .wav files?

//Walt

[Lance Hoffmeyer]

wrote:
I am going to rip a bunch of cds and a fair amount of concerts on
cassettes to my computer. My question: If time and disk space were of
no importance, which format is the best way to go? My goal is to be
able to make sure in 5 years I have made the most adaptable choice for
future technology while also keeping audio quality as high as possible.
What are the positives and negatives for the two? Am I missing another
format (not interested in any mp3 format)?
Thank you in advance for your help.

See:

http://web.inter.nl.net/users/hvdh/l...s/lossless.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Lossless_Audio_Codec

basically, no difference in lossless formats.

Since time and space are no issue I would stick with WAV. EAC and CDPARANOIA
both extract into WAV and then convert to a various format (FLAC, MAC, WV ...).
Therefore, extra time is needed. A 50M file in WAV will compress to 35M-40M
in the various compressed formats. Since they are lossless there is no issue
with loss of data. You can always convert back to the original quality.

I prefer FLAC myself. I rip to 300G harddrives. That extra compression adds up
over time allowing more CD's per harddrive. Works on any PC platform (I use Linux).
Opensource, so I know it will be around in 5 years, will most likely be backwards
compatible and has no copyright issues. So, theoretically, it should be a format
used in any portable or non-portable player (but, currently, lossless formats are
not well known or often used in portable or non-portable players). That being said,
who knows what format will be prevalent in 5 years. There will probably be newer,
better compression methods.

Very few car players support any of the lossless formats. They support MP3 and WMA
(why no opensource formats, OGG, FLAC ...???). Will be getting a squeezebox in a
couple of months or so. I know it supports FLAC (and probably WAV). Not sure about
the other lossless codecs.

Lance

[Lance Hoffmeyer]

Actually, I read an article not long ago that indicated harddrives were the best way to
back things up. Most reliable. May fail in 5 10 years but they are cheap enough to offset
the costs. I made a number of CD's back when Napster first started (6-7 years ago). Have
had them shelved in a CD sleeve for a long time. When I went to copy them onto a harddrive
a number of the CD's were partially unreadable. IMHO, CD's are an extremely unreliable backup
method. Not to mention that I have a 200G harddrive that I have been using to put CD's onto.
How many DVD's would it take to back this up? Since one can purchase a 260G USB harddrive for
100-150$ why not just use harddrive backups? In 1-3 we will see 800-1000G harddrives
for the same price. Just spend 100$ on a new harddrive every year or so and copy existing
harddrives onto it. I have 3 computers and all of them have secondary harddrives that I
use to backup the primary harddrive on a nightly basis. I also have two music USB harddrives
that I have been copying CD's onto. I have a backup harddrive I keep on a shelve for these
as well.

Lance


The alternative is to keep the .wav files on your harddrive, which we
all know will fail in 5 to 10 years. So you need to make backups. How
to backup your harddrive? CD, right? So why not use redbook instead of
copying .wav files?

//Walt