ewitles
Gang -
RPM is now offering their music as lossless m4a files. I know from Apple iTunes, they play very nice w/ vdj - almost better than mp3.
My master library is in flac - but w/ limted tag support, I have been reluctant to use them.
m4a is a few % larger than flac sometimes, but is fully supported via tags.
Now there is a free audio converter that will batch convert my flacs to m4a and retain tags (alac - Apple lossless).
So, notwhithstanding the time to batch convert and the obvious increase in disc space, would this be a valiant effort or waste of time?
Yes, my mp3s sound great, but would like to offer my clients the best audio possible.
And only use mp3s when no m4a is avilable.
Thoughts?
RPM is now offering their music as lossless m4a files. I know from Apple iTunes, they play very nice w/ vdj - almost better than mp3.
My master library is in flac - but w/ limted tag support, I have been reluctant to use them.
m4a is a few % larger than flac sometimes, but is fully supported via tags.
Now there is a free audio converter that will batch convert my flacs to m4a and retain tags (alac - Apple lossless).
So, notwhithstanding the time to batch convert and the obvious increase in disc space, would this be a valiant effort or waste of time?
Yes, my mp3s sound great, but would like to offer my clients the best audio possible.
And only use mp3s when no m4a is avilable.
Thoughts?
Posted Thu 23 May 13 @ 1:05 pm
Martin FourS
Imo a waste of time (and quality). Details gone lost in converting the originals to any compressed form of audio (MP3, FLAC, M4A, a.s.o) will not return if you convert them to a higher quality of compressed audio. What's even worse is that converting compressed audio to another form of compressed audio will result in losing even more detail and quality.
Stick to what you've got now and get your new music in M4A.
Stick to what you've got now and get your new music in M4A.
Posted Thu 23 May 13 @ 3:40 pm
ewitles
Ok, flac is lossless (no loss in quality). alac (m4a) is also 100% transparent w/ no loss in quality.
mp3 is lossy no matter what bitrate.
I have ALL my time life and other original cds ripped as flac (lossless) and was thinking of trans-coding to lossless alac (m4a).
Might just make a test system and see how it behaves. :)
mp3 is lossy no matter what bitrate.
I have ALL my time life and other original cds ripped as flac (lossless) and was thinking of trans-coding to lossless alac (m4a).
Might just make a test system and see how it behaves. :)
Posted Thu 23 May 13 @ 6:56 pm
PhantomDeejay
FYI:
M4A is the same with MP4. In fact you can rename back and forth a file from MP4 to M4A and they will still play the same on ANY application that supports them.
The tricky part however is that an MP4 file is actually a CONTAINER. It can contain several audio streams (lossless or not), video streams, subtitles texts, lyrics texts, e.t.c. Most of the time an application will assume that an M4A file contains audio streams only, but still there's no actual restriction on that.
The bad part is that MP4 tagging system is proprietary. It is owned by Apple and this means that they can change it at any time as they wish.
In fact there are already 3 "revisions" of the MP4 tags the way they are treated by iTunes. Different versions of iTunes used different frames for some info, while you can't find on ANY place on the web a complete list of all the frames used by iTunes today.
That been said if I were to convert all my music library to a lossless format I would go to FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) which is open source, and of course it can be recognized easily by it's extension without leaving any doubts if the file is video or audio, lossless or not!
M4A is the same with MP4. In fact you can rename back and forth a file from MP4 to M4A and they will still play the same on ANY application that supports them.
The tricky part however is that an MP4 file is actually a CONTAINER. It can contain several audio streams (lossless or not), video streams, subtitles texts, lyrics texts, e.t.c. Most of the time an application will assume that an M4A file contains audio streams only, but still there's no actual restriction on that.
The bad part is that MP4 tagging system is proprietary. It is owned by Apple and this means that they can change it at any time as they wish.
In fact there are already 3 "revisions" of the MP4 tags the way they are treated by iTunes. Different versions of iTunes used different frames for some info, while you can't find on ANY place on the web a complete list of all the frames used by iTunes today.
That been said if I were to convert all my music library to a lossless format I would go to FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) which is open source, and of course it can be recognized easily by it's extension without leaving any doubts if the file is video or audio, lossless or not!
Posted Fri 24 May 13 @ 12:33 am
Hi,
i saw Version 8 on a Tradeshow in Frankfurt last year and it looks like it has support for FLAC tags.
Greets,
Phillip
i saw Version 8 on a Tradeshow in Frankfurt last year and it looks like it has support for FLAC tags.
Greets,
Phillip
Posted Fri 24 May 13 @ 12:47 am
ewitles
If VDJ supported flac directly (tags) like mp3 & mp4, this would be a non issue.
Posted Sat 25 May 13 @ 10:32 am