[CLOSED] Feature request: FLAC conversion

Pulse, I think you will not make the frustration go away with that answer. the technical argument presented here and elsewhere are either nonexistant or they dodge the issue. This makes it feel as though the lack of FLAC support is a political issue, rather than a technical one. What a lot of us would like to know, is the following:

• How come the hardware can be made to decode MP3 and AAC, but not FLAC? The latter is distinctly easier to decode in terms of computational power.Just about any chip that can manage MP3 can do FLAC as well; the buffers are small enough that memory should not be the issue.
• Please address the suggestion of having Rekordbox transcode the files as you export them to the USB medium. It appears that this should solve everything even if current hardware for whatever reason cannot be made FLAC compatible; you get to keep your music archive intact and won't have to deal with duplicate data. Surely implementing the FLAC codec in Rekordbox should be trivial?
• Please do not simply say there are cross converters available; We all know that and what everyone wants is to NOT have to deal with them. That's the very point of this argument.

The "no standard tagging format" argument clearly has no merit, so I can only imagine there is some elephant in the room regarding FLAC that Pioneer do not want to mention. I just wish I could figure out what it is because this whole thing is very frustrating.

If you have an audio editor like Peak Pro, you can do a batch conversion for all of your FLAC files to another format.  Then it would just take the time to process those encodings.....  which you could start before bed and probably wake up to converted files.  I'm not sure why Rekordbox needs to have this functionality?

while FLAC's a very good format, by its very nature of being open source could pioneer rely on stability and support from the developers.  Pioneer couldnt get on board developing this and guiding the team to cater for every users wants & needs due to the very same nature of open source...

I do, however, think its about time a lossless format became main stream... mp3 is such a limited and old format - but so god damn popular...

Erm, FLAC being opensource is definitely not a problem, more like the opposite. There are readily available libraries that can be used to add FLAC support.. also to a commercial program. For example Native Instrument supports FLAC in Traktor, among very many consumer devices, android phones etc.

you've missed the point Pasi... while NI may have flac support in traktor - they have no control over its future support or direction of the format.  If flac was to change the libraries, traktor would need to ensure this change is reflected in their package, or face a bunch of djs moaning for support!

I personally wouldnt want to be playing chase with a bunch of open source dudes when i potentially have a bunch of issues i need to focus my development team on...ie rekordbox has a long way to go to get to where it should be - i would rather pioneer focus on the core issues before new stuff is added.

being a mac user i have limited access to flac... not many of my apps (ok they are main stream) actually support flac - audacity and audition are the only two on my lappy!  Ok i have traktor as well but i gave up using that due to its poor stability on stage!

As i said above id love a new format to work with, but 320k mp3 on most systems does the trick... dont get me wrong reading the spec of flac, and hearing the difference its an awesome format as is aflac.... but with £50 2TB drives is a compression (lossless or not) format needed... why not stick with wav or aiff?  ok art work and enough tags to populate would be a nice place to start!

ummm enough food for thought :)

Matt: You've missed the point aswell. The problem you described is solved by versioning. That's what happens with all formats or standards. Software like Traktor or Rekordbox supports some specific version of the standard. If the standard changes, then the software needs to be modified. Current FLAC format is well defined, so no need to worry about it. You can add support for the current version.

The world is full of open standards, especially the Internet. Let's take HTTP as an example. It's developed in open and it's supported by all the browsers (and other tools) - both open and closed source programs. Actually one of the reasons Internet developed so big is because most of the core protocols in Internet are open and could be easily implemented in all operating systems and various open- and closed-source programs.

.. And about the "they have no control over its future support or direction of the format" argument, that's wrong aswell, unfortunately :) Because FLAC is open source NI is very welcome to contribute and suggest new features/ideas, if they want something done in a different or better way!

over to pulse... im sure he will push your request... pio will then need to investigate if a business case exists with its user base?

while he is there maybe he could look into getting aflac support also ;)

i personally dont think it will happen (in the near future) due to the small cost of hard drive space when wav & aiff already work as high quality audio formats.

It has been suggested but the problem is there is no real standard for its tags.

Quote from: http://flac.sourceforge.net/faq.html#general__tagging

"FLAC has it's own native tagging system which is identical to that of Vorbis. They are called alternately "FLAC tags" and "Vorbis comments"."

And like said, for example Traktor supports both FLAC and Ogg Vorbis.. is there something extra that needs to be done (vendor specific custom tags or something) ?

.. so I don't think there is a problem really?

OMG, I'm so shocked...

No FLAC or WMA lossless support for Rekordbox or CDJ-2000.

I can't believe that for such an expensive device...

That's like ignoring all windows users that want full quality...

WAV is not really an option becaus no tags and the file size...

I don't understand why some folks swear by lossless formats.  Fact is, human ears cannot distinguish a lossless wav and a quality compressed file. Now, add to that less than ideal (or should I say shitty) acoustics and mediocre sound systems most venues have, bunch of drunk people making lots of ambient noise, and your argument about lossless files becomes totally invalid. Another issue is the lack of lossless files available, since very few sites offer them, so unless you limit yourself to these sources, you have no choice but to use MP3. Now, if you're a discriminating classical music connoisseur listening on state of the art equipment in your private, acoustically perfect room , then yes, compression could be a bit of compromise.

Koobah, I can assure you that I can hear the difference in not only a WAV vs. an 320 MP3 (that's pretty easy), but I can do even better than that.  I can hear the difference between a WAV file on CD vs. the same WAV file playing on the same system with an iPod through the dock connection.  And I have done blind tests with friends to prove it.

And I would argue that the need for quality formats is ever greater when being used in a live situation.  I could understand someone not hearing much difference in an MP3 when using a pair of those lousy white iPod earphones, but on an amplified system in a club....  major difference.  I guess it depends on what kind of music it is, and the venue.  If it's a small lounge with self-powered Mackies hanging by chains, then perhaps you are correct.  But in a club with even a reasonable sound system I think it matters.  In my tests, the bass response is always the dead giveaway.  So you would be correct if the system being used does not have good bass reproduction ability.  But I can tell you the difference at my home, in my car (probably the easiest place to tell), and at the club I play monthly.

I don't understand why WAV is not an option because of file size?  Hard drives are so cheap now and the capacities are huge.  Surely drive space is not the biggest factor?  The only advantage I would concede to MP3 or FLAC is the tagging ability.  Yes, I would certainly like to have more tagging ability, but we can still tag those files in Rekordbox and iTunes, or in other music library software.  You just need to be diligent with your backups.  I recently did a clean install upgrade of my OS from Snow Leopard to Lion, and had to do the Rekordbox migration.  It worked perfectly and all of my tags were preserved for my WAV and AIFF files.

I keep my music on an external hard drive.  I have an identical second hard drive which is my backup drive.  I use Carbon Copy Cloner to do very simple and quick backups every couple of days or so.  It takes about 15 seconds to save any changes.

Also lossless files ARE available out there, at least in electronic music shops. I've personally bought *mainly* lossless files.

I can hear the diffrernce between an MP3@320Kbps without any problem.... but not with laptop speakers or crapy earbuds...

Than I don't know what is crisping the MP3 or the speakers :-(

Don't want to use wav becaus lack of tags and file size. With lossless I have same quality as WAV @ 70% to 90% of the file size. That makes a big difference for me...

@Pasi, I never heard of ARE is it supported by the CDJ-2000 and other regular equipment/software?

sorry misread your ARE....

BTW you can buy AIFF files (beatport) but that are NOT lossless COMPRESSION file...

They are just raw data files like a WAV

AIFF support is much improved in the recent version and there's no reason not to use that as a lossless option given that you can get a 2TB drive for $100.

+1 on FLAC support or at least add an option that Rekordbox will convert the file to something native. 

C'mon people add your plus ones to this thread otherwise they will never add this feature. 

I think its ridiculous to assume to "know better" that FLAC is a pointless standard to support. It offers 30% reduction in filesize and maintains WAV quality. I NEVER buy mp3s. On a Funktion1 or a Void rig you WILL hear the difference in a club. 

When I use Traktor I use RME hardware instead of NI. I always have sound engineers running over to check out what's making such a crystal clear sound.

I DONT use Rekordbox or 2000s natively simply because I cant be bothered to recompress my triple-backed up music archive from FLAC to mp3 just to use Rekordbox. I _would_ use it over Traktor in many gigs if I could use the format. 

I agree with Irvin, I dont use WAVs because tagging is proprietary and largely doesnt work. FLAC is the way because _it_simply_works_. 

Use AIFF instead? No, absolutely not. If you want DJs to completely change their archiving workflow, then you lose marketshare. 

I would like to hear the argument as to _why_ you shouldnt support this (technically speaking) as opposed why I should change my workflow to suit your software.

(no standard of tagging in FLAC is not true, there is a standard as Pasi suggested)

+1

FLAC will not be supported in any of the current hardware although it has been suggested for implementation in future hardware.  Adding +1's to this thread will not result in faster support of the codec.

If you want to convert from FLAC to any other format, there are plenty of cross-converters out there.

@ukiro > My theories:

• the decoding process doesn't work as required for DJ players as compared to regular playback

• they don't have any available space for the code required

• they don't have any staff who are familiar with FLAC

• they did it but the results weren't to their liking

Transcoding is not something Pioneer will incorporate into rekordbox, hence my suggestion for a 3rd party app.  There are plenty which will batch-process for you and it's a trivial task to set it up.

Thanks for the response. I feel stupid for not considering the memory limit for the actual firmware; This is indeed very likely to be an obstacle. In theory there could be a firmware that skips AAC support in favor of FLAC but I understand that something like that will never ever be made available since it's a support nightmare.

The other theories are reasonable and I suppose we will not know for sure if you don't know. Refusing to add transcoding sounds obnoxious and I would love to learn more of what's behind that decision, if possible.

Corporate policy tells me we'll never know.  Sorry!

Can I vote a -1 on FLAC support?   ;)

Also a -1 on MP3 support.

Let's have some CDJ-2000 MK2 players with only WAV or AIFF support.  :)   (I know that isn't possible, but I can always dream)

MP3 is pretty much the default setting - I don't think that'll be gotten rid of any time soon.

@ Gavin    Yes, I realize that.  I was only being half-serious.  But wouldn't it be great if the entire world demanded the end of the MP3 format?  ;)

@Pulse: This thread is not asking for FLAC support in CDJ2000 hardware. This thread is asking for FLAC import support in Rekordbox! So we're asking to add support for importing FLACs in Rekordbox, and export them as WAV when exporting the tracks to USB stick from Rekordbox.

FLAC does support tagging, and online music shops (for example Beatport) have been selling FLACs for years!

@Pasi > Regardless of the tag support, it can't be implemented into the software either because it's not the software that does the decoding of the audio files, it's the players, thus supporting it within rekordbox is akin to saying it should support video.

@Pulse: Unfortunately I can't agree with that :) I've written a lot of software myself, and I think it shouldn't be hard to implement FLAC importing (automatic conversion to WAV) in Rekordbox.

So please opensource Rekordbox and we'll implement it ourselves! :)