[linux-audio-user] Flac vs wavpack and float32 to pcm24 conversion tests

Hi! I'm interested in losless compression of typical Jack audifiles for exchange. That means float32 sample format. Flac doesn't handle float, only pcm. wavpack handles both. So I was told that converting from (wav) float32 to pcm24 and back should be losless, if the float file is normalized. This would cut down on file-size by itself and allow to use Flac. I tested this using sndfile-convert and diff tells me there are differences. The file sizes are identical. diff did not report differences for a wav-unpacked file (staying in float32). Now I wonder if I did something wrong (I'm pretty sure the source file is normalised), or if there's a bug in sndfile-convert or if the differences are in the header. diff is a tool for text, after all. Anyways, file size results, didn't care about time: 48kHz, float 32: - original wav: 59.1 MB (my Aliethno track) - wavpack: 39.9 MB pcm24: - wav: 44.4 MB - wavpack: 32.3 MB - flac: 37.4 MB I used wavpack -h and flac -8 for best compression ratios. (Well, just saw wavpack has a -hh switch) -- Thorsten Wilms Thorwil's Creature Illustrations: http://www.printfection.com/thorwil