FLAC Better Than APE or OGG or MP3?
When and why use FLAC
FLAC is lossless format. That means that not a bit of information is lost during encoding and the FLAC file is completely identical to the source file. Unlike WAV Lossless FLAC allows to significantly reduce size of the audio file.But there is Monkey's Audio (APE) that also allows lossless encoding. The advantage of FLAC in this case is that FLAC is open-source, completely free and multi-platform. FLAC files can be played on Windows, Linux, Unix, and Mac OS X.
So if you want to create a copy of your CD rip it to FLAC. The quality will be same as source but the files won't be as large as WAV lossless.
As to OGG the comparison is short: FLAC is lossless, OGG is lossy.
Many people state that they don't hear any difference between FLAC and MP3 (high bitrate) files. It's true for most people who don't use professional music equipment. BUT there are certain reasons still to rip CD to FLAC not to MP3:
- You can convert FLAC to MP3 to reduce size but can't convert MP3 to FLAC to get better quality
- Having FLAC files on you hard drive you have plenty of choice: you can convert it to MP3 at 96 kbps or 256 kbps. Or to OGG. And the quality will be good. Having MP3 files at 256 kbps you can't change bitrate to 320 kbps and it's almost senseless to convert them to OGG.
- Having a FLAC copy of your CD you are always on the safe side. You can easily give it to a friend, scratch it or even lose it - you still have an identical copy of it. Any time you can burn your FLAC files to a CD.
| Format | Size |
| WAVE | 23 793 KB |
| FLAC | 10 578 KB |
| APE | 9 987 KB |
| MP3(192 kbps) | 3 238 KB |
So we see that FLAC makes files twice smaller but of the same quality than WAVE. And MP3 is 7 times smaller! As for sound quality - it's up to you to decide.
Tips and tricks:
