Hello boys
I was seeing on youtube that they did a conversion between wav to flac and they did a test inverting the phase, and, since there was silence, there was no loss compared to other formats.
then i was wondering
Would it be a good idea to transfer some samples that I have from wav to flac to save space on the hard drive?

 

Maybe. But for me the hassle factor would outweigh spending a few bucks on a new drive. They're pretty cheap now, even with all the crap going on.

 

I did that a few months ago, a 1.5tb library became about 560gb and works like a charm with all well known applications... Too bad there is not much hype about Flac, it's definitely underrated. I encourage you to do it, Reapers Batch converter works great for that job!

 

I might do some extra work like this if you are talking about SSD space. But you aren't. Standard external USB drives are about 20-25$ per terabyte. In which case, there is no way I would do all the batch conversions, etc; for such a small gain.

 

I have to agree with you, this is a task for SSD drives only or laptop portability, doing something like that for a desktop computer with cheap mechanical drives is not going to pay off for two simple reasons, "time" to convert everything and "compatibility" (WAV is still the king in that area)...

 

Yes, I do this especially when archiving larger stems. Saves up to 60% - 80% in some cases.
dBpoweramp can even preserve embedded metadata (like timestamps in ProTools and Logic, ACID data, etc.). And technically advanced DAWs support FLAC out-of-the-box. There is no need to decode the files back to Wave/AIFF.
The only downside is that FLAC doesn't support 32-bit float...

 

On the other side, 32 float is useless because DA AD converters are 24 bits only ... because audio CHIPS on converters are 24 bits

 

He's talking about using plugins inside the DAW which are a higher bit depth than the session is.

 

No he is talking about 32float audio in FLAC ... and it is USELESS.
No need for more than 24bits for ANYTHING in audio domain.

 

In order to understand if playing a Flac file is more CPU intensive than an uncompressed file I did a test:
I played 84 tracks with wav files on Ableton, then I converted the same files to Flac and played them again (Ableton support natively Flac)

Result:
The CPU usage seems to be the same

Nice!

 

How about some pitch automation and time stretching? I imagine that applies extra stress on the cpu

 

Yes FLAC is very nice !
Decompression is a lot less stressful than compression.

Batch conversion is a good option.
Especially with automated tools : you go away and let the software do ALL

https://dbpoweramp.com/dmc.htm

Free full for 21 days :D
Try on one folder
If it works right, you can auto convert all sub folders AND auto delete source file once converted (if i remember well).

 

I was converting the files and researching on my own, I looked for information on the internet, but it was found regarding "Loops" in flac, it only talks about songs.

Well what I did was experiment to see if I had lost data, I passed several loops and one shot to Flac (I have 200 gb in sampes hehehe)

What I did was stretch them both and see if I lost some information, but no, I did this test by inverting the phase, that is

I put both songs and in a winter the phase and if it remains silent, it is that there is no loss.

So as I was saying, I stretched the loops in wav and flac, inverted the phase and apparently there is no loss.

Most of the loops and samples I have are in 24 bit. And here's an interesting point. If I convert from 24 to 16 bits in wav, I don't hear any loss, but if I convert from 24 bits in wav to 16 bits in flac, it does feel like a "sssssssss" in loss, very slight, but there is.

What yes, it is very stressful to go through all the files through the folders and subfolders.
The fastest way I found was to put it in Studio one in the mode that it has for mastering, and drag 300 tracks. Sometimes the result is good and some space is saved, for example (700 mb to 400mb), but also sometimes there is not much difference and something like (700mb in wav, 600 in flac), I don't know why that happens .

I'm going to try the program you mentioned PifPafPif , dbpoweramp.

Sorry if my English is bad, help me with a translator.

 

this tool is excellent! With this it is super fast, also, if I hover over the files it tells me if it is 24/16 bits, etc. thanks for sharing

 

No, its not useless. Read about that you never ever again have to worry about "things being in the red" and dither if you use 32bit float. I use 32bit wavpack for everything. Its a compressed format, so all these 0s are compressed to literally nothing. Can be tagged (mp3tag), can be read by any halfway decent software (for me its Reaper and foobar) and it takes space like 24bit flac. So... I have a dynamic range to record and mix of >1.500 db (!!! no typo !!!) and never worry about too low or too hot. Normalize afterwards, done.

So 32bit float is the format to go.

 

Absolute top class:
dBpoweramp www.dbpoweramp.com
Mp3tag www.mp3tag.de/en/download.html

 

It's not only about finished files ready for publishing/listening.
So, it is not useless during the course of your work. When you save files in progress you should use 32float, to avoid digital rounding, truncating, etc.

 

Not quite so. I compared playing the same file as WAV and as a FLAC on several occasions, and although they are bit-identical in the end, FLAC uses some more CPU power for unpacking and seems to sound just slightly worse because of the increased digital noise in the CPU.

 

Basically yes, and it's even more than human ear dynamics requires (145 vs 120dB), however it doesn't hurt to work in 32 bits (floating within daw, 1500dB!!!, then integer wav file save) to scale it down in the final stage.

I guess it depends on the hw too, not specified here.
But it shouldn't break a sweat even in older system.

I don't know, I may be wrong, but I think you can only save 32bits integer wav, floating is inside daw computation.