24bit AIF to FLAC encoder question

[bitsteam]

Having ignored the FLAC format for all too long, I finally understood that ‘lossless’ obviously means ‘lossless!’, not “you won't hear the difference” as in the mid '90s with MP3.

I want to start releasing my own music alternatively to vinyl as FLACs made from the master files which are 24bit AIF/44.1, or 96kHz more recently.

While I understood the basic concept of FLAC now, the entire Encoder Setting options in the preferences are still confusing to me. Just by changing the Compression Rate (0 – 8), some to me mysterious boxes will be checked /unchecked, so I am unsure which effect they have on the resulting file.

I was wondering which settings you will recommend in order to shrink down the file size without any changes to the original material?

Thanks a lot for your help,
Stephan

[mattn]

Just by changing the Compression Rate (0 – , some to me mysterious boxes will be checked /unchecked, so I am unsure which effect they have on the resulting file. I was wondering which settings you will recommend in order to shrink down the file size without any changes to the original material?

All of them. Lossless is lossless; there will be no change to the resulting sound when playing back / expanding back to WAV/AIFF, regardless of the compression rate. The compression rate governs how much smaller the file size will be, and that's all it does. Higher numbers give smaller file size, but there is a point of diminishing returns at about 6; after that, the compression takes much longer without much benefit. For technical information, see:

http://flac.sourceforge.net/documentati ... ng_options

[bitsteam]

Thanks a lot for the clarification, mattn!