Can some one tell me more about ths FLAC format hear so much on the forums?
Seeing as mp3 can be set to use fixed bitrate, how is Flac better? I guess I will have t rip everything from scratch again? What tools do you use to rip to FLAC?
From the
FLAC website: "FLAC stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec, an audio format similar to MP3, but lossless, meaning that audio is compressed in FLAC without any loss in quality. This is similar to how Zip works, except with FLAC you will get much better compression because it is designed specifically for audio, and you can play back compressed FLAC files in your favorite player (or your car or home stereo, see supported devices) just like you would an MP3 file.
FLAC stands out as the fastest and most widely supported lossless audio codec, and the only one that at once is non-proprietary, is unencumbered by patents, has an open-source reference implementation, has a well documented format and API, and has several other independent implementations."
MP3 is by definition lossy compression, meaning bits in the audio stream are discarded and permanently lost on creation of an mp3 file. When you play back a FLAC or other losslessly encoded file it's pretty much the equivalent of playing the track off the CD (assuming of course the track was properly ripped from CD in the first place [this limitation is independent of the encoding method and is an inherent limitation of the ripping process]).
If you want CD quality versions of your audio library you pretty much have to rip them again and encode to a lossless format. Ripping and encoding to FLAC is best handled by
dbpoweramp (paid software, but worth it) or
Exact Audio Copy (freeware, equally good, but fewer metadata source options).
If you're ripping using Linux, I'd suggest
Grip.
To add/edit metadata such as artist, album and track names you'll need a decent tag editor. For Windows there's
Mp3tag and for Linux and OS X there's
puddletag.
For a decent into to ripping CD's you'd do well to peruse [/url=http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.php/BeginnersGuideToRipping]the Slimdevices Wiki - Beginners Guide To Ripping[/url]
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