What about FLAC?

[KaoDome]

FLAC format is not supported right now... Any plans on supporting it?

Thanks for your time.

http://flac.sourceforge.net/

[davidf]

Let me add my vote to the request for FLAC support. I've used FLAC compression successfully for quite some time. I am satisfied that it is truly lossless audio compression. Fils compressed with FLAC can be uncompressed to produce an file check summed to be the same as the original. The uncompressed WAV or AIFF files playback sucessfully.

The only problem I can see is the added overhead for on-the-fly decompression of the FLAC file for audio analysis. It will always be faster and more efficient for Sonic Visualiser to use uncompressed files.

I may start storing my audio files in FLAC format and only decompressing them for analysis.

cheers,
df.

[cannam]

FLAC support is available in some builds of Sonic Visualiser; I'll try to look into extending support for it in future builds.

Whether FLAC support is available or not depends on whether it was included in the build of libsndfile that Sonic Visualiser was linked against (libsndfile is capable of reading FLAC files, but only if the FLAC libraries have been compiled in to it).

The Linux builds of Sonic Visualiser 1.5 _do_ have FLAC support included in their versions of libsndfile, and should be able to open .flac files directly (davidf, do you not find this to be the case?).

OS/X and Windows builds currently lack FLAC support.

Sonic Visualiser on OS/X is actually capable of opening any file supported by QuickTime, so users on OS/X might be able to get it to work by installing additional QuickTime codecs (I don't actually know offhand whether there is one for FLAC, but it seems likely).  One limitation here -- this is a bug in SV -- is that any file types supported by non-core QuickTime codecs will not be automatically enabled in the open-file dialog: you have to set the file dialog to "All files" rather than "Audio files" before it will let you select one of them.


Chris

[KaoDome]

Thanks for the answers and your time! I really appreciate your efforts.

As far as I know from version 1.0.12 libsndfile supports FLAC files, and I guess you are using a newer version so the only thing that has to be done is to compile libsndfile with FLAC support (in order to be able to open FLAC files)? If you link Sonic Visualizer to a libsndfile DLL in the Windows build I can provide a DLL with FLAC input support if needed.

@davidf: It's a good idea to use FLAC as storage, as you have said it's a lossless codec. That's what I do

[davidf]

Sorry for not getting back sooner, I've been working on a school project using SV !

Soon as I installed Sonic Visualiser 1.5 I had FLAC access almost as fast as AIFF or WAV. SV 1.5 flies compared to the old version.

FLAC will be really good, I'll have to introduce it to my professor. Running Windows I guess he hasn't run into FLAC and hasn't considered what a space saving it is when dealing with as many audio files as he deals with (and our class).

I've been breaking up larger works for analysis at least partially because any graphs I generate using a spread sheet or presentation software become completely unwieldy if you attempt to do a whole sonata or symphony movement.

I could go on, but I'll be off topic!

thanks,
davidf

[KaoDome]

Some time has passed since the last time I wrote here, but FLAC is still not supported by the Windows build.

Is there any development work taking this into account? Are there any plans on adding FLAC support for the Windows platform?

Thank you very much for your time and efforts.

Regards,
Kao Dome.