FLAC vs. Apple Lossles Audio Quality through Squeeze Box

[garym]

Yes but that's your tagging scheme I think it's fair to say that no ones doing these thing the same way around here .

I also have an unfounded suspicion that the folks that have a mixed content collection a bit haphazardly sorted is not the guys/gals that are meticulous taggers with perfect tags either .
Such feature may bug out completely exactly for those who wants it ?

Edit. I think some of my stuff would be hit to , when I begun this journey to streaming music i did not know any good tagging practices .
I do have some flac/id3v1 tagging in some old files for example ( the still work rigth now ,the information is not conflicting or incomplete )

agree 100%

[simes_pep]

agree 100%

But if the details are exactly the same - Album title, Artist, Album Artist, etc. and only the file format is different (e.g. ALAC, ACC or mp3) then could LMS preference the FLAC version, particularly if the bit rate and sampling frequency of the FLAC and ALAC were the same as well?

Thanks,
Simon.

[garym]

But if the details are exactly the same - Album title, Artist, Album Artist, etc. and only the file format is different (e.g. ALAC, ACC or mp3) then could LMS preference the FLAC version, particularly if the bit rate and sampling frequency of the FLAC and ALAC were the same as well?

Thanks,
Simon.

anything is possible of course, but there is no existing plugin or other function that does this in LMS (that I know of, and this question comes up about once a month for the last few years)

[aubuti]

But if the details are exactly the same - Album title, Artist, Album Artist, etc. and only the file format is different (e.g. ALAC, ACC or mp3) then could LMS preference the FLAC version, particularly if the bit rate and sampling frequency of the FLAC and ALAC were the same as well?

One problem is the naming used for different tags. In the ID3v2 tag spec (see, for example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ID3) the tags aren't called Album, Album Artist, etc. They are called things like TALB, TPE1, etc. And the mappings used from ID3v2 to Vorbis Comments (FLAC) and other tagging schemes are subject to interpretation, with no universally acceptable correspondence from one to the other.

It's not to say that it couldn't be done, but it does mean that even establishing that "...the details are exactly the same..." is not a trivial matter, especially if one is talking about writing a plugin or tool for public consumption, where all kinds of practices, kludges, and "de facto standards" may be encountered even within a single music library.

I happen to arrange mine the same way garym described in post #15 -- it's easy and it works.

[stereoptic]

I recently purchased the 96/24 .wav files for George Harrison's All Things Must Pass. I used dbpoweramp to convert them to .flac and then added all of my tags and copied over to my "high resolution" folder that is read by the Squeezebox Touch. Then I realized that I didn't convert to flac, I never changed the pull down setting on dbpoweramp so they converted to Apple Lossless by mistake. The files are still 96/24, but since they are not in my standard iTunes directory, how is the SBT 'reading' these? Is there any difference between a 96/24 flac and a 96/24 Apple Lossless file to the SBT?

[aubuti]

Is there any difference between a 96/24 flac and a 96/24 Apple Lossless file to the SBT?

The difference is that the SBT can decode the FLAC natively, whereas the Apple Lossless has to be transcoded by Logitech Media Server. I believe that under the default settings, LMS transcodes Apple Lossless to FLAC and sends that to the Touch. Other than that, lossless is lossless.

EDIT: Who is selling 96/24 of ATMP? My only copy is MP3 (well, plus far-from-pristine vinyl), so if they don't gouge too much for the hi-res I may consider it.

[stereoptic]

The difference is that the SBT can decode the FLAC natively, whereas the Apple Lossless has to be transcoded by Logitech Media Server. I believe that under the default settings, LMS transcodes Apple Lossless to FLAC and sends that to the Touch. Other than that, lossless is lossless.

EDIT: Who is selling 96/24 of ATMP? My only copy is MP3, so if they don't gouge too much for the hi-res I may consider it.

Thanks for the answer! You can buy the 96/24 .wav files at georgeharrison.com in the store tab. $30. Best sounding digital version. From the master tapes - forgives all of the sins of the 2001 remaster!