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Topic: Native FLAC support in Windows 10? (Read 37522 times) previous topic - next topic
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Native FLAC support in Windows 10?

Reply #50 –
Don't want to keep bragging these comments but...:


"Flac Not the best but good for now > the future is DSD and DXD"

"DSD is almost like 4K, unless you are not an audiophile and don't have the top notch hardware. . its like having a 4K tv with analog cable. ."


"Good thing Microsoft has the patent for 128 GB SD cards."

Native FLAC support in Windows 10?

Reply #51 –
Quote from: krabapple on
so , FLAC  is not lossless unless it's decoded outside of Windows.   
You could as well argue that FLAC is not lossless when played back with Replaygain since it changes the original amplitude and introduces rounding error.

Native FLAC support in Windows 10?

Reply #52 –
As pointed out here, ALAC is supported in Windows 10. I just checked for myself, build 9926 indeed plays back Apple Lossless files, but as it's wrapped in the MP4 container (just like AAC) metadata support is much better. Let's hope support for FLAC metadata gets at the same level before the launch
Music: sounds arranged such that they construct feelings.

Native FLAC support in Windows 10?

Reply #53 –
Quote from: ktf on
- The column Album artist is fed from the ALBUMARTIST tag if it is available, otherwise it is taken from the ARTIST tag
- Disc numbers are not recognized
- I don't know about total number of tracks and discs, is there any de facto standard for this?
- It does not recognize the YEAR and COMPOSER tag, despite looking for those
- It does not recognize the DATE tag
- No UTF-8 support apparently

I just checked with build 10041 of Windows 10: the UTF-8 issue has been fixed (Tiësto now displays correctly) but no other improvements have been made. edit: bitrate is correctly displayed now.
Music: sounds arranged such that they construct feelings.

Native FLAC support in Windows 10?

Reply #54 –
Is it too far off-topic to ask if they have got around to USB Audio Class 2 yet?

Somewhat academic, as I intend that WinXP shall continue to be my last regular-use version
The most important audio cables are the ones in the brain

Native FLAC support in Windows 10?

Reply #55 –
Quote from: ktf on
Quote from: ktf on
- The column Album artist is fed from the ALBUMARTIST tag if it is available, otherwise it is taken from the ARTIST tag
- Disc numbers are not recognized
- I don't know about total number of tracks and discs, is there any de facto standard for this?
- It does not recognize the YEAR and COMPOSER tag, despite looking for those
- It does not recognize the DATE tag
- No UTF-8 support apparently

I just checked with build 10041 of Windows 10: the UTF-8 issue has been fixed (Tiësto now displays correctly) but no other improvements have been made. edit: bitrate is correctly displayed now.

Still no support for the DATE tag? I am getting a bit worried about that to be honest. Let's hope they do really stick to the VorbisComment spec.
Every night with my star friends / We eat caviar and drink champagne
Sniffing in the VIP area / We talk about Frank Sinatra
Do you know Frank Sinatra? / He's dead

Native FLAC support in Windows 10?

Reply #56 –
Today I checked build 10074, and there has been one small change: instead of giving the illusion you can change tags, it is now not possible to change the tags in the File Explorer. The illusion is still in place in Windows Media Player though.

It still doesn't look for the DATE nor DISCNUMBER tags though, and ARTIST is not properly displayed. And for some reason, FLAC is only played in Windows Media Player, not in the Music app.
Music: sounds arranged such that they construct feelings.

Native FLAC support in Windows 10?

Reply #57 –
Quote from: ktf on
As pointed out here, ALAC is supported in Windows 10.

Is Microsoft completely retarded? Great, welcome to the new lossless standard. Apple will never integrate FLAC.

Native FLAC support in Windows 10?

Reply #58 –
I doubt that ALAC will ever completely overtake FLAC unless FLAC's development is abandoned. Even so, ALAC isn't terrible; we could do far worse with an "official" sanctioned lossless format.

Native FLAC support in Windows 10?

Reply #60 –
Quote from: eahm on
Quote from: ktf on
As pointed out here, ALAC is supported in Windows 10.

Is Microsoft completely retarded? Great, welcome to the new lossless standard. Apple will never integrate FLAC.

What's retarded about it? Many people will have ALAC files in their collection and Microsoft just caters to those people too.
Every night with my star friends / We eat caviar and drink champagne
Sniffing in the VIP area / We talk about Frank Sinatra
Do you know Frank Sinatra? / He's dead

Native FLAC support in Windows 10?

Reply #61 –
Quote from: eahm on
Is Microsoft completely retarded?

No, just insane. ;~)

Quote from: eahm on
Great, welcome to the new lossless standard. Apple will never integrate FLAC.

Doesn't matter, lossless is lossless. Personally, that's all I find relevant, considering that if I don't like the container, I can easily change it. Hopefully these format inclusions will promote lossless distribution.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?  ;~)

Native FLAC support in Windows 10?

Reply #62 –
With the release of Windows 10 planned for the end of this month, I downloaded the latest 'slow ring' version (build 10162).

Changes:
- WMP can now rip CDs to FLAC or ALAC!
- DATE tag is now recognized, listed as 'Release Date' (in File Browser/Explorer, not in WMP)
- YEAR tag is now recognized, listed as 'Year' (both File Browser/Explorer and WMP)
- Bitrate is now correctly displayed
- Tags can now be changed (in File Browser/Explorer, not in WMP)
- FLAC files are now opened in the Music app instead of WMP, like all other music file formats
- Embedded album art works in WMP, not in Music App

That means that:
- Multi-disc albums are still not supported
- Artists are not recognized if an albumartist is present

I'll soon take a look at the ripping feature, this might  be very interesting, especially the vendor string.
Music: sounds arranged such that they construct feelings.

Native FLAC support in Windows 10?

Reply #63 –
It's a shame they messed up the date/year tag. The YEAR tag doesn't exist, FLAC uses the DATE tag to display the year the track was released.
Every night with my star friends / We eat caviar and drink champagne
Sniffing in the VIP area / We talk about Frank Sinatra
Do you know Frank Sinatra? / He's dead

Native FLAC support in Windows 10?

Reply #64 –
Okay, I've just taken a look at the FLAC encoder. The version string is reference libFLAC 1.3.0 20130526. However, the files generated are even larger (only slightly, but still) than FLAC 1.3.0 with the -0 setting, and feature no padding. It looks like Microsoft has taken the liberty to make the FLAC files encoded with WMP as big and slow as possible? 

The ALAC implementation seems to be fine though, however for some reason it crashes every other track for no obvious reason. Might be something in my setup causing that though.

edit: an example of the tags added to a FLAC file ripped by WMP
Quote
comment[0]: TITLE=Summit
    comment[1]: ALBUM=Bangarang
    comment[2]: ARTIST=Ellie Goulding
    comment[3]: COMPOSER=Skrillex
    comment[4]: GENRE=Dance
    comment[5]: WM/MCDI=7+96+3570+7480+CCF9+122C9+16A94+1A567+212F8
    comment[6]: TRACKNUMBER=7
    comment[7]: YEAR=2012
    comment[8]: ALBUMARTIST=Skrillex
    comment[9]: WM/WMCOLLECTIONID={3c63402e-1c1a-4d43-bb82-513fabe33523}
    comment[10]: ORGANIZATION=WEA

So yes, Microsoft seems to prefer the YEAR over the DATE tag.
Music: sounds arranged such that they construct feelings.

Native FLAC support in Windows 10?

Reply #65 –
Thanks very much, ktf, for this investigation! Seems like they managed to get a useful FLAC integration ready in time for the Windows 10 RTM.

Maybe they chose such inefficient FLAC encoding in WMP not only to make their WMA Lossless look better, but also to minimize the risk of running into foreign patents they don't know about (the more elaborate an encoder, the higher such a risk).

Chris
If I don't reply to your reply, it means I agree with you.

Native FLAC support in Windows 10?

Reply #66 –
Maybe they built it with FLAC__INTEGER_ONLY_LIBRARY defined?

Native FLAC support in Windows 10?

Reply #67 –
I've seen plenty of oems build codecs with optimization disabled or misconfigured settings. Wouldn't surprise me here.

Native FLAC support in Windows 10?

Reply #68 –
Well i'm using the released build of Windows 10 now, and the "Contributing Artist" column in WMP is completely blank, and all the years are "Unknown Year"... Sigh. WMP Tag+ Handled this fine, but as FLAC is now natively supported, WMP Tag+ won't handle them.... Is there any way to disable WMP 10's Native FLAC support so I can go back to something like LAV filters, and use WMP Tag+ for tagging again?

Native FLAC support in Windows 10?

Reply #69 –
Hi, as the author of WMP Tag Plus, I thought I'd chime in here. I have actually been thinking about adding an option to my plug-in to override the native FLAC tagging support in Windows 10.

However, switching in WMP from one tagging support implementation to another on-the-fly isn't without danger. There's a high risk that after the switch, the missing tags (Contributing Artist and Year in this case) are written back to the file, meaning that the original tags in the file are erased.

To prevent this, I would only allow a change of the new 'override' option while there are no FLAC songs in WMP's library. This would force you to temporarily remove all FLAC songs from the library. A bit of a hassle, but the alternative (loss of tags) is much worse. And it's a one-time thing.

Just let me know what you think, then I might add such an option.

Native FLAC support in Windows 10?

Reply #70 –
Quote from: Tim De Baets on
However, switching in WMP from one tagging support implementation to another on-the-fly isn't without danger. There's a high risk that after the switch, the missing tags (Contributing Artist and Year in this case) are written back to the file, meaning that the original tags in the file are erased.

Sorry, I don't understand, who would write these missing tags back to the file, Windows?

I would say the solution would be to always read both DATE and YEAR (if a file erroneously contains a YEAR tag) but take the contents of a (non-empty) DATE tag as leading. On write you simply only write back the DATE tag and the file should conform to the FLAC specs. And because Windows apparently reads both that shouldn't be a problem.


Or am I missing something?
Every night with my star friends / We eat caviar and drink champagne
Sniffing in the VIP area / We talk about Frank Sinatra
Do you know Frank Sinatra? / He's dead

Native FLAC support in Windows 10?

Reply #71 –
It's WMP that writes the missing tags back to the file, not Windows. WMP will always try to keep the tags in the file in sync with the tags in its library. So when there are tags missing in the library due to incomplete tagging support, and you suddenly *do* get tagging support for the missing tags, WMP will sync the file with what's in the library, thus erasing the tags in the file.

This has nothing to do with the DATE versus YEAR confusion.

Native FLAC support in Windows 10?

Reply #72 –
Quote from: Tim De Baets on
Hi, as the author of WMP Tag Plus, I thought I'd chime in here. I have actually been thinking about adding an option to my plug-in to override the native FLAC tagging support in Windows 10.

However, switching in WMP from one tagging support implementation to another on-the-fly isn't without danger. There's a high risk that after the switch, the missing tags (Contributing Artist and Year in this case) are written back to the file, meaning that the original tags in the file are erased.

To prevent this, I would only allow a change of the new 'override' option while there are no FLAC songs in WMP's library. This would force you to temporarily remove all FLAC songs from the library. A bit of a hassle, but the alternative (loss of tags) is much worse. And it's a one-time thing.

Just let me know what you think, then I might add such an option.


+1 for continued wmp tag plus support in win 10...ms implementation just doesnt work yet.

Whats really oddon on my pc
is that if i set 'year' in the explorer interface on a test track...
then look at track in mp3tag....i have two tags 'year'..the original year and the one i just entered in explorer..
why the 'year' tag that explorer creates is visible, whereas the original year tag defined in mp3tag is not visible i dont know...

Native FLAC support in Windows 10?

Reply #73 –
Quote from: ginjaninja on
Quote from: Tim De Baets on
Hi, as the author of WMP Tag Plus, I thought I'd chime in here. I have actually been thinking about adding an option to my plug-in to override the native FLAC tagging support in Windows 10.

However, switching in WMP from one tagging support implementation to another on-the-fly isn't without danger. There's a high risk that after the switch, the missing tags (Contributing Artist and Year in this case) are written back to the file, meaning that the original tags in the file are erased.

To prevent this, I would only allow a change of the new 'override' option while there are no FLAC songs in WMP's library. This would force you to temporarily remove all FLAC songs from the library. A bit of a hassle, but the alternative (loss of tags) is much worse. And it's a one-time thing.

Just let me know what you think, then I might add such an option.


+1 for continued wmp tag plus support in win 10...ms implementation just doesnt work yet.

Whats really oddon on my pc
is that if i set 'year' in the explorer interface on a test track...
then look at track in mp3tag....i have two tags 'year'..the original year and the one i just entered in explorer..
why the 'year' tag that explorer creates is visible, whereas the original year tag defined in mp3tag is not visible i dont know...


Make sure you also send Microsoft some feedback.  They seem to be pretty receptive to feedback this time around.  Heck, they added MKV and FLAC support to Windows.