FLAC test

What's the point of owning some fine loudspeakers and a matching receiver, if the set only gets to play crappy MP3 stuff? With todays prices for digital storage, storing music with a lossless audio codec has become affordable. Just exactly how crappy are those MP3 compressed music files?

To put this question to the test, I compared MP3 compression against a lossless format, FLAC. FLAC stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec, and that's exactly what it is. It's also open source and it seems to become a standard. I used Exact Audio Copy to generate a quality WAV file from 10 very different CD fragments and converted to FLAC. The same WAV fragments were compressed to 192 kbps MP3 files as well. In my experiment, the set of WAV files was compressed to 22MB, while FLAC needed 76MB for the same set.

The FLAC fragments and the MP3 fragments got the same names, so I couldn't tell the difference when playing them in MediaPortal. Using mediaportal, I loaded all 20 fragments in a playlist and had the list randomized. Then I manually put the fragments with the same name together and saved the playlist. The result is a playlist that plays each of the 10 CD fragments twice, without me knowing if the first is the FLAC version and the second MP3, or vice versa.

Sitting back on the couch, I quickly noticed it was damn hard to spot any differences. I wrote down FLAC or MP3 for each of the fragments. After checking with the extensions in the playlist file, I found out I guessed wrong 8 out of 10 times!

In a way that's a disappointing result: so much for my audiophile qualities. But, for now I won't have to invest a whole lot of time in re-compressing my cd collection to FLAC. I'll probably redo the test with 128kbps MP3 files and FLAC, because I definitely still have a serious amount of music at that quality.

Windows XP

My Media Center PC runs on Windows XP. Today I visited Microsoft updates site and found out I had a backlog of 41 high priority updates since January 2007. I simply never do the updates and I get away with it. I never even bothered to install an anti virus package, for performance and stability.
But then again, I don't get exposed to risks too often. My DSL router has a firewall. I only use the Media Center PC for running MediaPortal. It doesn't have e-mail or any office applications and I don't use the web browser on it.
Knock on wood...

Keyboard (2)

My Media Center madness knows no boundaries. When shopping for paint for my house, I found the shop's paint blending machine was equipped with a very tiny keyboard with integrated trackball. How neat would that look in the living room? A trackball is much more precize than the little joystick-like device I have on my keyboard. On the downside: it was attached by a cable. Of course, I had to ask the shop attendant if I could inspect their equipment from up close. On the back it said iOne, and after I had bought my paint and returned home, I found their website. Sure enough, they do have similar keyboards in multiple wireless versions.

The best choice appears to be the Scorpius P20MT model. It combines a compact sized keyboard with 10 meters of RF range, multimedia keys and a trackball.

Update April 24th 2008:

Logitech released an innovative design for a Media Center PC keyboard with the diNovo Mini. It features bi-colored back lighting and a multifunctional touch pad. As with all products in the diNovo line: the price is prohibitive and I don't particularly like the style, but it has a high gadget factor.

And if you like using a laptop style touchpad, your keyboard of choice may very well be the Adesso SlimTouch Wireless. Their site also features other interesting keyboards.