Buh Bye SHN; Welcome FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec)

[Joe M.]

For all of you that haven't heard the news....

Now this sounds like some good stuff!
----------------------
Introducing: FLAC, the Free Lossless Audio Codec

The Etree.org community was formed by a crew of music geeks with a single goal: Trading live legal lossless audio. The common mantra "SHN via FTP" came about as the most popular means to that end. However, times change and technology matures. Enter FLAC...

FLAC stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec. This new lossless audio codec has been in development for over a year by a team of developers led by Josh Coalson. FLAC has been designed to have flexibility to adjust to future technology advancements, and to move beyond the obvious shortcomings of Shorten. Some of the ways FLAC is superior to Shorten include:

* Better compression (between 5 and 15% better than Shorten)
* Support for 24 bit audio (and beyond!)
* The ability to embed ID3-style tags within the audio file (useful for storing important information such as artist, song, source, recordist, etc.)
* Integrated checksums (no more .md5 files necessary!)
* Automatic sanity checking when decompressing (no more checking a .md5 file before decompressing)
* Sector boundary checking and fixing (similar to SHNtool)
* Hardware playback support
* Realtime playback software for Windows, MacOS and Linux
* Native support in various audio software packages
* Less restrictive licensing than other lossless codecs (FLAC and
associated plugins are released under the GPL)
* Streamable!
* Active development community

I'm not suggesting that SHN will go anywhere anytime soon, nor am I urging anyone to go out and convert all their SHN files to FLAC. I personally don't plan on migrating my CD-R collection to FLAC anytime soon. FLAC is just another tool in the arsenal... a much more efficient and robust tool than the software we've been using in the past. You will begin seeing new seeds around the lossless trading scene with the extension .flac and folders labeled with .flac16 and .flac24. This is what it's about.

If you're a Windows user, we have created a very handy package to install everything you need to compress, decompress, verify, and playback FLAC file on your computer! Check out http://sparkle.etree.org/flac to download. Users of other operating systems should check out http://flac.sourceforge.net for more information.

For etree-specific FLAC info, check out the following URL's:

http://wiki.etree.org/index.php?page=FLAC - General FLAC Info
http://wiki.etree.org/index.php?page=FLACSeedingStandards - Suggested FLAC Seeding Standards
http://flac.sourceforge.net - FLAC sourcecode and pre-compiled binaries for various operating systems
http://sparkle.etree.org/flac - FLAC Tools installer for Windows
http://wiki.etree.org/index.php?page=FlacFrontend - FLAC Frontend Tutorial

Thanks, and everyone have a happy and safe weekend!

MW

[dmband_fan1]

i was reading this earlier today and it sounded great but it just adds confusion to the trading community especially for newbies/and ppl who are just getting a firm grasp on shn. i know you said not to convert it right away. hopefully this will be easier for new ppl to understand the technology:)

but heck the tapers should start churning out shows in this format now:D

[Joe M.]

Originally posted by dmband_fan1
but heck the tapers should start churning out shows in this format now:D

I totally agree... I think the sooner they do the better. It would be lest confusing if it happened now instead of months down the road. I just d/led the beta and if all goes smoothly i will be 100% for FLAC because its a lot easier to use then SHN's and will get a lot bigger because of the codec abilities...

[scott brown]

FLAC is over a year old.....and Shorten is still compatible with more platforms

you won't see me compressing 16 bit with flac...maybe 24, but definitely not 16

[Joe M.]

Originally posted by scott brown
FLAC is over a year old.....and Shorten is still compatible with more platforms

you won't see me compressing 16 bit with flac...maybe 24, but definitely not 16

now why is that?

[scott brown]

because, like i said, shorten is more compatible. flac has no mac os 9 support, for one thing. shorten does

[deercreek]

yawn

5% of 700MB is 35MB.
15% of 700MB is 105MB.

If the compression is closer to 5% better, I don't see the point. If it's more around the 15% mark, it might be worth talking about.

How is it so much easier than shn? I download shns, and burn them straight to CDs. If I want to listen to them on my PC, I use Shnamp. If I want to burn audio CDs, I drag and drop them into mkw to convert them. Double clicking on an md5 to check a show is not a big deal.

No reason to change entire communities for a small gain.

[dmband_fan1]

Originally posted by scott brown
because, like i said, shorten is more compatible. flac has no mac os 9 support, for one thing. shorten does


just read this from the etree mailing list:

"FLAC can be used under macos9 by using virtual PC. Of course, this isjust a shoddy workaround until native OS9 support is finished (it's in development now). "

[scott brown]

>>"FLAC can be used under macos9 by using virtual PC. Of course, this isjust a shoddy workaround until native OS9 support is finished (it's in development now). "<<

i told mike i'd look into it, i hope etree isn't saying that because of my comments only...

[Mike]

I started converting my 330 gigs of shows on my server yesterday..... yeah right

:)

Mike

[Joe M.]

Originally posted by scott brown
because, like i said, shorten is more compatible. flac has no mac os 9 support, for one thing. shorten does

not on X yet?

[Joe M.]

Originally posted by deercreek
yawn

5% of 700MB is 35MB.
15% of 700MB is 105MB.

If the compression is closer to 5% better, I don't see the point. If it's more around the 15% mark, it might be worth talking about.

How is it so much easier than shn? I download shns, and burn them straight to CDs. If I want to listen to them on my PC, I use Shnamp. If I want to burn audio CDs, I drag and drop them into mkw to convert them. Double clicking on an md5 to check a show is not a big deal.

No reason to change entire communities for a small gain.

a better compression is always good.... take the 10% middle of what you got and that 70mbs... or take momos server 330Gigs... and thats 33gigs! tats a lot...

much easier.... burning will be even easier with a codec... companies like Roxio can eventually use this codec or d/l a plugin so that it will convert and burn for you in one step....

listening will be even easier also... now with tags for information to be stored (ie taper or special notes) and a wide rariety of players will be able to play them now with the codec.

something that self checks its self or is included is always going to be better... all those new people that don't know about md5 that don't d/l the checks cause they don't know about them... well now they are integrated and can be done with no extra work.

FLAC is not as picky as SHN is... you don't have to follow its strick 16bit code... you can now go even farther with it....

its streamable now... (small thing)

but prob. the biggest out of them all is the active development team... for SHN its almost dieing, there is no one to keep it updated... the program was written many years ago and with new operating systems and the change in things... it will soon be outdated... already there have conflicts with XP and mkw and appending seek files... an active development team means up to date and many more things to come

[deercreek]

I'm still skeptical, but I'm also old fashioned(I still do my HTML/PHP in a simple text editor). I can't see the folks at Roxio saying, "Hey, let's implement this codec that most people have never heard of that burns audio from files that are 8x the size of an mp3." With XP, it seems that many people prefer the ease of use that comes with Windows Media Player, and I'm sure adding flac isn't high on Microsoft's list of things to do.

It seems to me that the kind of person who can't figure out .md5 wouldn't want to screw with a 20-30MB plus download for a song that sounds no better than a 2-3MB .mp3. ;)

As far as momo's 330GB goes, he's not your average person. :lol Your average person stores shows on CDs and the 35GB-70GB difference in file size could just mean more extra wasted space(if you're one of those anal types who doesn't want one show to share a CD with another) or more of a headache(if you're one of those anal types who wants to use up every last bit of space by having shows share CDs with files from other shows).

Then again, anything that's open source and has a site on sourceforge is ok by me. I've seen people talk about throwing out mp3 and going to Ogg Vorbis or whatever, but that hasn't happened yet. Although the shn community is incredibly tiny compared to the mp3 empire. I never thought I'd have to get a new newsreader that does this yEnc encoding stuff instead of uuencode just to get my MAME roms either.

[Joe M.]

if you could invest in either one of these...

with out any outside influence... just look at the FACTS... FLAC has so much more potential for growth compared to SHN and FLAC can offer so much more and even for less...

while SHN... holds the current "monopoly" but has its problems...

which would you put your $$$ in?...

undoubtably FLAC for me... :lol ... why did i make a comparison like this? i have no idea... lol

[AustinAl]

Originally posted by momo
I started converting my 330 gigs of shows on my server yesterday..... yeah right

:)

Mike
DUDE! don't do that. You know how much of a puter spaz I ma to begin with. then you go effin with my head about flac? Hell I still don't have my head around shns yet :lol
Alex

[nringelstetter]

"not on X yet?"

X currently is not very good for audio work. 9 is much better.

-nate

[scott brown]

>>SHN its almost dieing, there is no one to keep it updated<<

not true at all, there is ongoing development with shorten, it's up to v3.4 last i checked. maybe you're just not keeping up with it, but that doesn't mean developers aren't

[scott brown]

yes there is flac support in os x (X is a bsd unix variant, so it'll compile without problems)

but not all mac users can run os x...

[rhuss]

don't the tapers have to start converting to flac before we see any flac files??

and from scott brown is saying it doesn't look like he will be using flac anytime soon, not sure about the rest of the tapers ...

i also agree with the point that now we have a lot of newbies working with shn and finally 'getting it' and now we are going to switch everything to flac??

also wasn't ape supposed to be the next best thing?? i have yet to see any tapers converting to ape ...

i agree better compression and things like that would be nice.

[deercreek]

Originally posted by Joe M.
if you could invest in either one of these...

with out any outside influence... just look at the FACTS... FLAC has so much more potential for growth compared to SHN and FLAC can offer so much more and even for less...

while SHN... holds the current "monopoly" but has its problems...

which would you put your $$$ in?...

undoubtably FLAC for me... :lol ... why did i make a comparison like this? i have no idea... lol

Oh so we're talking share price here, ok. So shn is probably floating around $10 a share or something, with a 52 week high of maybe $20ish then. FLAC is coming out of the gate as a penny stock, what is it up to, maybe 30 cents a share? In that case, sure, I'd put money behind FLAC since the shares are cheap and you're not risking much. There's a possible upside if it is capable of market penetration.

But we're not talking about freakin' stocks. We're talking about a lossless audio format. If you really want to talk stocks, I'm sticking with a proven winner, I'm listening to scott brown. :multi

[SharonB]

Shorten is a lousy application for use in the mac world (OS9 and OSX). If Flac will allow Mac users to listen in compressed format and burn directly to CD then I say ... bring it on.

[twostep]

Originally posted by deercreek


Oh so we're talking share price here, ok. So shn is probably floating around $10 a share or something, with a 52 week high of maybe $20ish then. FLAC is coming out of the gate as a penny stock, what is it up to, maybe 30 cents a share? In that case, sure, I'd put money behind FLAC since the shares are cheap and you're not risking much. There's a possible upside if it is capable of market penetration.

But we're not talking about freakin' stocks. We're talking about a lossless audio format. If you really want to talk stocks, I'm sticking with a proven winner, I'm listening to scott brown. :multi

Point me to a good stock please.

Rick

[Joe M.]

ok... so i guess we will never see FLAC from the tapers... even though it would be an inprovement in my eyes... it doesn't look like it will happen I guess.... other things seem to be coming first in this case...

[deercreek]

You could always release the shows you tape as FLAC.

[Joe M.]

Originally posted by deercreek
You could always release the shows you tape as FLAC.

only released one.... but if i ever do another i will be sure to try FLAC out

[deercreek]

Then you can be a pioneer. :evil