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Need advice: FLAC --> mp3

K

kppanic

Limp Gawd
Joined
May 14, 2008
Messages
164
Hi all;

I've got some FLACs I would like to encode into MP3's for my iPhone.

What are the best ways to go about doing this? I'll be going the higest bitrate as size won't really matter for me, but which encoder would be most appreciative in this case?

Thanks!
 
what i do is play the .flac using winamp (setting its output to Nullsoft disk writer) that makes a .wav file out of the .flac, then you can use your favorite mp3 encoder to encode the wav file to mp3 :)

there might be a program that reencode the .flac to .mp3 directly though
 
leSLIe said:
what i do is play the .flac using winamp (setting its output to Nullsoft disk writer) that makes a .wav file out of the .flac, then you can use your favorite mp3 encoder to encode the wav file to mp3 :)

there might be a program that reencode the .flac to .mp3 directly though
Click to expand...

Thanks for that,

i am going to use something called dBpoweramp Music Converter, it looks convenient.

I am confused though; because I don't care about the file size shall I go variable or constant bit rate?

CBR would be 320kbps but the higest VBR i can get is 240kbps. Which one would "net" a better quality mp3?
I will also be going Joint Stereo as I don't see the point of going Full Stereo.
 
FLAC files > official FLAC GUI app > uncompressed WAV > favorite LAME GUI app > 320Kbps CBR MP3

/thread
 
I use Foobar2000 to convert FLAC to mp3. It allows a simple 1 step conversion which is way easier than what everyone else has suggested. It's also multi-threaded. It will do a conversion on each core, so it's really quick. It also keeps the tags intact.

I don't see why you're interested in going 320kbit CBR, but that's your call.
 
kppanic said:
I am confused though; because I don't care about the file size shall I go variable or constant bit rate?
Click to expand...
If you want to throw all efficiency out the door, CBR. Otherwise, VBR.

kppanic said:
CBR would be 320kbps but the higest VBR i can get is 240kbps. Which one would "net" a better quality mp3?
Click to expand...
Generally it doesn't matter. When the encoder (LAME) fails on a problematic sample, it typically fails at all bit rates, even 320kbps CBR. Its coding model just isn't very resilient against certain types of artifacts.

kppanic said:
I will also be going Joint Stereo as I don't see the point of going Full Stereo.
Click to expand...
Let the encoder decide what to with respect to that :)

criccio said:
FLAC files > official FLAC GUI app > uncompressed WAV > favorite LAME GUI app > 320Kbps CBR MP3
Click to expand...
You can go straight from FLAC to MP3 with dBpoweramp.
 
Why is it generally not recommended? It's actually recommended seeing as how it's the only way to preserve tags (dBpoweramp also preserves embedded album art).

EDIT: Just to throw a tad of science in here, the only difference is that the the LAME encoder will rely on stream piping rather than data in a container. It's the same stream regardless of whether it's piped or if it's from a WAV/AIFF container.
 
I just tested a FLAC with embedded art conversion with LAME 3.98r2 and it didn't preserve the artwork (this is with foobar 0.9.6.1). Is there a trick to it?

(I don't embed art in my FLACs any longer, so it's moot for me, though I'm still a bit curious)
 
Stereodude said:
I use Foobar2000 to convert FLAC to mp3. It allows a simple 1 step conversion which is way easier than what everyone else has suggested. It's also multi-threaded. It will do a conversion on each core, so it's really quick. It also keeps the tags intact.

I don't see why you're interested in going 320kbit CBR, but that's your call.
Click to expand...

i do the same for my devices that need mp3s... works fine
 
Agreed with the foobar2000 conversion methodology, been using that for a long time now, never had issues, works fine. Doesn't move the artwork if it's embedded in the FLAC, however - I think that's something they're hoping to do in a future release but, as LAME doesn't do that sort of processing, then it would rely solely on foobar2000 to do it as a "finishing move" after the mp3 conversion is done with the externally called LAME encoder.
 
Soundconverter is fairly intuitive.

I thought there might be a flac2mp3 program (like the mp32ogg) but I didn't find one.
 
phide said:
I just tested a FLAC with embedded art conversion with LAME 3.98r2 and it didn't preserve the artwork (this is with foobar 0.9.6.1). Is there a trick to it?
Click to expand...
Ooops... :eek:

I don't use artwork in my FLAC files, so I never tried it and assumed it would keep it. Sorry for the misinformation.
 
Stereodude said:
I don't see why you're interested in going 320kbit CBR, but that's your call.
Click to expand...

Why is this a bad idea? i really have no idea.

My reasoning is that while 320kbps seems inefficient it will actually have the extra bandwidth to play with in case it needs to "fall" below the 320kbps mark. I could be smoking something though, so tell me I am wrong.

So you suggest that I go VBR vice CBR? I say again, size and storage are not a problem.
 
The idea of variable bitrate is to reduce the bitrate where it isnt needed.
So the theory goes that you can get the same quality in less space, theory isnt always reality, you need to experiment to find what suits you .
If size doesnt matter, choose whichever sounds best to you.
There may be no difference in sound quality, thats for you to decide, using your hardware.
 
kppanic said:
Why is this a bad idea? i really have no idea.
Click to expand...
I didn't say it was a bad idea. It's just something with no point. You really aren't going to gain anything by going CBR320 vs. VBR -V0. On the other hand you will not be able to fit as much on your iPhone.
 
Stereodude said:
I didn't say it was a bad idea. It's just something with no point. You really aren't going to gain anything by going CBR320 vs. VBR -V0. On the other hand you will not be able to fit as much on your iPhone.
Click to expand...

Awesome, I guess it looks like the quality between CBR and VBR are at par with each other. Will be going VBR to save space then. Cheers.
 
I use MediaMonkey to convert my FLAC files into -V0 VBR MP3 files... Does it in one step and preserves all tags (including artwork) with no issues whatsoever. I dunno if it's multi-threaded or if it does it as fast as foobar (never bothered to look tbh) but it couldn't be any simpler, and that's the reason I use MediaMonkey to organize my library to begin with (I still use foobar for playback tho, most of the time).
 
kppanic said:
My reasoning is that while 320kbps seems inefficient it will actually have the extra bandwidth to play with in case it needs to "fall" below the 320kbps mark.
Click to expand...
I'm not really sure what you mean by this. Do you mean that, if the processor isn't able to keep up with decoding, you'll have a kind of "reserve bandwidth"?

That actually can't happen. If there's a hardware issue, it'll drop one or more frames entirely rather than trying to reduce the bandwidth (which it can't really do). The iPhone's ARM processor is more than powerful enough to decode anything while you're busy doing anything else, so you don't need to worry about that (I know this very much first-hand).
 
He's alluding to the fact that converting from one lossy format to another one isn't the best idea, since you're losing data along the way (unlike going from FLAC to MP3 or FLAC to whatever).
 
Impulse said:
He's alluding to the fact that converting from one lossy format to another one isn't the best idea, since you're losing data along the way (unlike going from FLAC to MP3 or FLAC to whatever).
Click to expand...

Oh I see... there was a misunderstanding. I only gave the mp32ogg program as an example; I didn't condone its use.
 
Stereodude said:
It's not a good idea to convert one lossy format to another unless you have a really good reason to do so because generally speaking you will gain nothing, and just add additional artifacts.
Click to expand...

Sure. The other guy, I believe, misunderstood me. I just gave that program name as an example.
 
phide said:
I'm not really sure what you mean by this. Do you mean that, if the processor isn't able to keep up with decoding, you'll have a kind of "reserve bandwidth"?

That actually can't happen. If there's a hardware issue, it'll drop one or more frames entirely rather than trying to reduce the bandwidth (which it can't really do). The iPhone's ARM processor is more than powerful enough to decode anything while you're busy doing anything else, so you don't need to worry about that (I know this very much first-hand).
Click to expand...

What I am saying is:

if given a constant 320kbps bandwidth -- and I am purely speculating at this point -- the encoder would have more "bandwidth" to work with than it would if it were VBR. Instead of the encoder going "oh I don't need to put as much data into this frame so i'll reduce it to 192kbps" maybe I can force it to say "no cram all the data you can, even if it means including inaudible/indistinguishable bits of data into all 320kbps." The argument behind this is that there is always MORE data to a lossless/FLAC than in a lossy/MP3 format at any given time -- You can never put too much "data" into a lossy from a lossless.

I guess it's a similar argument to "Full or Joint Stereo."
 
Okay, gotcha. With LAME, -b320 does pretty much exactly as you describe, forcing every frame to the same exact size. Even totally silent ones :)

Stereo/joint stereo is a bit different. Joint stereo in LAME is typically lossless, and using mid-side coding allows for more bits to be allocated to the perceptual coding process. Like I said though, you don't need to force LAME to utilize joint stereo since it uses its own algorithm to determine for what frames to encode mid-side and when to encode full stereo.

For archive-quality, the only command you need to use is -b 320.
 
phide said:
Okay, gotcha. With LAME, -b320 does pretty much exactly as you describe, forcing every frame to the same exact size. Even totally silent ones :)

Stereo/joint stereo is a bit different. Joint stereo in LAME is typically lossless, and using mid-side coding allows for more bits to be allocated to the perceptual coding process. Like I said though, you don't need to force LAME to utilize joint stereo since it uses its own algorithm to determine for what frames to encode mid-side and when to encode full stereo.

For archive-quality, the only command you need to use is -b 320.
Click to expand...

Thanks phide. This makes lifer so much easier. -b 320 and "fire and forget."
 
WinLAME my first choice - then foobar2k. You could always write out a wav with winamp and put it into any mp3 encoder.
 
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