[peel] Lossy and Lossless Audio compression

[Alasdair Macdonald]

On 28/11/2007, markbursa@... <markbursa@...> wrote:

> >>Maybe FLAC is superior but so was OGG and it (OGG) seems to be
> falling by the wayside a la betamax!<<
>
> A perfect analogy.
>
> Ogg is preferable to MP3, but incompatible with a lot    of players etc, and will surely wither away.
>
>
> >>Anybody have any convincing arguments for one or the    other?<<
>
>
>
> Flac is not an audio format like MP3 or OGG. It's more    like ZIP or RAR - a way of temporarily compressing files so they're easier to    send. Once you un-Flac them they turn back into WAV files - which is the best    you can get.
>
> So please use Flac ahead of Ogg , MP3 or any other    compressed format, which permanently remove information from the files, so    degrading the quality.
>
> The alternative to Flac is Shn, which is similar but    less widely used and not as effective in reducing file    size.

ogg and flac are open source, and available on different operating
systems. ape is not.

Alasdair