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Hack 28 October 2003

What program are you using to compress your audio files for storage? Win-zip?

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MisterBlue Tue, 10/28/2003 - 16:24

I'm not really answering your question but fact is that I don't compress them when I am archiving. Emagic used to have the "Zero-Loss Audio Packer" (ZAP) software but it doesn't seem to be offered anymore... :roll:
I don't know of any other program that does a really good job at packing audio files, hopefully somebody else here will have a better answer ...

MisterBlue.

falkon2 Tue, 10/28/2003 - 22:55

Couple of posts I pulled out of a soon-to-be-deleted thread

Originally posted by falkon2:
Audiogaff: Actually, there ARE formats that compress audio files losslesly and can be decompressed to get a bit-for-bit identical copy as the source. Monkey's Audio's .APE and FLAC are just two examples, with quite a number of others on the horizon with even better compression ratios. Right now .APE can do up to about 50-55% compression, and playback doesn't even eat much CPU.

Only problem is that it hasn't picked up in popularity because no one cares - everyone is screaming "MP3! MP3! MP3! WOO 128kbps IS CD QUALITY SINCE FRAUNHOFFER SAID SO! LALALALALALA".

Seriously, .APE is a damn good idea, and a badly underrated one at that.

Originally posted by falkon2:
http://www.monkeysaudio.com/

Saved my bottoms once when I had to archive a few projects that were roughly 1 gig total each... managed to compress them to fit onto one CD-R each, with space leftover for the decompression tools.

http://flac.sourceforge.net/

FLAC is almost identical in function to the above, but is even less-supported. It encodes faster and uses less CPU on playback, but is slightly bigger in filesize.

The last one isn't really lossless, but is a huge step-up from MP3.

http://www.personal.uni-jena.de/~pfk/mpp/audiocoder_english.html

From the "Quality and Performances" section near the bottom of the page:-

quote:
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Encoding with default-parameters leads to very high quality, that in general exceeds the quality of known MP3-encoders like Lame. MPEGplus shows nearly no pre-echoes or flanging.
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Flanging is the primary cause of the harshness in the treble range in lower-to-medium bitrate MP3s, and pre-echoes cause the loss of "tightness" for transients like drums. These two problems are eliminated in MPC.

The page itself is also a good read for understanding MP3 and a lot of other compression techniques - what actually happens in the process and it's inherent disadvantages, etc.

I'd like to append - I believe I mentioned it somewhere in that thread as well - never do lossy encoding onto material you will edit/reuse later on. Ever seen a photo that's gone through one too many jpg encodes? :)

Hack Wed, 10/29/2003 - 09:05

thanks falkon2, I will look into all that.

please tell me to shut up if this about to get messy, but, what types of drives are you using? USB, Firewire, blahdrives. I am just talking PC here. I have been looking at some usb2 drives. But they seem to cost more than I want to pay considering the amount of space I need, or want.

So here is what this is all about, tell me if I am over thinking.

I want to record in one rig. Transfer the files to another rig to edit and mix.

I am thinking that I want one dedicated external drive for archiving pre-edit track files and post edit track files. Then another external drive for current project track files.

The decision seems to be... what types of drives and what type of compression. And I am think in terms also of what all this might do to my costs and what I have to charge clients.

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