FLAC CD vs. DVD format question

Norm Apter

I've been getting a number of great Pink Floyd shows through file sharing sites lately, particularly from the '75 and '77 tours, which are my favorite. Most, if not all, are audience recordings as opposed to soundboard but some have outstanding sound quality.

I just downloaded one in FLAC (as most are) except whereas most shows of two discs of material might amount to between 500 and 900MB in FLAC, this one is huge: 3.15 GB. I was able to listen to it on Winamp on my laptop and it sounds fantastic (Boston Garden, 06-18-1975). But when I tried to burn the files on to CDs, it was a no go.

After that, I looked closely at one of the tracks and noticed that it is in FLAC DVD (not CD) format.

Does anybody know if I have any options? (i.e. conversion programs) Again, it will play on my PC but I would like to listen to it through my 2 channel. I just have a regular redbook player in my 2 channel though, so I'm assuming it won't play DVDs.

Or, I suppose I could burn this to DVD and listen to it through my HT system??? (though that would be less preferable).

disneyjoe7

What you have is a space issue CD is 700mb where DVD is 4.7gb, not sure how you're going to get a file at 900mb under 700mb.

strider

I've not come across anything that's indicated more then one type of FLAC file.
If it is indeed a file conversion issue, try db Poweramp Pro. You can get a trial version for free, and it converts pretty much any file type I've come across to FLAC.

John30_30

I would guess the people who recorded that did it at 96khz and 24bit sampling size rather than standard 44 and 16.
If you can transcode the rates down to typical CD 44 and 16 via a flac converter, it will shrink it by probably half, and I really doubt there'll be any info missed. A/B the files for yourself.

p.s. Foobar will allow you to set the bitsampling down from whatever it is to 16 in the lossless section. You'll need flac.exe somewhere for it to find.

adam2434

Building on John's post - can you verify the bits per sample, sample rate, and number of channels? This will determine why the file is so large and can also help determine how you may want to bust it down to something that can be put on a CD.

In Winamp, clicking on "View file info..." for a track will provide the info above. The attachment is a screen shot of this.

bigaudiofanatic

When I extracted the audio from my elton john concert the higher quality could not allow everything to fit onto one cd; I believe that a dvd has much better quality than a cd but better quality I am not sure.

Norm Apter

adam2434 wrote: »

Building on John's post - can you verify the bits per sample, sample rate, and number of channels? This will determine why the file is so large and can also help determine how you may want to bust it down to something that can be put on a CD.

In Winamp, clicking on "View file info..." for a track will provide the info above. The attachment is a screen shot of this.

Yes, both you and John seem to be right. Here is the info I was able to glean from clicking on "properties" of the song Echoes (so these are the properties of just one song).

Size: 518.9 MB
Original size: 705 MB
Length: 21 minutes 23 seconds
Channels: 2 (stereo)
Sample Rate: 96 KHz
Sample Size: 24 bit
Bit Rate: 4,608 kbps (DVD)
Encoder: FLAC Reference libFLAC 1.1.2 2050205
Audio Quality: Perfect (lossless)
Type: Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC)

---

Since reading your posts, I went back and did a keyword search for the show on this website and found another torrent for this show with a 44 KHz / 16 bit sample size. It totals only 930 MB, and thus can fit easily on two CDs. Therefore I won't need to convert anything in this case.

I tried to A/B on Winamp (on my laptop) but couldn't detect too much of a difference between the two using this device.

Out of curiousity, though, do you think it would be possible for me to burn the larger version (96/24) onto a blank DVD (or two DVDs) so that I could compare them using my HT system? (If I had any blank DVDs sitting around, I would have already tried but I don't so I thought I'd ask to see if it might be worth it to pick some up. I've actually never used blank DVDs for music or otherwise).

adam2434

Norm Apter wrote: »

Out of curiousity, though, do you think it would be possible for me to burn the larger version (96/24) onto a blank DVD (or two DVDs) so that I could compare them using my HT system? (If I had any blank DVDs sitting around, I would have already tried but I don't so I thought I'd ask to see if it might be worth it to pick some up. I've actually never used blank DVDs for music or otherwise).

I'm pretty sure you would need special DVD authoring software to do that, not the standard fare that comes with one's DVD burner.

Another way (without discs) would be a direct spdif connection from the PC to a digital input on the HT, assuming you have a PC that can output spdif.

John30_30

adam2434 wrote: »

I'm pretty sure you would need special DVD authoring software to do that, not the standard fare that comes with one's DVD burner.

Another way (without discs) would be a direct spdif connection from the PC to a digital input on the HT, assuming you have a PC that can output spdif.

You could convert the big flac to a big wav, then split that to fit on 2 dvd's using something like Audacity. (hassle)
I don't know of any dvd players that recognize flac natively, and converting to mp3 would entirely defeat the original purpose of the high sampling.

Or you could run your laptop audio jacked into your stereo amp and see what it sounds like that way via winamp.