On Thu, 27 Dec 2007 08:44:37 -0800 (PST), wrote:

On Dec 27, 10:33*am, John H. wrote:
On Thu, 27 Dec 2007 10:19:52 -0500, John H. wrote:
On Thu, 27 Dec 2007 15:09:19 GMT, "RG" wrote:

"John H." wrote in message
. ..
I went to alt.binaries.sounds.lossless.classical and ran into a 'flac' file
extension.

Anybody know what will open a file with that extension? WMP, Divx, and
IrfanView won't touch it.

My mp3 player and the software that comes with it supports flac. *It's the
format I use when I'm auditioning a new cd on the portable player.

It looks like I'll have to download some more software to play the flac
file. Or, not download .flac files. That's always an option too!

Just installed Winamp. The current free version handles a 'flac' file. Yay!- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

You're welcome......

Yes! I owe you a 'thank you'.

Thank You!

On Dec 27, 12:03*pm, John H. wrote:
On Thu, 27 Dec 2007 08:44:37 -0800 (PST), wrote:
On Dec 27, 10:33*am, John H. wrote:
On Thu, 27 Dec 2007 10:19:52 -0500, John H. wrote:
On Thu, 27 Dec 2007 15:09:19 GMT, "RG" wrote:

"John H." wrote in message
. ..
I went to alt.binaries.sounds.lossless.classical and ran into a 'flac' file
extension.

Anybody know what will open a file with that extension? WMP, Divx, and
IrfanView won't touch it.

My mp3 player and the software that comes with it supports flac. *It's the
format I use when I'm auditioning a new cd on the portable player.

It looks like I'll have to download some more software to play the flac
file. Or, not download .flac files. That's always an option too!

Just installed Winamp. The current free version handles a 'flac' file. Yay!- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

You're welcome......

Yes! I owe you a 'thank you'.

Thank You!- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Just yanking your chain! Is everything working the way you want now?

On Thu, 27 Dec 2007 09:29:06 -0800 (PST), wrote:

On Dec 27, 12:03*pm, John H. wrote:
On Thu, 27 Dec 2007 08:44:37 -0800 (PST), wrote:
On Dec 27, 10:33*am, John H. wrote:
On Thu, 27 Dec 2007 10:19:52 -0500, John H. wrote:
On Thu, 27 Dec 2007 15:09:19 GMT, "RG" wrote:

"John H." wrote in message
. ..
I went to alt.binaries.sounds.lossless.classical and ran into a 'flac' file
extension.

Anybody know what will open a file with that extension? WMP, Divx, and
IrfanView won't touch it.

My mp3 player and the software that comes with it supports flac. *It's the
format I use when I'm auditioning a new cd on the portable player.

It looks like I'll have to download some more software to play the flac
file. Or, not download .flac files. That's always an option too!

Just installed Winamp. The current free version handles a 'flac' file. Yay!- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

You're welcome......

Yes! I owe you a 'thank you'.

Thank You!- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Just yanking your chain! Is everything working the way you want now?

Yep. I just double click the header and when it's downloaded double click
again. That launches Winamp which plays the selection.

wrote in message
...
On Dec 27, 9:21 am, John H. wrote:
On Thu, 27 Dec 2007 06:11:26 -0800 (PST), wrote:
On Dec 27, 9:08 am, John H. wrote:
I went to alt.binaries.sounds.lossless.classical and ran into a
'flac' file
extension.

Anybody know what will open a file with that extension? WMP, Divx,
and
IrfanView won't touch it.

WinAmp with the FLAC plugin is what I use, here are some mo

http://www.fileinfo.net/extension/flac

The free version of Winamp or the pay version, or does it make any
difference?

I don't know, I've got the pay version, because I use it with my sound
systems for instruments, etc. so I don't know if the free version
supports it, I'll try to find out.

free version supports it. there are also programs to compress flac and
convert to mp3.

Many bit torrent sites use flac, and bootlegs are also often distributed
as flac.

On Thu, 27 Dec 2007 15:01:27 -0600, "Del Cecchi"
wrote:


wrote in message
...
On Dec 27, 9:21 am, John H. wrote:
On Thu, 27 Dec 2007 06:11:26 -0800 (PST), wrote:
On Dec 27, 9:08 am, John H. wrote:
I went to alt.binaries.sounds.lossless.classical and ran into a
'flac' file
extension.

Anybody know what will open a file with that extension? WMP, Divx,
and
IrfanView won't touch it.

WinAmp with the FLAC plugin is what I use, here are some mo

http://www.fileinfo.net/extension/flac

The free version of Winamp or the pay version, or does it make any
difference?

I don't know, I've got the pay version, because I use it with my sound
systems for instruments, etc. so I don't know if the free version
supports it, I'll try to find out.

free version supports it. there are also programs to compress flac and
convert to mp3.

Many bit torrent sites use flac, and bootlegs are also often distributed
as flac.

Got it. Thanks.

"Del Cecchi" wrote in news:5tii56F1dtcp9U1
@mid.individual.net:

I don't know, I've got the pay version, because I use it with my sound
systems for instruments, etc. so I don't know if the free version
supports it, I'll try to find out.

free version supports it. there are also programs to compress flac and
convert to mp3.

Many bit torrent sites use flac, and bootlegs are also often distributed
as flac.



Are you guys playing all this disk-hogging FLAC through those ****ty little
boat speakers that sound like crap?

Don't forget all the music was sampled at 44.1 Kbps in the first place
before they burned it onto the CDs. No matter how many Gigabytes you
encode it into it's NEVER gonna overcome it.

Larry
--
I worked hard under Social Security since I was 12.
My SS retirement check is one oz of gold per month.
Can we afford to start any more wars for corporations?

"Larry" wrote in message
...
"Del Cecchi" wrote in news:5tii56F1dtcp9U1
@mid.individual.net:

I don't know, I've got the pay version, because I use it with my sound
systems for instruments, etc. so I don't know if the free version
supports it, I'll try to find out.

free version supports it. there are also programs to compress flac and
convert to mp3.

Many bit torrent sites use flac, and bootlegs are also often distributed
as flac.



Are you guys playing all this disk-hogging FLAC through those ****ty
little
boat speakers that sound like crap?

Don't forget all the music was sampled at 44.1 Kbps in the first place
before they burned it onto the CDs. No matter how many Gigabytes you
encode it into it's NEVER gonna overcome it.

Larry


Just the word "flac" sounds like something you'd wipe off the floor with a
big wad of paper towels, and then spray with Lysol just to be safe.

"Larry" wrote in message
...
"Del Cecchi" wrote in
news:5tii56F1dtcp9U1
@mid.individual.net:

I don't know, I've got the pay version, because I use it with my sound
systems for instruments, etc. so I don't know if the free version
supports it, I'll try to find out.

free version supports it. there are also programs to compress flac
and
convert to mp3.

Many bit torrent sites use flac, and bootlegs are also often
distributed
as flac.



Are you guys playing all this disk-hogging FLAC through those ****ty
little
boat speakers that sound like crap?

Don't forget all the music was sampled at 44.1 Kbps in the first place
before they burned it onto the CDs. No matter how many Gigabytes you
encode it into it's NEVER gonna overcome it.

Larry
--
I worked hard under Social Security since I was 12.
My SS retirement check is one oz of gold per month.
Can we afford to start any more wars for corporations?

Not the bootlegs. And isn't that 44k Bytes per second?

"JoeSpareBedroom" wrote in
:

Just the word "flac" sounds like something you'd wipe off the floor
with a big wad of paper towels, and then spray with Lysol just to be
safe.



Actually FLAC, (Free Lossless Audio Codec), an opensource project across
the planet housed at http://flac.org/ is a wonderful audio product. You
can download and add FLAC to about any computer. They even have a nice
player if you want a different one.

What's neat about FLAC is if you encoded an audio file into FLAC, then
decode it back into the audio file you started with, you get an EXACT
duplicate of what you started with....right to the single BIT! It's
perfect. That won't happen with MP3.

That said, it's crazy to use it unless you're encoding directly from the
audio console at Carnegie Hall of some amazing symphonic concert and
simply MUST have every crazy harmonic, noise and sneeze the audience can
make. Flac is superior to 44.1 Khz encoding on a CD, which does
"distort" the music 99.99% of the humans would never hear or sense.

But this is about BOATS.....BOATS with ****ty little speakers hooked to a
crap boat stereo in little acoustic disaster cutouts in a hollowed out
plastic box or crappy little Boze tinyspeakers hung under a shelf in a
cabin that, acoustically, is like listening to music in a 55 gallon oil
drum!

I mean......what's the point?!

Test my hypothesis for yourselves. Take your favorite CD and rip it to a
set of MP3s at DIFFERENT sample rates. Make some song encoded at 32Kbps,
64Kbps, 128Kbps, 256Kbps all mixed up from all the songs. Put the mixed
up MP3 disk into your MP3 player on the boat speakers and play it for the
onboard drunks. See if any of them notice the difference....they won't,
even if they're not drunk. Actually if you make it a point to tell them
about this experiment, I bet most of them will appreciate the 32K MP3
songs the most because it does dull out some of the highs, effectively
boosting the bass and giving you a "rounder" sound like an old tube amp
used to...deadening the damned boat's oil drum acoustics and making those
****ty little white boat speakers HAVE a little bass, instead of a buzz!

If you encode at 16K or 22K, the music sounds about like AM radio
rounding out the highs even better.

Now, figure out what encoding sample rate everyone likes the best and
encode ALL the music you use on the boat like that! You'll be AMAZED at
how much music you can put on a CDR at 32K! It'll play all day without
swapping disks with lots of albums to SHUFFLE with so you don't HAVE to
listen to a WHOLE album of Yanny all at once in FLAC, which DRIVES ME
CRAZY! You won't even need that stupid CD changer you can't find a place
to hide from the water that will destroy it.

After 2 beers, 16K sounds just as good as 320K or perfect
FLAC!....especially when there are 20 albums to shuffle on ONE disk!!
Write the GENRE of each of the 3 disks the boat now carries on the CDR.
Take the changer and those huge disk carriers home. Drink another beer to
thank me for curing this other insanity....on a BOAT!

Larry
--
I bought a MotoROKR Z6M Sellphone from Alltel that has a 2GB microSD card
and fairly nice, but simple, MP3 player in it. Its speakers suck. Moto
finally put a STANDARD stereo headphone jack on the tiny phone so I can
plug in my tiny FM transmitter to it. I'm on 88.3 if you like light
classic rock and Carolina Beach Music made to squish the sand between
your toes dancing in the sand.

I load up the Z6M and put a fresh AAA alkaline in the transmitter before
going on anyone's boat. Fed up listening to the opera after a couple of
hours, after the group has mellowed on libations, I say, "Have you heard
the new station on 88.3 FM?", much to the relief of everyone else aboard.
Without drawing attention to myself, I put my hand in my pocket to turn
on the FM transmitter and punch PLAY on the phone.

The music goes on in SHUFFLE for all 800-1000 tunes for hours to the
delight of everyone groovin' around on board. Mixed in with the music, I
put some jingles it stumbles upon a friend sent me from WABC Engineering.
They all look at me funny when the "radio" comes on with the 1970's
station jingles...."Seventy Seven, W-A-B-C!....The station with the happy
diffffffrence!" The Les Paul/Mary Ford Riengold Beer commercials always
get a grin from us old folks. They also sold Robert Hall discount
clothes.

As the night wears on, as I sail with an older crowd usually, a nice
Jackie Gleason Orchestra program of dreamy love songs winds down the
onboard festivities with close dancing some couples haven't done in
years, barefooted on deck against the backdrop of Charleston Harbor at
night....as we motor quietly into the marina, the envy of the whole
assemblage on the docks........(c

"Del Cecchi" wrote in
:

And isn't that 44k Bytes per second?

Oh, sorry....44.1K 16-bit SAMPLES per second. Bytes are 8 bit. Here, a
little background reality:
http://www.repairfaq.org/REPAIR/F_cdfaqb.html

Frequency response: 5 to 20,000 Hz +/- 3 dB.
Harmonic distortion: .008 % at 1 KHz.
Dynamic range: Greater than 90 dB.
Signal to noise ratio: Greater than 85 dB.

The frequency response is a dirty lie. That's the DISK frequency
response. If they want to SELL the music on FM radio, they use the RIAA
equalization standard of 50-15000 Hz....which is exactly the audio
bandwidth allowed on FM radio since World War 2 and what's been recorded
on all 33 RPM LPs since the first one was pressed. All the music you
listen to is recorded for FM transmission. Notice the freq response is
+/- 3%, not .3 or .03 or .00001. This means nothing because the worst
instrument in the listening string is YOU and your rotten human frequency
response. Drop by an audiologist and have your own hearing swept
frequency tested. It's just awful, even if you are 16 and never used
hiphop headphones so loud they could hear you in the next car.

Every FM stereo transmitter is sending out a constant "pilot tone" of 19
Khz, the whole time the transmitter is in stereo. This tone is the
reference frequency for the L minus R quadrature stereo difference
channel, a doublesideband supersonic audio signal centered on 38 Khz. To
inject the carrier for this subcarrier, the pilot tone is doubled to 38
Khz and injected so it can be detected in the stereo receiver without too
much interference to the main L + R main channel, compatible with mono FM
receivers. You don't hear the 19 Khz "tone" in the speakers because the
receiver has a sharp cutoff low pass filter at 15 Khz up. Sounds fine,
doesn't it?

Armed with this information, why would you buy a $5000 stereo receiver
that has a frequency response so wonderful it can reproduce 30 Khz to
drive the neighbor's ultrasonic-hearing dogs just crazy? You also don't
need a $1200 woofer that can reproduce 10-50 Hz, because the only thing
down there is turntable rumble and a few heavy trucks rattling FM
detector's tuned circuits, in older radios. Shhh...this farce has been
successfully sold the the public since WW2. It made many billionaires!

One more shot....radio stations playing the finest music used to run
massive reel to reel tape decks at 3 3/4" per second....while Audiofools
at home spent millions on 15"/sec massive monsters to steal it...(c; We
had 3 at our studio. Tape heads noted to be "muffled" were usually
cleaned with your pocket hanky...unless you'd blown your nose in it, when
toilet paper from the men's room was substituted. A few good rubs over
the head to get the layer of tape crap off 'em fixed the freq response
problem for another couple of weeks. "Alignment" meant you put in a
commercially recorded tape, plugged in your headphones, punched play and
waited for the music to come up....then turned the head alignment screw
until Elvis had the most highs you could hear. Close enough. The boss
would bitch if you wanted to buy an "alignment tape standard", a waste of
money. If you made it sound TOO good, the advertisers would **** and
moan that their commercials sounded like crap on the cart machines at 1
3/4 ips....the only reason the transmitter was on the air in the first
place. In America, programming just fills in the time between
commercials....now even on Educational Radio and TV!

Lucky for us BBC has internet streaming....Thank you Radio 2!

Remember those old CRT television sets? All of them screamed at
15,565Hz, the horizontal Color scan rate. Could you hear them screaming
while you were watching Ed Sullivan? When I was a teen, I could hear
them, especially my grandfather's Dumont monochrome monster. After
sleeping with the whine of axial vent fans in the Navy, that cured that
problem for the rest of my life, even before the electronic scanning came
out.

Larry
--
I worked hard under Social Security since I was 12.
My SS retirement check is one American Eagle/month!
Can we afford to start any more wars for corporations?