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Topic: Seeking Expert Advice: FLAC vs. High-Res Audio for Archival Purposes (Read 666 times) previous topic - next topic
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Seeking Expert Advice: FLAC vs. High-Res Audio for Archival Purposes

Hi everyone,

Longtime lurker and audio enthusiast here finally diving into the forums with a question that’s sparked endless debate in my circles: For long-term music archival, is there any objective advantage to storing 24-bit/96kHz+ files over well-encoded FLACs?

My Context:

Digitizing a 2000+ vinyl/CD collection

Primary playback: High-end headphones (Audeze LCD-X) + RME DAC

Goal: Future-proofing without wasting storage

Key Considerations:

Technical Thresholds: At what playback gear level (if any) do high-res benefits become audible over 16/44.1 FLAC?

Metadata Flexibility: Does one format better preserve tagging/album art long-term?

Generation Loss: If I need to transcode decades later, which holds up better?

Debates I’ve Encountered:

The “golden ears” crowd swears by 24-bit dynamic range

Others argue proper FLAC encoding captures 100% of “perceptible” audio

Some claim high-res matters only for studio work, not consumer playback

Would especially love perspectives from:

Archivists who’ve maintained libraries for 10+ years

Those who’ve A/B tested on high-end systems

Developers familiar with codec futures

Attached: Spectrograms of identical tracks in both formats (via Spek) for discussion.

Thanks in advance for sharing your wisdom!

Current Setup:

Roon Core → RME ADI-2 DAC → LCD-X

Storage: Synology NAS (40TB RAID)

Re: Seeking Expert Advice: FLAC vs. High-Res Audio for Archival Purposes

Reply #1 –
Spek is not considered viable spectrogram solution at all.

Re: Seeking Expert Advice: FLAC vs. High-Res Audio for Archival Purposes

Reply #2 –
First, FLAC is a lossless format. As long as the audio is linear PCM (integer, not float) then there is no discussion about generation loss or fidelity - of the audio. But then there is metadata; you need a solution that transfers it.
If you are dealing with audio as floating-point audio or DSD, then FLAC cannot store it at all (WavPack can do both). The only possibly relevant among those is if your vinyl digitizing software saves to 32-point float; then you MUST take care of volume before decimating it (but you should do that anyway!)


Quote from: Daisy L. on
My Context:

Digitizing a 2000+ vinyl/CD collection

CD:
* Those are 44.1/16 and there is no use in changing that.
* They are not as files on the CD, so you do not need a file format that preserves non-audio chunks in files. FLAC is fine. (FLAC can also preserve that, but only through the reference implementation and custom options - but never mind.)
* However, you may consider your ambitions for preserving
- files, in case there is a data session
- CD-Text
- info on whether they have pre-emphasis (CUETools checks both subcode and TOC ... assuming you are on Windows - but it does not read CD-Text)
- ... as much subcode as possible, whatever you may need that for.

Vinyl:
* Again you don't need a "file compressor" format. FLAC is fine, except:
* ... if your digitizing software offers floating-point. Which is clipping-free
* Otherwise, if you rip to integer PCM, then you need to keep volume low enough to avoid clipping. But hey, even -12 dB is only 2 bits lost.
* Vinyl does not have 16 bits resolution in any case. If you rip to 24 bits and volume-normalize, you can decimate to 16.
* Then there's the discussion on sample rate.



Quote from: Daisy L. on
Metadata Flexibility: Does one format better preserve tagging/album art long-term?
As long as you stay below 16 MiB, FLAC is fine - but if you want to migrate to a different format, you need to use software that can transfer metadata between them.

There are several archives that swear by WAVE (or the BWF variant). I don't know how they handle metadata.

Quote from: Daisy L. on
Generation Loss: If I need to transcode decades later, which holds up better?
Lossless is lossless. There is no generation loss - what you need to transcode later, is a decoder - and some metadata handler.


Quote from: Daisy L. on
Some claim high-res matters only for studio work, not consumer playback
High resolution matters for studio work yes. For example, float means you can do mixing without worrying over digital clipping. Once the audio is finalized ...

Quote from: Daisy L. on
Storage: Synology NAS (40TB RAID)
2000 CDs would take less than a TB. Much more important than the RAID is an off-site backup.