Topic: New Sound Devices Firmware ***Coming Soon***

[RobertNC]

I did not see anywhere that said it is truly "on-the-fly" or "real time" encoding. 

What if the unit is in fact caching the raw wav on the media and then doing a lazy encoding/final write?  If it's doing that on the INHDD then your battery consumption is gonna take a hit, and those batteries are not cheap and not likely to become so. 

[Brian Skalinder]

I did not see anywhere that said it is truly "on-the-fly" or "real time" encoding.

Good point.  I think many of us assumed so (and we all know what assuming makes us) based on:  "gain the ability to record data-compressed audio to local storage while maintaining all file metadata."  But that's not nearly definitive enough a statement to know how they're implementing the feature.

Anyone on the SD support board seen any info on how this is implemented?

[F.O.Bean]

I did not see anywhere that said it is truly "on-the-fly" or "real time" encoding.

Good point.  I think many of us assumed so (and we all know what assuming makes us) based on:  "gain the ability to record data-compressed audio to local storage while maintaining all file metadata."  But that's not nearly definitive enough a statement to know how they're implementing the feature.

Anyone on the SD support board seen any info on how this is implemented?

im VERY curious myself.....

[it-goes-to-eleven]

I really like how SD continues to enhance the existing product rather than declaring it 'done' and moving on to the next model..

[Digital Quality]

IME, flac  compression for 24 bit signals is only about 0.7 vs about 0.5 for 16 bit data using compression level 6. On the fly will likely use an even lower compression level so don't expect this to double your 24 bit recording capacity.

[rowjimmy]

the question is... are than any tools to edit/track in flac format?

CDWave not only encodes in FLAC but it will open one and allow you to track it.

Now if only they had a high quality dither/resample component...

[JasonSobel]

IME, flac  compression for 24 bit signals is only about 0.7 vs about 0.5 for 16 bit data using compression level 6. On the fly will likely use an even lower compression level so don't expect this to double your 24 bit recording capacity.

I've had much better compression ratios for 24 bit audio with FLAC v1.1.4, relative to the older version.  v1.1.4 was just released a few months ago, so make the switch if you haven't already.  I wonder if SD is going to use the latest version of FLAC with the recorders...

[F.O.Bean]

IME, flac  compression for 24 bit signals is only about 0.7 vs about 0.5 for 16 bit data using compression level 6. On the fly will likely use an even lower compression level so don't expect this to double your 24 bit recording capacity.

I've had much better compression ratios for 24 bit audio with FLAC v1.1.4, relative to the older version.  v1.1.4 was just released a few months ago, so make the switch if you haven't already.  I wonder if SD is going to use the latest version of FLAC with the recorders...

1.1.4 isnt available for fronetend yet tho, so im holding off til it is

at the same time i would imagine SD uses the newest STABLE version of flac which is 1.1.4 hopefully

[OFOTD]

Say you're recording directly to FLAC at 24/96.  Let's also say that you'll double your recording capacity.  So now you record a set thats an hour and a half.   No errors or anything from the 7xx.  You get home to eq levels, add track splits, add fades, etc.

You still have to deal with the 2GB limit with most software.  So the only REAL benefit here is either for those using the 702 or those recording a festival with the stock drive in the 722/744.

So essentially FLAC support is just a space saver and not a time saver.  So with that thinking Bean's statement that it puts the 7xx boxes "WAY ahead of the pack" may be more of Bean's fluffing of his gear than SD being truly WAY ahead of the pack. 

I mean how many of you would even use that feature?  Its cool that they offer it but is it really a reason to "see even more folks spending the $$ on a 7x series"

I'm impressed that SD is listening to their customers but is this really a killer app for this box?  Will this make more people buy the box?

[F.O.Bean]

Say you're recording directly to FLAC at 24/96.  Let's also say that you'll double your recording capacity.  So now you record a set thats an hour and a half.   No errors or anything from the 7xx.  You get home to eq levels, add track splits, add fades, etc.

You still have to deal with the 2GB limit with most software.  So the only REAL benefit here is either for those using the 702 or those recording a festival with the stock drive in the 722/744.

So essentially FLAC support is just a space saver and not a time saver.  So with that thinking Bean's statement that it puts the 7xx boxes "WAY ahead of the pack" may be more of Bean's fluffing of his gear than SD being truly WAY ahead of the pack. 

I mean how many of you would even use that feature?  Its cool that they offer it but is it really a reason to "see even more folks spending the $$ on a 7x series"

I'm impressed that SD is listening to their customers but is this really a killer app for this box?  Will this make more people buy the box?

i wont be using it unless its quicker to record to flac/transfer/decode to WAV anyway....But for SD to be continually on top of their products firmware says alot about them IMO......this is just the icing on the cake IMO. I think it took them not even one week to realize they had a crappy/buggy firmware(2.09) and fix the problem on the QUICKNESS(2.10)

[OFOTD]

But for SD to be continually on top of their products firmware says alot about them IMO......this is just the icing on the cake IMO. I think it took them not even one week to realize they had a crappy/buggy firmware(2.09) and fix the problem on the QUICKNESS(2.10)

Agreed.

[fozzy]

I know that the mp3 recording feature that was initially introduced but was found to be faulty was really desired within the ENG field.  I think they re-coded their entire encoding feature set and it was a reatively easy and cheap to add flac support as well as re-implement mp3.  The comments from the SD engineers on their board see the biggest users/value add will be for customers using CF. 

For folks turning in dailies the production houses will not see flac as an acceptable delivery method for some time if at all. 

[live2496]

IME, flac  compression for 24 bit signals is only about 0.7 vs about 0.5 for 16 bit data using compression level 6. On the fly will likely use an even lower compression level so don't expect this to double your 24 bit recording capacity.

I've had much better compression ratios for 24 bit audio with FLAC v1.1.4, relative to the older version.  v1.1.4 was just released a few months ago, so make the switch if you haven't already.  I wonder if SD is going to use the latest version of FLAC with the recorders...

libFLAC still has some problem handling some types of 24-bit data as has been noticed by some of the developers using FLAC. I have seen some posts here by tapers indicating that also. I'm going to include Josh Coalson's recent post on this subject. Josh is the lead developer on the FLAC project.

I think that it's great that SoundDevices is moving in this direction. And it sounds like this issue is going to have a published fix available soon anyway.

Subject: Re: [Flac-dev] FLAC 24 bit test results
   From: Josh Coalson <xflac@yahoo.com>
   Date: Sun, 8 Apr 2007 15:29:40 -0700 (PDT)
     To: flac-dev@xiph.org

>sorry about the delay in responding.  Miroslav basically described
>the problem correctly, 24-bit samples with a lot of noise will
>require a rice parameter larger than FLAC supports, so it will punt
>and use VERBATIM subframes.  the escape parameter will help a bit
>but is not a good long term solution.
>
>the proper fix is to increase the possible size of the rice parameter
>in a backward-compatible way and I have already done this months ago,
>but I am still working with all the hardware vendors to ensure there
>are no problems for users because it requires a change to the decoder.
>the next flac release will have the change in the decoder but I am
>holding off the encoder release until hardware makers are up to date.
>this should not be too long as very few support 24bps.
>
>so, short answer, the fix is in progress.
>
>Josh

[sleepypedro]

friggin' rice parameter will get you every time 

[live2496]

friggin' rice parameter will get you every time 

Just to be clear on this so that no one gets the wrong impression...

FLAC is lossless. And it works perfectly in 24-bit mode. You get out of it what you put into it bit for bit.
However, the issue is how much compression do you get with 24-bit data. In some cases the compression is very little. Sometimes you can get a file that is larger than the original by a small margin. I would assume that this is because of the verbatim encoding mentioned by Josh. If the entire file is encoded "verbatim", you have original pcm samples, plus FLAC framing information, plus the index points and any metadata added.