I have exactly the same problem. I encoded a BWF file to flac and then then decoded back to wav, using --keep-foreign-metadata, and I ended up with a bit-perfect copy of the original BWF. So I was fairly confident that the flac encoding is working correctly, the problem definitely appears to be with the flac players. Unfortunately it seems that the majority of flac players cannot play 24bit files - winamp, windows media player (with flac plugin), vlc, amarok, kaffeine and a few others ALL failed to play the file. I would either get silence, static, or a complete refusal to play the file. The only player that played it successfully was Foobar 2000 on Windows. More seriously from my point of view is the Java flac plugin also fails, which has major repercussions for the project I work on (the National Archives of Australia Xena project - http://xena.sourceforge.net). I don't know how much the flac developers have to do with the player implementations, but this does seem to be a major problem across almost the full board of flac players. J. On Feb 7, 2008 9:59 AM, Brian Willoughby <brianw@sounds.wa.com> wrote:> I have one theory about your playback problem: Many flac solutions > load the entire flac and decompress the samples before passing them > on to the player. In your case, the conversion code may be running > out of memory on 24-bit files where it does not run out of memory on > 16-bit files of the same duration. Another possibility is that the > flac player does not support 24-bit data properly. > > As Erik mentioned, conversion to 16-bit is a loss of quality. Even > if you are willing to do this, you should have a very good dithering > algorithm to avoid quantization noise. > > The problem you are having is not with flac. Your problem is with > your player. The encode and decoder both support 24-bit files all > the way up to the 4 GB limit. I have made several 24-bit multitrack > recordings, and flac always handles these files without loss of > data. The flac players I have fully support long 24-bit files. It > seems that you need to replace your player if it cannot handle large > 24-bit files. > > You don't want to reduce the quality of your source or abandon > lossless coding just because the players are buggy! > > Brian Willoughby > Sound Consulting > >
As a player writer this doesn't really surprise me very much. My guess is
that many players have hard-coded 16-bit code paths. Mine certainly does,
although in my defence it is a mobile phone FLAC player and I wouldn't
really expect anybody to put broadcast quality audio on a mobile phone.
Something to look at for future development though!
Stuart ("OggPlay project")
----- Original Message -----
From: "Justin Waddell" <jwaddell@gmail.com>
To: "Brian Willoughby" <brianw@sounds.wa.com>
Cc: <flac-dev@xiph.org>
Sent: Friday, February 08, 2008 12:55 AM
Subject: Re: [Flac-dev] wav to flac corruption
>I have exactly the same problem.
>
> I encoded a BWF file to flac and then then decoded back to wav, using
> --keep-foreign-metadata, and I ended up with a bit-perfect copy of the
> original BWF. So I was fairly confident that the flac encoding is
> working correctly, the problem definitely appears to be with the flac
> players.
>
> Unfortunately it seems that the majority of flac players cannot play
> 24bit files - winamp, windows media player (with flac plugin), vlc,
> amarok, kaffeine and a few others ALL failed to play the file. I would
> either get silence, static, or a complete refusal to play the file.
> The only player that played it successfully was Foobar 2000 on
> Windows.
>
> More seriously from my point of view is the Java flac plugin also
> fails, which has major repercussions for the project I work on (the
> National Archives of Australia Xena project -
> http://xena.sourceforge.net).
>
> I don't know how much the flac developers have to do with the player
> implementations, but this does seem to be a major problem across
> almost the full board of flac players.
>
> J.
>
> On Feb 7, 2008 9:59 AM, Brian Willoughby <brianw@sounds.wa.com>
wrote:
>> I have one theory about your playback problem: Many flac solutions
>> load the entire flac and decompress the samples before passing them
>> on to the player. In your case, the conversion code may be running
>> out of memory on 24-bit files where it does not run out of memory on
>> 16-bit files of the same duration. Another possibility is that the
>> flac player does not support 24-bit data properly.
>>
>> As Erik mentioned, conversion to 16-bit is a loss of quality. Even
>> if you are willing to do this, you should have a very good dithering
>> algorithm to avoid quantization noise.
>>
>> The problem you are having is not with flac. Your problem is with
>> your player. The encode and decoder both support 24-bit files all
>> the way up to the 4 GB limit. I have made several 24-bit multitrack
>> recordings, and flac always handles these files without loss of
>> data. The flac players I have fully support long 24-bit files. It
>> seems that you need to replace your player if it cannot handle large
>> 24-bit files.
>>
>> You don't want to reduce the quality of your source or abandon
>> lossless coding just because the players are buggy!
>>
>> Brian Willoughby
>> Sound Consulting
>>
>>
> _______________________________________________
> Flac-dev mailing list
> Flac-dev@xiph.org
> http://lists.xiph.org/mailman/listinfo/flac-dev
>
>
>
> Unfortunately it seems that the majority of flac players cannot play > 24bit files - winamp, windows media player (with flac plugin), vlc, > amarok, kaffeine and a few others ALL failed to play the file. I wouldThe latest version of Winamp works fine for me, at least with 24/48 - haven't tried 24/96 yet. Martin
Winamp supports 24bit FLAC files just fine. Make sure you are using the plugin that ships with the latest versions of Winamp, and not the one distributed with the FLAC tools. Justin Waddell wrote:> I have exactly the same problem. > > I encoded a BWF file to flac and then then decoded back to wav, using > --keep-foreign-metadata, and I ended up with a bit-perfect copy of the > original BWF. So I was fairly confident that the flac encoding is > working correctly, the problem definitely appears to be with the flac > players. > > Unfortunately it seems that the majority of flac players cannot play > 24bit files - winamp, windows media player (with flac plugin), vlc, > amarok, kaffeine and a few others ALL failed to play the file. I would > either get silence, static, or a complete refusal to play the file. > The only player that played it successfully was Foobar 2000 on > Windows. > > More seriously from my point of view is the Java flac plugin also > fails, which has major repercussions for the project I work on (the > National Archives of Australia Xena project - > http://xena.sourceforge.net). > > I don't know how much the flac developers have to do with the player > implementations, but this does seem to be a major problem across > almost the full board of flac players.
--- Justin Waddell <jwaddell@gmail.com> wrote:> I have exactly the same problem. > > I encoded a BWF file to flac and then then decoded back to wav, using > --keep-foreign-metadata, and I ended up with a bit-perfect copy of > the original BWF. So I was fairly confident that the flac encoding is > working correctly, the problem definitely appears to be with the flac > players. > > Unfortunately it seems that the majority of flac players cannot play > 24bit files - winamp, windows media player (with flac plugin), vlc, > amarok, kaffeine and a few others ALL failed to play the file. I > would > either get silence, static, or a complete refusal to play the file. > The only player that played it successfully was Foobar 2000 on > Windows. > > More seriously from my point of view is the Java flac plugin also > fails, which has major repercussions for the project I work on (the > National Archives of Australia Xena project - > http://xena.sourceforge.net). > > I don't know how much the flac developers have to do with the player > implementations, but this does seem to be a major problem across > almost the full board of flac players.this is probably the problem: http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=57572&st=40&p=518661&#entry518661 ____________________________________________________________________________________ Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your home page. http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs
I've had this problem with all versions of flac, so I don't think that this is specific to that bug in 1.2.1. I think Stuart has it right, it's probably caused by flac player developers not coding the 24 bit path. Unfortunately for me, the JFlac project hasn't had an update since 2005 so it's probably going to be up to me to fix the problem... J.> > this is probably the problem: > http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=57572&st=40&p=518661&#entry518661 >