Quiet or subdued sounding FLACs?

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RanceJustice

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Hey guys. I recently picked up a couple of CDs that I wanted to rip and encode into FLACs. The ripping part went fine - I used Winamp Pro to rip them to WAVs. Listening to these, they sound loud and clear. However, the problems come when I use the FLAC frontend to convert them over to FLACs.

The conversion goes smoothly, though FLAC throws out some warnings about expecting certain bits but getting others on certain songs. I have it set to Level 6. However, when I try to play the FLACs they sound... less vibrant and softer at the same volume compared to the WAVs. Since FLACs are supposed to be lossless, I'm not sure why this is. Is there something I should check into? Or some setting I should change? Thanks.

Edit: The WAVS are 1411kbps at 44hz - which if I'm correct is the highest "CD Quality" audio setting?
 
You may wanna try ripping them with EAC and the FLAC plugin it has, or try a different FLAC decoder... I'm assuming you're using winamp, you may wanna try foobar. The winamp FLAC decoder sucks anyways :p

Other than that, no idea.

the black knight always triumphs!
 
Alright, I'll try the EAC method. I'm using the "installed" FLAC 1.1.2 (I think) and encoded with the front end, not through winamp itself. Is the native FLAC decoder crappy or just the one that comes with winamp without downloading the FLAC package seperately.

I'll also try opening them in ZoomPlayer - that thing has so many options it should be able to figure something out. Thanks
 
There should be any difference at all in a FLAC encoding.

The 2 things that come to mind:


1. That is not a smooth conversion; you shouldn't have those errors you mentioned. That would probably indicate an improperly constructed WAVE file which could be the source of your problem.

2. The other issue may have to do with replay-gain. Wave files don't have any information of this type stored, but FLACs can. Turning off replay-gain on your player would solve this.
 
As far as I know there's only one FLAC plugin for winamp, and the reason I dislike it is the way it handles errors - any error and it dies. It is apparently unable to just ignore a playback error :/

I've never used the FLAC frontend, I just use EAC. My FLACs all turn out just fine :p

the black knight always triumphs!
 
I misunderstood about where the errors were occuring.

I have used Winamp to a limited degree, and I did not experience any trouble with it. You can turn off replay-gain in Winamp, so I'd suggest that to maybe help with the sound issues you are experiencing.

As for the stopping playback on decode errors, that is just how the player is designed.

I know foobar2k doesn't have that limitation, but there is somewhat of a learning curve to get that player set-up and customized.
 
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