FLAC, Monkey's Audio or ? to store wav samples

[Spratman]

Hello peoples.

Recently I've started to make a variety of recordings with my MD and I guess now the issue I have is finding out a reasonable way to store the wav files I create.

I've been looking around for an easy, painless lossless solution, hoping to find a set of directshow filters for compressing wave --> something smaller, within an audio editor and I'm really not very sure what to go with. I know that FLAC and APE seem to be pretty popular, well "popular" at any rate, but I'm still not entirely convinced about the long term nature of things, as some of the implementations of filters seem to be getting on a bit/beta.

I'd really appreciate it if somebody can give me some insight into how they pack their wave files, what with and what seems to be reliable.

Spratman

[LBN]

FLAC is good for inter-platform compatibility. APE is as well. For stuff that I plan on just keeping on my own system I store it in WMA9-Lossless format. It compresses almost as well as APE-Insane but is supported by most programs via DirectShow filters.

[Spratman]

Thanks for the reply LBN. I've had a look around at WMA and the "lossless" option it has, a lot of people seem to be rather against it for various reasons, some seem to suggest that it's not in fact 100% accurate, and that MS doesn't actually use the term lossless in the documentation. Other tests seem to indicate it's not as efficent in playback as well as when compared against other compressors to.

I've had a look at DBPoweramp and it seems to convert things pretty quickly and easily to FLAC etc. I guess I'm dreaming about there ever being an ACM Codec so that apps like my olde Soundforge can save and open the files directly, which would be wonderful in many ways. Unless I get any other suggestions I might well just stick with DBPoweramp or have a go at using my creaky version of CEP with some of the various plugins that seem to be available.

Spratman