FLAC 24/96 down sample

[veger69]

I have a collection of 24/96 stereo flacs mostly from HDtracts. I have been unable to get my sagetv HD300 or Popcorn hour A300 to play nice with them when streaming to my Denon receiver.

So for now I would like to down sample them or convert them into another format that will work. I know that 44.1 and 48 khz flacs will work but if there is a better format than Flac I'm open to suggestions.

I intend to use SOX possibly with Foobar2000.
Is Foobar2000 used only for its UI?

I am not familiar with SOX so if someone could point me to info on Down sampling or Converting my Flacs with the Highest Quality it would be appreciated.

[Brazil2]

This may help you:
http://src.infinitewave.ca

And as long as it's lossless, the format doesn't matter.

[tebasuna51]

If you want convert 24/96 to 24/48 you can use eac3to:

eac3to input.flac output.flac -resampleTo48000
or
eac3to input.flac output.flac -resampleTo48000 -r8brain

"-r8brain" forces use of r8brain resampler instead of SSRC

If you want sox resampler:

eac3to input.flac stdout.wav | sox -t wav - -t wav - rate -v 48k | flac -8 --ignore-chunk-sizes -o output.flac -

where -v is very high quality 24-bit mastering

[veger69]

If you want convert 24/96 to 24/48 you can use eac3to:

eac3to input.flac output.flac -resampleTo48000
or
eac3to input.flac output.flac -resampleTo48000 -r8brain

"-r8brain" forces use of r8brain resampler instead of SSRC

If you want sox resampler:

eac3to input.flac stdout.wav | sox -t wav - -t wav - rate 48k | flac -8 --ignore-chunk-sizes -o output.flac -

Thankyou for the help.

I am familiar with eac3to.

If I’m reading the graphs linked by Brazil2 correctly (using Izotope 64bit SRC steep, no alias as an example of a Good result)

Then eac3to seems to be the best (Free) SRC to use.

r8brain Pro had good results as well but I’m assuming that version is not free?

I am no expert so if you guys could confirm my conclusion that would be great.

[veger69]

Ok using eac3to I get this error
"an error in the stream caused the flac decoder to lose synchronization. Aborted at file position 524288"

Below is the media info:

General
Complete name : \\SEANS-PC\Music\Esperanza Spalding\Chamber Music Society\96kHz\1-Little Fly.flac
Format : FLAC
Format/Info : Free Lossless Audio Codec
File size : 63.5 MiB
Duration : 3mn 33s
Overall bit rate mode : Variable
Overall bit rate : 2 499 Kbps
Album : Chamber Music Society
Track name : Little Fly
Track name/Position : 01
Performer : Esperanza Spalding
Genre : Jazz
Recorded date : 2011
Cover : Yes
Cover type : Cover (front)
Cover MIME : image/jpeg
HDTRACKS : www.hdtracks.com
ORIGDATE : 2011-03-07
ORIGTIME : 11:06:24
TIMEREFERENCE : 0

CODINGHISTORY : A=PCM,F=96000,W=24,M=stereo,T=Samplitude software

Audio
Format : FLAC
Format/Info : Free Lossless Audio Codec
Duration : 3mn 33s
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 2 493 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Sampling rate : 96.0 KHz
Bit depth : 24 bits
Stream size : 63.4 MiB (100%)
Writing library : libFLAC 1.2.1 (UTC 2007-09-17)

[tebasuna51]

- I can't say you what is the best resampler. Read some madshi comments about:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1333581#post1333581
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1198070#post1198070

- About the error message
If the error is with only this file maybe the file is corrupt.
Tray flac to decode the file:

flac -d "1-Little Fly.flac"

[veger69]

Looks like its a problem with that track. Flac throws a Sync and Header error. Would writing a batch file be the easiest way to automate re-sampling a album? or is there a front end or GUI that could handle this using eac3to?

[IgorC]

Solution with GUI.

foobar + plugins for Sox/SSRC resamplers (these two resamplers are well known for their transparent quality. Well, http://src.infinitewave.ca/ confirms that).

http://www.foobar2000.org/
SoX http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=67373
SoX and SSRC http://audiophilesoft.ru/load/audiophilesoftware/foobar2000/3-1-0-5

P.S. HDtracks is a salvation from overcompressed CD's mastering. I get a Dream Theater album from there and it's much less compressed that CD version.
The same day I have converted 24/96 to 24/44.1 with SSRC resampler with best possible quality (Ultra). I've performed the blind test with reference class headphones (as I always do after conversion) and couldn't tell the difference. Not even closer.

Album: Dream Theater - A Dramatic Turn of Events:
CD version - -9.19 dB (too compressed)
HDtracks version - -4.49 dB.

Dynamic Datarange Database:
http://www.dr.loudness-war.info/index.php?search_artist=&search_album=a+dramatic+turn+of+events