Topic: FLAC v1.1.4

[JasonSobel]

well, it looks like as of ~ a month ago, FLAC v1.1.4 was released (as of 2/13/07).
It had been ~ two years between v1.1.2 and when v1.1.3 was released, which was just back in Nov/Dec 2006
(see some discussion here: http://taperssection.com/index.php/topic,76692.0.html regarding v1.1.3)

so, it looks like another nice and welcome round of improvements for v1.1.4
all the changes are listed at the official FLAC site (http://flac.sourceforge.net/).
below are a few items of most interest to me:

Improved compression with no change to format or decrease in speed.

Encoding and decoding speedups for all modes. Encoding at -8 is twice as fast.

I'll always welcome smaller files, and quicker compression speeds, as I always compress at Level 8.
but it seems like FLAC Frontend has not yet been updated for FLAC v1.1.4.  For v1.1.3, Mike Wren had a new Frontend update within a couple of weeks.  so has anyone used it yet?  I assume it'd be great.   but I'm certainly not going to go back to DOS command line encoding.  so, for me, I'll continue to use v1.1.3 until the windows GUI gets updated.  but, I thought I'd start some discussion here, see if anyone's used it and to get some general thoughts from people.

[rowjimmy]

Encoding and decoding speedups for all modes. Encoding at -8 is twice as fast.

Hell, yeah.
Thanks for the news.

[paramnesiac]

Thanks for the heads up!  I've got a few recordings that I'm currently transferring and one that I just recently did with v.1.1.3b that I can re-extract & FLAC to compare. 

[F.O.Bean]

Thanks for the heads up!  I've got a few recordings that I'm currently transferring and one that I just recently did with v.1.1.3b that I can re-extract & FLAC to compare. 

i noticed a decent encoding improvement even from 1.12 to 1.3 and cant wait for 1.4 for frontend

[boojum]

You can download the binaries and put them in your current 1.1.3 folder and get 1.1.4 results.  If you check hydrogenaudio.org they have the thread on this with comments from Coalson, the coder.  Nice package.  The new front end will be done "soon."

Cheers

[dorrcoq]

Thanks for the heads-up!  I quit using level 8 because it took so long, so this will be a nice upgrade.

[seedee_oner]

it really is quicker, I almost thought it was just hype until I upgraded last month 

if you visit the main sourceforge site and click on the windows link, it still gives you the 1.1.3 installer package.  you can get the binaries here:
http://downloads.sourceforge.net/flac/flac-1.1.4-win.zip?modtime=1171408499&big_mirror=0

like boojum mentioned, just overwrite the files in your C:\Program Files\FLAC directory with the ones in the zip file above.

[Gordon]

question

99% of the time I save as flac with CD Wave.  does cd wave have the flac exe bundled in it or does it use the flac exe from your hardrive (frontend etc)??   ie would it make any difference to upgrade if using cd wave to flac?

[JasonSobel]

You can download the binaries and put them in your current 1.1.3 folder and get 1.1.4 results.  If you check hydrogenaudio.org they have the thread on this with comments from Coalson, the coder.  Nice package.  The new front end will be done "soon."

Cheers

it really is quicker, I almost thought it was just hype until I upgraded last month 

if you visit the main sourceforge site and click on the windows link, it still gives you the 1.1.3 installer package.  you can get the binaries here:
http://downloads.sourceforge.net/flac/flac-1.1.4-win.zip?modtime=1171408499&big_mirror=0

like boojum mentioned, just overwrite the files in your C:\Program Files\FLAC directory with the ones in the zip file above.

excellent, thanks guys.  I'll definitely check it out and replace the files in my FLAC directory when I get home this evening.

[seedee_oner]

99% of the time I save as flac with CD Wave.  does cd wave have the flac exe bundled in it or does it use the flac exe from your hardrive (frontend etc)??   ie would it make any difference to upgrade if using cd wave to flac?

here's the results of some testing:



as the results show, cdwav is using a four year old flac library.  I tried replacing the libFLAC.dll file in the cdwav program directory, but when you try to compress with the updated libFLAC, cdwav doesn't like it and throws errors at you.  I'd suggest emailing the developer and asking him to upgrade the program to include an updated flac library.

btw, here's the results of compressing with the 1.1.0 version vs. the 1.1.4 version (both at level 8):

v1.1.0 took 55 seconds to encode the wav file
v1.1.4 took 28 seconds to encode the wav file

[JasonSobel]

here are the results of my very basic and minimal testing:
I compressed a ~133MB 16/44.1 WAV file
with FLAC v1.1.3, I got a compression ratio of ~0.54 (and a FLAC file ~71.8MB)
with FLAC v1.1.4, I got a compression ratio of ~0.53 (and a FLAC file ~70.5MB

obviously, there are many factors which ultimately determine the overall compression level, but I'd be happy with even this modest ~1% reduction in file sizes.  over the course of a whole show, that could add up and save some bandwidth when uploaded shows

[F.O.Bean]

going from SHN.FLAC saves a ton of space, especially with the latest flacs

[dorrcoq]

Faster and more compressed files - sounds great!

[JasonSobel]

does flac frontend support v1.1.4 yet?

as far as I know, you can't download a FLAC Frontent to work directly with v1.1.4 yet.  however, it's an easy work-around.  assuming you have flac frontend installed with v1.1.3, if you follow these steps, you can use v1.1.4 with FLAC Frontend:

You can download the binaries and put them in your current 1.1.3 folder and get 1.1.4 results.  If you check hydrogenaudio.org they have the thread on this with comments from Coalson, the coder.  Nice package.  The new front end will be done "soon."

Cheers

it really is quicker, I almost thought it was just hype until I upgraded last month 

if you visit the main sourceforge site and click on the windows link, it still gives you the 1.1.3 installer package.  you can get the binaries here:
http://downloads.sourceforge.net/flac/flac-1.1.4-win.zip?modtime=1171408499&big_mirror=0

like boojum mentioned, just overwrite the files in your C:\Program Files\FLAC directory with the ones in the zip file above.

it's really pretty simple and easy to do.  and its easy to verify that its actually using v1.1.4, because the little DOS screen that comes up as it is compressing will say 1.1.4 instead of 1.1.3

[tapeworm48]

i upgraded last night, and the new version is super fast.  thanks!

[F.O.Bean]

does sector align still work if you trick frontend into using 1.1.4

[terrapinj]

does sector align still work if you trick frontend into using 1.1.4

yup

[boojum]

The way to make sure you have 1.1.4 doing the job is to 1) remove the flac.exe in your system32 folder and 2) put the new flac.exe 1.1.4 in the frontend folder.  That works.  That is how I finally got it to do its magic.  Yes, faster; yes, smaller.  Thank you, Josh Coalsen!

In the PC search path it goes to system32 folder before it hits the flac frontend folder.  ;o)

L8R   

[terrapinj]

looks like FLAC 1.1.4 is setup with the installer now

http://downloads.sourceforge.net/flac/flac-1.1.4b.exe?use_mirror=internap

[F.O.Bean]

looks like FLAC 1.1.4 is setup with the installer now

http://downloads.sourceforge.net/flac/flac-1.1.4b.exe?use_mirror=internap

+T, trying it now

[Brian Skalinder]

anyone know what's up?

http://taperssection.com/index.php/topic,81809.0.html
http://taperssection.com/index.php/topic,76692.0.html

[sleepypedro]

haven't seen it mentioned yet that version FLAC v1.20 was released on 7/23/07.  i haven't upgraded yet but will be doing so momentarily.

FLAC 1.2.0

    * General:
          o Small encoding speedups for all modes.
    * FLAC format:
          o One of the reserved bits in the FLAC frame header has been assigned for future use; make sure to refer to the porting guide if you parse FLAC streams manually.
    * Ogg FLAC format:
          o (none)
    * flac:
          o Added runtime detection of SSE OS support for most operating systems.
          o Added a new undocumented option --ignore-chunk-sizes for ignoring the size of the 'data' chunk (WAVE) or 'SSND' chunk (AIFF). Can be used to encode files with bogus data sizes (e.g. with WAV files piped from foobar2000 to flac.exe as an external encoder). Use with caution: all subsequent data is treated as audio, so the data/SSND chunk must be the last or the following data/tags will be treated as audio and encoded.
    * metaflac:
          o (none)
    * plugins:
          o (none)
    * build system:
          o Added solution and project files for building with VC++ 2005.
    * libraries:
          o Added runtime detection of SSE OS support for most operating systems.
          o Fixed bug where invalid seek tables could cause some seeks to fail.
    * Interface changes (see also the porting guide for specific instructions on porting to FLAC 1.2.0):
          o libFLAC:
                + Added FLAC__format_sample_rate_is_subset()
          o libFLAC++:
                + Added FLAC::Decoder::Stream::get_decode_position()

[JasonSobel]

haven't seen it mentioned yet that version FLAC v1.20 was released on 7/23/07.

very interesting.  thanks for the heads up!
perhaps this should get it's own thread

[Crumbo]

haven't seen it mentioned yet that version FLAC v1.20 was released on 7/23/07.

very interesting.  thanks for the heads up!
perhaps this should get it's own thread

it does:  http://taperssection.com/index.php/topic,88397.0.html