[geofstro]

In setting up my Subsonic server, I gave this some thought. I already have my entire library copied in both aiff and WAV formats. Quite a few files are also in flac and Apple Lossless.

For Subsonic I wanted to guarantee reliable streaming capability for the whole library, whatever applications I may use to access my Subsonic server now or in the future.

It seems to me that flac with an ogg wrapper is the best possible all round format. As explained in the following article, flac was not really designed with steaming in mind and this is probably true of the other uncompressed or lossless formats as well. Ogg was though, so by simply putting an ogg wrapper around your flac files, there is no loss of quality and streaming is guaranteed to work as reliably as possible.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11489300/flac-streaming-over-http-without-ogg

As an added bonus, if you still use iTunes to manage your local library on a Mac it can also playback flacs as long as they have an ogg wrapper. This is done just by downloading a quicktime component and dragging it to your 'Components' folder in your library. (Create one if it's not already there)

http://www.macworld.com/article/1142096/play_wmaoggflac_iTunes.html

I don't know if there's ever been a vote on which audio format you'd want to take to a desert island with you, if you could take only one. My vote would go to flac with an ogg wrapper though (.oga).

Geoff

[richidoo]

That's really interesting. Thanks for sharing your knowledge Geofstro!

My library has  mp3, wav, flac and AIFF. I listen to flac in my home system, and mp3s on my old Jukebox3 portable, but I can hear the mp3 distortion when I listen with nice headphones. I'd like to standardize my library to a format that can be played on anything, including my kids' and wife's iPods. So I'll watch this thread closely.

[geofstro]

At first I thought flac with an ogg wrapper (.oga) files would work best, because I read that the ogg wrapper is likely to be supported by more software that handles streaming. The problem is that flac has it's own tagging system and when I encoded some aiff files to flac/ogg I found that Subsonic could not figure out the correct track order for albums. Instead it listed and played the tracks in alphabetical order of the track name. Apple Lossless recognises the track # tags without any problem, so the tracks in each album are played in the correct order. So I've settled on Apple Lossless for this library and it seems to support http streaming just as well.

[JEaton]

At first I thought flac with an ogg wrapper (.oga) files would work best, because I read that the ogg wrapper is likely to be supported by more software that handles streaming.

Ogg Vorbis, maybe, but stuffing FLAC into this wrapper is another story. FLAC is not a variation of Vorbis, so I'm not sure how a given player is supposed to simply play it just because it's in a familiar wrapper. I know there are a handful of radio stations using this format, and that the Squeezebox is unable to play them. Which is saying something, as it's one of  the most flexible players available due to the server's transcoding ability.

The problem is that flac has it's own tagging system and when I encoded some aiff files to flac/ogg I found that Subsonic could not figure out the correct track order for albums. Instead it listed and played the tracks in alphabetical order of the track name. Apple Lossless recognises the track # tags without any problem, so the tracks in each album are played in the correct order. So I've settled on Apple Lossless for this library and it seems to support http streaming just as well.

So now you have three copies of your library, encoded in three different lossless formats, plus some FLAC? Jeeze.

Settle on a player (or as few as possible) and transcode your library into a compatible format. Don't count on (or worry about) the future. It doesn't matter, as long as you have your current lossless library tagged well, you can transcode the whole thing into another format.

[geofstro]

So now you have three copies of your library, encoded in three different lossless formats, plus some FLAC?

 I'm not that crazy 

Just doing a few test albums in different formats to determine which is the best for streaming using Subsonic, as well as the most widely supported by software players.

It's a good idea to have your library backed up though, so I'll be happy to have one copy in aiff and the other in whichever of these lossy formats I finally settle on.

I think it's just in the transcoding from aiff to flac with an ogg wrapper that seems to have screwed up the track ordering.

I think files that were already in flac, then have an ogg wrapper applied might be ok. Will verify this and confirm later.

Tagging seems to be the key, I agree.

[geofstro]

Confirmed! It was the transcoding from aif to flac/oga that caused the track ordering to be screwed up.

When I transcode an existing flac file to add an ogg wrapper, the track order is respected in the resulting flac/oga album.

Interestingly though, there may be another advantage to transcoding to Apple Lossless. XLD allows me to downsample highres files to 16bit, 44.1khz. I need to do this for high-rez to ensure reliable streaming. I cannot downsample when transcoding to flac/oga.

Perhaps these are peculiarities of XLD. I doubt it though. It's more likely that Apple Lossless supports this downsampling when transcoding somehow, whereas flac does not.

Once again, this would make Apple Lossless the more flexible lossless format. The only advantage flac/oga may have is slightly better performance/reliability when streaming. This is only a guess though.

Anyone have different experiences?

[geofstro]

I'm finding that just a straight conversion from aiff to Apple Lossless works in most cases. i.e. respects the track order within an album, which is what I mostly care about. Some of the albums refuse to play through subsonic following the conversion. The best tool for fixing this, I've found to be MusicBrainz Picard. These albums probably got mis-tagged somehow when I ripped the CD's using EAC or DBPowerAmp.

I find if I convert aiff to flac the track order never seems to be respected, unless I clean up the tags with MusicBrainz first. So Apple Lossless has proved to be the least painful route for me. I've learned to accept though that some albums will always need the tags cleaning up.

Another advantage of Apple Lossless for me, is that I can use XLD to downsample any High-Res files to 16/44.1, which I think is necessary to make music steaming work for these files. Within XLD on Mac, there is no downsampling solution for flac.

So all in all, Apple Lossless has proved the best solution for me, with a little Music Brainz manipulation of tags, where necessary.

[JEaton]

I find if I convert aiff to flac the track order never seems to be respected, unless I clean up the tags with MusicBrainz first.

By track order not being "respected", do you just mean that the track number field isn't transferred? There is nothing else that dictates track order, unless the server is primitive enough to sort by filename, which should also be easy to deal with. If so, then that's a problem with whatever software you're using to transcode. That doesn't make the final format better just because it's the easiest for you to handle.

I would think that the most "flexible" format is the one that can be played by the most players. But doesn't this Subsonic server itself have the ability to transcode in realtime? And hopefully, the ability to transcode to a chosen format for any particular client, so that the native file format isn't actually all that important.

[geofstro]

But doesn't this Subsonic server itself have the ability to transcode in realtime? And hopefully, the ability to transcode to a chosen format for any particular client, so that the native file format isn't actually all that important.

You're right up to a point, and this is the approach I was initially going to take. The trouble is I couldn't figure out a way to transcode without reducing the quality by transcoding to a lossy format. I thought I could have Subsonic transcode all my aiff's to flacs (for example); but there doesn't seem to be a way to do this.

Additionally Subsonic trancodes each file before sending it to wherever you are, so you have to wait longer for the file to play.

Since Subsonic streams lossless without any problem, I decided to use one of the lossless formats.

Subsonic does handle track numbers just fine. These were not being carried across by XLD when converting from aiff to flac/oga. Mostly track numbers do carry across just fine when converting to Apple Lossless though.

The albums that don't work are easily fixed in Music Brainz Picard.

So XLD to Apple Lossless, and a pre flight check and fixing any errors in Music Brainz is what works for me, as a Mac centric guy.

It may not work for everyone; but of course I don't have time to try all the options on different platforms.

...and I really don't mind making duplicates of my albums on the NAS in Apple Lossless format. I don't have to convert the whole library at once and I'm finding it a useful exercise also in re-assessing my library and deciding what is important for me to have available over this streaming solution right now.

[mojave]

But doesn't this Subsonic server itself have the ability to transcode in realtime? And hopefully, the ability to transcode to a chosen format for any particular client, so that the native file format isn't actually all that important.

I use JRiver Media Center and agree that the native file format isn't really important if the media player can convert on the fly to any device or codec requirement. I only have a single library that contains WAV, FLAC, APA, MP3, and ALAC files with no duplicates.

[geofstro]

To be clear, what we were discussing here is not a media player

It's Subsonic, a streaming media server that allows you to stream music from a remote location (remote from where you are now).

When I'm playing music from a drive directly connected to my Mac/PC to my audio system, sure I agree, J R and others will convert formats on the fly.

The point for me was to find the most universal format which will work in both these situations, (local playback or remote streaming).

Apple Lossless has turned out to be the answer, for me and for the reasons I've stated.