Depends on what you mean by "natively" If "can I drag it into my project without converting," then Live & Fruity Loops do. It gets ~~converted~~ ~~decoded~~ ~~decompressed~~ uncompressed and transcoded to bitstream somewhere along the way, not sure if this happens during import or in real time.

Compressing files = conversion, by definition. Conversion: the process of changing or causing something to change from one form to another.

Conversion shouldn't imply quality loss. Converting a 16-bit file.wav to file.rar changes the file's format -- data must be decoded; players expecting [wav header][bitstream] won't understand it without a .rar CODEC

...and understanding the structure of .rar container format (to handle the relevant audio stream in .rar files containing multiple streams (video, audio, bananas) and file types (.nfo, .rar, .banana). So yeah, .rar is both a codec and a non-streamable, lossless container format.

I'm here all week, try the veal

 

So you for you, taking a bunch of jpegs and stuffing them in a zip archive is a conversion to you???
For me it's not… because the data just get crunched and then reassembled on extraction.
And that's exactly what Kontakt does. And that's just losstless compression, no conversion touching the actuall bitstream of the audio

I rest my case.

 

Yes. By definition. A less contrived example: To drag a FLAC file into your DAW (the one that doesn't handle FLAC files natively), you must first *convert* it to a format your DAW does understand, like .wav. While, at first glance, the problem seem insurmountable (Googling for "file decompressor/uncruncher/reassembler" proves wholly unsatisfactory), fear not: try Googling "file *converter*." There! A file *converter,* a.k.a. "media *converter*," will *convert* that FLAC file into a formats your DOW will (hopefully) understand. Transcode it, if you will. Try XMedia Recode: free & works.

If you feel "media converter" is a lie or, at a minimum, a dangerous misnomer, consider letting those responsible know just what you think of those who recklessly misuse ~~emotionally loaded~~ highly technical terms like "convert" & play fast and loose with the Queen's English in general

 

Studio One. Unless you count converting to WAV right after you drag the file in not native, but then so is any non-WAV file support in any DAW. You just can't work on compressed files natively, it needs to be unpacked for efficient and easy processing.

 

FLAC is the go-to format for lossless compression but it's not much more efficient than compressing your WAV/AIFF files in rar format with audio compression enabled. Rar also has the big advantage that you can include an adjustable amount of recovery data and if you split your archives into multiple parts and back them up to another drive, I would say that you're quite safe.

Modern lossy compression formats with good efficiency are OGG, MP4/M4A and especially Opus.
After doing many side-by-side comparisons with different types of samples and different compression rates, I have started compressing a lot of my samples using OGG, and here's why:
OGG and M4A are widely supported, m4a even more especially on Apple devices.
OGG quality levels between 8 and 9 have been virtually indistinguishable from the original, which is in contrast to the best mp3 encoders I know when using 320kbps. Transients, Synth bleeps and certain overtone combinations still show a noticeable difference at 320k when compared side-by-side. For most applications of course, mp3 320k is more than acceptable.
My typical compression is OGG at quality level 7 and I'm using the command line encoders from rarewares.org.
A very important advantage of the OGG compressed versions is that I've never had any phasing issues and sample length and position were always accurate which can be a big problem with certain mp3 and m4a encoders, some introducing silence before the sample start. Not a problem with consumer music but a big issue when compressing individual samples.
A disadvantage of any lossy compression is that the compression format will sooner or later become outdated and probably will have to be re-compressed with another level of quality loss.
But converting back to WAV/AIFF will most likely always be possible.

 

im sure this has been said but im not reading through everything because i am tired and lazy.
storage is pretty cheap these days, it might be better to just invest in more space rather than go through the hassle of converting it all. also, having WAVs means you are pretty much guaranteed to be able to just drop them straight into your project, with FLAC you may find yourself having to convert things back every time you use a sample.

i would also recommend having a clean out of your samples. too much choice is not a good thing.

 

Wrong definition, sorry. Compressing any files(s) to rar or zip or whatever equivalent is not conversion. It's a non-destructive process used for archiving files that helps users store data intact but in a smaller size so they can save space. It has nothing to do with file format conversion where we process one file and change it to another similar etc. Conversion in computer files is a destructive process that changes a file's format permanently.
Cheers

 

Team "compression" takes this round

 

Off the top of my head: REAPER, Studio One, Ableton Live, Cubendo, Samplitude all support FLAC in some capacity

 

@5teezo "Name one DAW which supports FLAC natively." Cubase.

I while ago when I had less cash and HDs where more expensive, I did go down the road of converting most of my sample library to flac and I saved 1/3 of my HD space for more samples. Especially as Cubase had added native flac support. However, its not quite that simple, while Cubase supported flac, Groove Agent didn't, neither did Machine, or Battery, or just about anything else, so it became a bit of a chore.

Fast forward 5 years and I would have to say it's simpler to buy a new hard drive or ask yourself how many of these samples do I actually use...... Do yourself a favour and delete 80% of them.

 

So is every lossless compression file format, e.g FLAC. "Conversion" is not a technical term & in no way implies lossiness -- you're thinking lossy compression (which, too, is conversion, but lossy). You can *convert* a binary string into hex or even https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonal_system -- nothing is lost, you can keep converting back and forth 'til the cows come home with zero data degradation, how can this not obvious?

What do you think winrar does, exactly? What do you think *every compression algo does*?

Cheers

 

The one i've been using for 10 years+: FL Studio
feelsgoodman

 

I thought it gets rid of annoying types who put in the same category rar and flac just because they use similar compression algos, like rar is an audio file
I don't care if the compression process is similar. You can post all the (quite uninspired) memes you like, thing is, flac is not wav. It may practically be identical in bits and bytes when decompressed during playback but it's compressed whereas wav is just a container with raw pcm audio data.
In real world applications (reads: daw) ,this means flac is not suited for multi-tracking because .flac puts a much bigger load on your cpu than .wav when played back, since it is decoded realtime.
Multitrack playback/mixing etc. with .wav may only raise your disk activity (compared to flac playback) since it's bigger in size but this is much less of a nuisance or concern than cpu load and realtime performance. This is why flac is fine for archiving music files but not daw work.
So, flac is not the same as wav simply because it is compressed. And converting wav files to flac IS a destructive process because flac needs to be decompressed in order to be played back.
And please refrain from reverting to dic-tionaries, you 'll see in time i know my English quite well.
Oh, and my 1s and 0s too:
https://opensource.com/article/18/9/comparing-audio-files-flac-wav
Cheers
PS: The redeeming quality of flac when used to store sample files, is that it can retain special metadata like tempo, root key, bpm etc. Still, due to its compressed nature its wide usage is storing our music collection.

 

Last edited: Feb 27, 2020

I guess it depends on how much space you already have. I tend to have all the samples i use in a project copied to the project so that I wont get into trouble at any point and the project is lost because of missing samples. Tracks that contain vst synths or Sounds from sample libraries you should bounce to audio before you archive the project because if you come back to it in 5 or maybe 10 years chances are that the synths or libraries don't exist anymore or at least won't be usable. After the project is finished i might even convert all of the audio to flac, depending on the project size, so it takes up a lot less space and i can still get back to it if i want without a big loss in quality. Other then that, if i need space in my sample library i go through it and delete stuff i have not used for some time and i probably wont use ever again anyways. I have favorite folders for about everything where i put the samples and libraries i want to keep so i have my goto sounds secured. All the other stuff I don't really care about and I delete whatever seems to be necessary if i need more space. I guess if you have 1TB of sound or even more, it should be enough to make music for the rest of your life and if you get new stuff constantly you will end up using the new stuff anyways so why should you care about all the bits and bytes that don't do much apart from filling up your harddrive space. Sure i will end up loosing something that i could have used in the future, but making music is about creativity and there is no such thing as the one sound that will make your next production a hit, there are a lot of sounds to choose from. And even if there was that one sound, I am pretty sure that you wouldn't be lucky enough to find it in your 16tb data store anyways and if you are not able to come up with it by yourself, you might not even have recognized it scrolling through your 1.423.587 presets again.
There definitely is a point where too many choices will rather just slow you down than further your creativity in my opinion so i guess it is good to be bold and to get rid of stuff. I mean if you really remember a sound that you deleted and still know the library it was from, you can even find it again on the internet in most cases if you really need it, but then again how big are the chances that you even remember any of it. In my case that would be close to zero so I tend to delete and forget, or the other way round.

 

Last edited: Jul 10, 2020

really depends on scale and accessibility, for ex. if someone has let's say 20TB worth of samples in 24bit/96kHz WAV they actively use, they should change their workflow first I guess :D and having reliable storage solution (aforementioned 20TB would mean 4x8TB NAS with 1 disk fault tolerance RAID as bare minimum) for such amounts of data is nowhere as cheap as simply buying another external drive - with use of lossless compressed files like FLAC, savings on storage costs may be worth it..

this^^

I think OPUS was designed with speech/broadcast in mind, so I wouldn't recommend it for everything anyway...

Reaper, it doesn't even care what samplerate source files you mix together within a project ;)

depending on source material and rar/7z/flac compression settings, I observed the result filesize is about same, recovery data portion is handy, but it's questionable if it's not better to have a reliable storage (NAS with regular RAID array consistency checks for ex.) instead

the way I prefer to use is, record everything as WAV and render out FLAC

 

Cubase does! Jeez, format wars rly? Anyway, just use flac, lossless & it does save a lot of space.

 

To be honest. If the issue is lack of space, then taking into account the fact that audio files take not a lot of space at all (compare to video files), you should probably just get an additional/external HDD. Converting to FLAC seems like a nice solution, but by the time you actually put them in your DAW project, it's been converted back to WAV and saved in your project's cache folder. So you only get more in terms of filesize (you now have both your original FLAC file and WAV cache file that your DAW can actually use), and you give yourself additional waiting time when importing FLACs or after recording something, when your DAW has to decompress that to a WAV file. Working with compressed files is just not worth it for audio.

 

If you define codec & compression, you'll go nowhere fast. Instead, it's better to define support & native. Here's my take:

1st-class support for FLAC:

REAPER. It creates a small index file, & subsequent loads are fast. NO intermediary disk WAV is created. EVER.

2nd & 3rd class support for FLAC.

• Adobe AUdition converts to WAV & stores it in a temporary cache.
• Sonar X2 converts to WAV & stores it in a PERSISTENT cache, which is not really better than supporting it at all.
  
• It sounds like S1 & Cubendo are 2/3rd class
• Not sure about Sony ACID

AFAIK Kontakt NKI compression converts & compresses samples to its own proprietary format (akin to FLAC), then decompresses them on playback.

 

Cheap-skate, not keepsake.

Common.

So if it's just to save space & will have to be uncompressed to use again, why has nobody mentioned simple, OS native file compression?
Can't op just archive everything as .zip, and be done with it?

 

Filesystem compression works, but just like FLAC will need decompressing on the fly, potentially increasing both CPU and disk usage. ZIP is nice for long-term storage of things you're not using common, but I'd OP might just as well get rid of the stuff he's not using. Plus you know, it's 2020. You get 4TB disks for like $50 and it's a non-issue then.