Date: Sat, 14 Mar 2009 12:46:15 +0100 From: Jan Henrik Sylvester <me@janh.de> To: Gary Kline <kline@thought.org> Cc: questions-list freebsd <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: best archiver? (for music) Message-ID: <49BB9907.5040101@janh.de> References: 20090314030558.GB25027@thought.org
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Gary Kline wrote: > my hearing is exceptionally good and while call myself an audiophile, [...] > lectures. when i tried to cut the quality even by a bit it was > evident immediately. rar compresses these file to If you care for quality (and call yourself an audiophile), you should read up on what you are doing before you start it. To compare different compression rates, you have to do both from the original. Applying lossy compression twice -- even with the same codec -- might give you artifacts that will not appear with just one run. For the same reason, you do not convert between lossy formats. Each might give different kinds of artifacts that you do not want to combine. (Of course, this does not really contradict the suggestions you got to try speex if you want to do a major reduction of bitrate for your voice mp3 files to save space.) The difference between lame with good settings and a bad mp3 encoder is probably bigger than between some better codec and mp3. Considering that, you should always stick to some "--preset *" options with lame, if you do not know better. Are you sure you can hear the difference between your flac originals and "--preset standard" lame encoded mp3? Consider a "double blind" test. This is probably all in the lame FAQ or similar sources. I do keep flac files after ripping CDs, too, but not because I think I can hear the difference between them and the ogg vorbis files I produce. I rather like the option to go to a different lossy format someday. (I must admit that I have never tested if I can hear the difference between an mp3 that come from the original or an mp3 that comes from a higher bitrate ogg. Actually, I doubt it.) I really do not see the point in saving one or two percent space by applying lzma/7z, rar, or similar compression. The savings in electricity by not doing that are better invested in a new hard drive. ;-) BTW: lzma is the default compression of 7z. GNU tar offers lzma, too, but without the 7z container. If you look at archivers/gtar history, you will see that it seems not to have finalized on the library (and format?): http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/cvsweb.cgi/ports/archivers/gtar/Makefile.diff?r1=1.63;r2=1.64 I am not an expert at all. You better read the lame (and ogg, speex, ...) manual and FAQ yourself that is hopefully written by some "expert". Cheers, Jan Henrik
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