FLAC vs. AIFF: Any Difference?

I'm afraid I'm not familiar enough with the current state of English slang to properly translate "Really bruh?" in a way that retains its full intent.

 

I don't generally look at folks profiles.
I just have, and I can see you're very heavy invested in your digital front end.
That said your digital front converts everything to DSD, so possibly it has some issues with the transcode from FLAC.

I have a pal with the same DAC, I'll ask him if he has noticed the same.

 

Too complicated. Take a DTS CD, rip it to FLAC and test if it decodes as DTS. Take an HDCD encoded CD and rip it to FLAC and check that it decodes as HDCD. I did this back in 2011 and both FLAC compressed DTS and HDCD played right on my former Oppo BDP-93 so FLAC it's lossless.

 

And you forgot to add that any file format that requires a special decoder won't guarantee it will be future proof when decades later all those FLAC files saving so much space can't be played or opened due to the decoder not being updated or not available on newer systems because a free open source based file format isn't worth keeping up with.

If FLAC is so much better as music file container for archiving purposes why is AIFF and WAV still around. Even Qobuz offers AIFF and always warns before I choose out of all the ALAC, FLAC, blah, blah, blah file formats available that the size of the file may take long to download. And then when I go ahead and download the AIFF file it takes only several seconds going from France to my 12mbs AT&T DSL router. More needless worrying about file efficiency that doesn't amount to a hill of beans.

 

FLAC is an open format with royalty-free licensing that can be freely ported to any operating system. There are various open source implementations of FLAC encoding and decoding. The code and documentation for all of this is freely available. 50 years from now developers will still be able to port FLAC to new operating systems and all of the FLAC files we have now will continue to work. That's one of the benefits of an open format with open source reference implementations available.

ALAC started out as a proprietary format developed by Apple. In 2011 Apple made ALAC open source with royalty-free licensing. So 50 years from now developers will still be able to port ALAC to new operating systems and add ALAC support to new software projects.

WAV and AIFF are still around as a format in wide use because they are a more raw format that is easier to record directly to and to edit. You can't record directly to FLAC or ALAC. Any recording device that outputs FLAC or ALAC is fist recording directly to WAV or AIFF or a similar raw format in memory before encoding to FLAC or ALAC. Uncompressed WAV is one of the preferred archive formats by the Library of Congress for digital audio files. They don't want to use compressed formats like FLAC or ALAC for long term archiving for various reasons.

AIFF and WAV are also quite complex if you dig into the file format standards for each and look at the code. AIFF and WAV can also optionally contain compressed data. So both AIFF and WAV have "accordions" inside their spec.

 

I'll be an Apple guy for life, so I'm content with ALAC or AIFF

 

Thanks for the clarity on the file format debate.

Can you tell me what the advantage will be for consumers 5o years from now keeping up with FLAC seeing they don't today and into the future pay royalty and licensing fees directly for all file formats in addition to the smaller file size aspect? Why have all these file formats? It's just too much to keep up with for me. I tried FLAC out on my Mac and I didn't see any advantage to saving music files in it.

 

FLAC is super commonly used on PCs nowadays -- it seems to be the lossless consumer format of choice other than .wav on PCs. I have not had any audiophiles share snippets other than mp3 and flac, very few in .wav. .wav has an advantage that hasn't been mentioned -- it has a floating point format which allows (if the software supports) greater than +-1 for the values... For pro applications where processing might create overshoot, this is an advantage. I have at least one master tape in .wav FP format. All of the other master tapes in my position are also .wav, 24bit signed.
FLAC compression is an almost zero cost option, and the software is adequately portable and essentially always has been free with the intent that it is free. FLAC seems to have critical mass in the PC world. I haven't run into anyone wishing to share other formats for snippets or demos.

There are other lossless and lossy formats; I admit that I like opus a lot, but see little need for more compression than what flac provides - and mp3 @320k is usually okay for most demos. The only serious problem that I have run into for mp3 and less-so opus is the time resolution sometimes glosses over certain very fast repeating details (like poorly made/too fast chorus effects.)

My DolbyA compatible decoder software itself uses .wav file format and supports input: 16, 24 signed, and 32bit FP. For output, it uses 24 signed or 32bit FP. The pros have only chatted about the .wav format for their use, but I am sure that supporting flac would sometimes be desirable.

If I didn't care about space, and SW was written correctly -- I'd use .wav 32bit FP primarily and 24bit signed. Even though my software packages are dynamics processors, in my day to day testing and use -- I have almost zero problems with overshooting +-1.0, and zero problems piping through sox for conversion to/from other than .wav formats.
So -- I can see .flac, and at least the 3 .wav types being supported almost forever. mp3 also -- but the other formats (for the relatively superior opus and aac lossy formats -- I would worry a little about the future.)

John

 

The big difference (besides the space used) is between lossy and non-lossy. Using iTunes on both PC & Mac means that it's ALAC for me. I had begun music transfers to iTunes using WAV. I really should have known better. Googling 'How File Compression Works' will yield a good explanation of lossless compression.

 

I didn't know that Itunes locks the user into ALAC? In that case, spending a bit more money 1/3 larger HDD, Id just use .wav (if Itunes supports it -- I truly don't know.) mp3s are really nice for sharing snippets, and online file sharing services seem to support .mp3 more often than flac. Maybe, some day I might move to .wav 32bit float -- that would mean 100% seamless use for me -- since my DolbyA decoder is a professional tool, it is more likely to be used in FP mode anyway. It would be SUPER nice if opus was supported more often -- it is usually just nicer and a bit more faithful sound quality than mp3. For serioius work -- lossless is 100% critical. There are already too many opportunities for loss from older material -- no sense in adding more problems with a lossy format!!!

John

 

Do you have an ADC that captures audio from a mic in 32/24bit? Or do you upsample it with software after it's digitized?

So I take it you say FLAC is widely used as a standard file encoding format according to what you know from others you deal with? I don't think that makes it an advantage to use for everyone in my opinion.

 

i would only add that FLAC is a bit more ubiquitous in the wild than ALAC or AIFF but as others have mentioned i believe sonically they are almost identical... i believe hdtracks and prostudio masters, both digital retail sites, offer both FLAC and AIFF options for lossless downloads.

 

So many people that don't understand the DEFINITION of the word LOSSLESS. It means NO information is lost. No one is hearing the "the sound" of files being uncompressed because only the result is being heard, not the process. Flac is open source, multi-platform, and very popular. And if you're taxing you're CPU playing lossless music you've got other issues with your computer or it's from Windows 95 days or something.

 

Yes,
example lossless uncompressed formats would include wav 32 bit FP, wav 24 bit signed, wav 16 bit signed, .wav 32 bit FP is the 'most lossless' because of less truncation, but all are audibly lossless (some feel that 16 bit is a bit lossy because of truncation.)

example lossless compressed formats are FLAC, ALAC.

More common music lossy formats include mp3, opus, aac, mp4 (a subset is the same as aac? I forget.)

Container formats that can theoretically contain either lossless or lossy are .wav (RIFF, RF64/BW64) and AIFF

I included .wav as both a 'lossless' and 'lossy' because colloquially .wav usually means lossless, but .wav usually contains RIFF/RF64 as containers for one of the three lossless uncompressed formats. AFAIR, .wav can be used in a more primitive mode containing just 16bits or 32bits FP also???

I forget: mp4 can theoretically contain the AAC, mpeg layer 3 (commonly mp3), mpeg layer 2, CLEP, and a few others.

(It has been a long time since I wrote my .wav file parsing & creation code -- so facts about .wav or others might be a bit distorted, but should generally be correct!!!)

John

 

I'll respond as a consumer myself. WAV, as mentioned by @Ham Sandwich, seems to be a good archival format for future generations. Probably AIFF as well. But that's not what I personally care about.

And not even 50 years, as I'll be dead. How about 30+ years? I use FLAC for my own archives because:

1) Standard tagging support so different programs tag the same way and don't muck the files up. (WAV, unfortunately, does not have standard tagging and AIFF only basic tagging support)
2) Lower storage footprint than WAV/AIFF - still important with large libraries at least today.
3) It currently has a high level of compatibility. Sans iOS which I believe is still a holdout, if an audio vendor supports a lossless format today, it's very likely they will support FLAC.
4) As an open standard (no fees btw), it can be ported over to future technology as required. That's the "30 years" part, pretty sure FLAC support is going to outlive me.

So as always, it depends on the hardware you have today and what you expect to have in the near future. In my case, every single piece of modern audio tech I own with lossless support includes FLAC.

 

I thought the 8-core comment was a dead giveway. He's being sarcastic.

 

It's not "all these" file formats. It's four, because there are two primary systems being supported (Mac/Windows) and two storage options (compressed/uncompressed). So 2 x 2 = 4 and there are four formats:

Uncompressed Apple =AIFF
Uncompressed Windows = WAV
Compressed Apple = ALAC
Compressed Windows = FLAC

It would be nice if there were just one standard compressed format and one standard uncompressed format but that's an accident of history and the horse left the barn a long time ago.

 

What you say is usually true about AIFF and WAV, but the formats have more flexibility than just being uncompressed. .wav usually contains a RIFF or RF64 header, which then can contain almost anything. AIFF is similar.

But, usually, again -- what you are saying about .wav usually being uncompressed is true. The .wav spec along with RIFF and RF64 that it often contains is onerous.

John

 

I'm just trying to paint in broad strokes here for a non-technical user.

 

Why not use a more universal format?

 

AIFF all day long.

 

Why?

 

The one thing that troubles me about FLAC is that it has some ties to the GNU/GPL. Which, while their info says it is free forever for any purpose, they have done things over the years that muddied the waters from time to time. I don't think they ever intend this to be an issue, but it really wrecked SAMBA a few years ago for awhile.

Of course Apple owns ALAC but they made it public some time ago and I doubt that will ever change.

 

I'm interested to hear from people who claim to hear a difference between WAV/AIFF and FLAC/ALAC. I remember reading a thread years ago on Headfi where a couple members claimed to hear a difference between CD rips done by dBpoweramp and EAC but it was determined the files contained all the exact same data.

 

Since Apple Lossless (ALAC) was made open source under an Apache License, I'm not sure it's quite right to say Apple "owns" it in the sense of a corporation owning a product or brand with patents it can enforce, or revenue it can extract, or even the power to withdraw the codec.