FLAC Support Coming to Chrome and Firefox this Month.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

They offer incredible-sounding high-resolution audio.

High resolution audio only wastes space

They can know. Xiph.org is the current maintainer of the FLAC encoder/decoder. The only reason why you want high-res audio is when you do editing and archiving. For listening, 16 bit resolution is enough, because the background noise ("tape hiss") is close to 0 already.

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by GtrsRGr8

I thought about making some kind of re-post on the Media Deals (Non-Eboook/Non Audiobook) thread in the Deals, Freebies, Resources forum about this sale that you mentioned. Sounds like a good one. However, the prices are about 50% higher than the prices that prefer to pay (i.e., free. ha). I've bookmarked the site, however.

We've been having a lot of success finding free classical music, although relatively little of it is a complete album, or of better quality than MP3 (one company actually provides entire free FLAC albums once a month, however). Too, I'm on the mailing list of quite a few music publishers/retailers and see sales of up to 50% off occasionally; sales of 30% or so off are pretty frequent. It would just get to be too much work to post all of those and, too, it seems like it would cause the thread to seem very cluttered.

Which company is it that has a free FLAC album once a month?

[Krazykiwi]

I suspect one of the main reasons this is of note is because you can cast music playing in chrome very easily to a Chromecast. And since those can be plugged straight into a stereo A/V receiver, if you're the kind of person who might use that facility it might be nice to be able to use a higher quality file. Actually I listen to a fair bit of music on my TV, via Google Play -> Chromecast, it's better sound quality than a Bluetooth speaker and doesn't need me to remember to charge yet another set of batteries, but I use my phone to set that going.

I remember a few years ago there was an in-browser music manager very like MediaMonkey, but it's name is escaping me. Something like that, with easy casting, ability to connect to Bluetooth speakers nearby built into the browser it's running in, etc, would be very convenient, because making a playlist for instance on the phone is often an exercise in frustration.

Meanwhile you can easily cast just about anything else via DLNA to a lot of other boxes right from Windows or almost any media player.

And you can stream almost anything to a Chromecast from the phone app.

But from a Windows desktop PC--where you might reasonably have a lot more storage available or networked to store lossless rips of a bunch of albums--to a Chromecast, you're really quite limited to just Chrome. There are a couple of fairly unreliable W10 apps but they are pretty dodgy.

[GtrsRGr8]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

Which company is it that has a free FLAC album once a month?

To answer your question in a word: Naxos. I'll give you some additional information in case you're interested.

First, I am so glad that this subject came up. I forgot all about making my choice of album for this month. If I had not chosen by the time the next month's offerings came out, I would have lost the chance to get one of the albums.

I recommend that you read this post from the Media (Non-Book/Non-Audio) thread. I think that it will give you everything (except what I say in the next paragraph) that you would want to know.

I thought that I failed to mention in this post that all of the album choices are in FLAC, but after re-reading my post, I see that it is there ("flac"). And FLAC is the only choice that a person gets with this giveaway, take it or leave it!

The freebie that they offer right after the first of the month is always MP3, I think. It's strange that with the higher quality album you get three choices, not just one, and it requires almost nothing on a person's part to get it. But to get the one, lower-quality MP3 offered right after the first of the month, you must be on their newsletter mailing list, and jump through another hoop or two. But that's the way that Naxos does it, for some reason.

[GA Russell]

It was my understanding in the mid-'90s that the mp3 format was adopted because everyone on the web was using dial-up, and the process of transfering the music-information would be too slow to use WAV.

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by GtrsRGr8

To answer your question in a word: Naxos. I'll give you some additional information in case you're interested.

First, I am so glad that this subject came up. I forgot all about making my choice of album for this month. If I had not chosen by the time the next month's offerings came out, I would have lost the chance to get one of the albums.

I recommend that you read this post from the Media (Non-Book/Non-Audio) thread. I think that it will give you everything (except what I say in the next paragraph) that you would want to know.

I thought that I failed to mention in this post that all of the album choices are in FLAC, but after re-reading my post, I see that it is there ("flac"). And FLAC is the only choice that a person gets with this giveaway, take it or leave it!

The freebie that they offer right after the first of the month is always MP3, I think. It's strange that with the higher quality album you get three choices, not just one, and it requires almost nothing on a person's part to get it. But to get the one, lower-quality MP3 offered right after the first of the month, you must be on their newsletter mailing list, and jump through another hoop or two. But that's the way that Naxos does it, for some reason.

Very much appreciated.

Thank you!

I'll check out the bit-rate. If it doesn't rise above 256, then I may pass. (Depends on the album, too.)

Again, thank you.

[GtrsRGr8]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

<snip>
I'll check out the bit-rate. If it doesn't rise above 256, then I may pass. (Depends on the album, too.)
<snip>

If you end up checking, and don't mind, would you please pass along the information about the bit-rate? I am curious now, and if you end up checking it it will save me the trouble of doing that. I'd probably pass that information along to the MobileReaders who monitor the Media thread.

I had checked the bitrate on some of the MP3's given away by various companies, but not the FLAC from Naxos. Perhaps that's because I'm not a true audiophile, and MP3 is good enough for me. Too, I don't have the audio equipment and software that would appreciate (ha) anything better than MP3.

Thanks.

[GtrsRGr8]

A technical question, if I may impose on your time again.

Do you think that there will ever be a way to electronically improve the quality of, say, a 128 bit-rate audio to at least the semblance of a 256 bit-rate audio?

That may sound (no pun intended. ha) farfetched, but after all, digital remastering may have, too, say 30 years ago. Or, would creating the impression of a higher bit-rate involve a whole different set of, or level of, challenges than accomplishing things like digital remastering?

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by GtrsRGr8

II had checked the bitrate on some of the MP3's given away by various companies, but not the FLAC from Naxos.

There's no point in checking the bit rate on FLAC. It's a lossless format. The bit rate will be whatever it needs to be.

[GtrsRGr8]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

There's no point in checking the bit rate on FLAC. It's a lossless format. The bit rate will be whatever it needs to be.

Thank you. This stuff is so far "above my head" that it's difficult to even ask a sensible question about it! ha

[GtrsRGr8]

I need to make a correction.

In post #19 of this thread, I referenced a post on the Media thread. In that Media thread post I stated, "the offer will be good until the first part of next month, around the time that the next Naxos promo like this comes out." I just found out, when I was trying to access this month's choice of FLAC albums, and couldn't, that what I said was in error.

Naxos clearly states in their Free Album Offer Guide that "Offers are valid for a limited period of time. The offer period in each of our offers will vary so make sure you claim your download before the specified end date. Otherwise, an expired offer will automatically become unavailable and cannot be reinstated or extended." Somehow I not only had missed that information, but had also gotten in my mind that an offer ended (only) when the new one came out.

The free albums were from composer Rossini. I hate it that I missed out on getting one of them. I'll tell myself that I don't like Rossini anyway, so I'll feel better about it. ha

[Red Falcon]

Originally Posted by GtrsRGr8

A technical question, if I may impose on your time again.

Do you think that there will ever be a way to electronically improve the quality of, say, a 128 bit-rate audio to at least the semblance of a 256 bit-rate audio?

That may sound (no pun intended. ha) farfetched, but after all, digital remastering may have, too, say 30 years ago. Or, would creating the impression of a higher bit-rate involve a whole different set of, or level of, challenges than accomplishing things like digital remastering?

Any lossy format throws away data so it is not possible to reconstruct that data. You would need a lossless format like FLAC or ACC which toss none of the data to make an 1 to 1 copy.

The only difference I have ever heard between good quality (320 kps VBR) lossy and lossless files is most classical music, heavy metal and some older rock and roll like Emerson, Lake and Palmer. The more wide ranging the sound spectrum is the harder it is to get a good sounding lossy file.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

There's no point in checking the bit rate on FLAC. It's a lossless format. The bit rate will be whatever it needs to be.

I hope you'll allow me to clarify this a bit for people who don't understand this yet.

If a piece has silence in it, the bit rate will be very low, or maybe even 0. If a a piece has a very complex part in it, the might be 1000 or even 1400 kbps; much higher than the 320 kbps max of MP3. This is the reason why MP3 is lossy: if you *need* 1000 kbps to encode lossless, but you can only use 320 kbps max, you'll therefore loose quality.

If you have a FLAC file that has 2 minutes of silence at a bit rate of 0, and 2 minutes of very complex music at a bit rate of 1400, the bit rate will probably be displayed as 700 kbps by most programs.

As pdurrant says, FLAC uses the bit rate it needs to use, to encode the audio in such a way as to lose nothing. The only thing you can say is that a file with a low bit rate was very easy to compress without loss, and a file with a high bit rate was very hard. Therefore, with FLAC, bitrate does not indicate quality; it indicates compression.

I hope I'm not preaching to the choir here, and stating things most people already know

[GtrsRGr8]

Let me share with you, especially with Dr. Drib who actually expressed possible interest in downloading one of the FLAC Rossini albums, some information, mostly what I learned from emailing Naxos. In fact, let me just quote the entire message--it's not long.

>Anna Mhay Saquing (Naxos Customer Service)
Jan 20, 10:03 AM HKT

Dear Mr. xxxxxxxx,

Thank you for your email.

We would like to inform you that the free album should still be available at this time. If you are unable to download the files, kindly let us know which album you chose so we can send you the zip file.

Meanwhile, it is true that there is an expiration on each month's free album offer. However, we provide zipped files to our customers who are unable to download the files even after its expiration (or a month after it expired).

Looking forward to hear from you.

Warmest regards,

Anna Mhay Saquing
Customer Service
Naxos Digital Services Ltd.
Customer.Service@Naxos.com<

Well, I tried getting the webpage with all of the choices and the download buttons for each. I still couldn't get the page (I still got a webpage with the heading, "Sorry, but the link you are trying to access appears to be unavailable."). However, Ms. Saquing says that we can get them, so I believe that we can get them. I don't know how many people on this thread would like any one of them, however. I'm going to making this post on the Media thread, where there are likely more people who would be interested (and hadn't dilly-dallied like I did, and already made their choice of albums).

They're nice folks at Naxos. Give them your business.

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by GtrsRGr8

If you end up checking, and don't mind, would you please pass along the information about the bit-rate? I am curious now, and if you end up checking it it will save me the trouble of doing that. I'd probably pass that information along to the MobileReaders who monitor the Media thread.

I had checked the bitrate on some of the MP3's given away by various companies, but not the FLAC from Naxos. Perhaps that's because I'm not a true audiophile, and MP3 is good enough for me. Too, I don't have the audio equipment and software that would appreciate (ha) anything better than MP3.

Thanks.

Will do, although I have yet to do anything.