Shannon's Journal Discussion

[Shannon]

Concerning MP3 vs FLAC:

There's probably not enough information yet to make this decision, but lets look at the advantages/disadvantages to each format:

FLAC:
Slightly more effective (somewhere Shannon mentioned, I believe, 5-10%)
but, 2-3 times larger files and not as widely supported.

MP3:
Smaller, widely supported, and hybrid format sounds like it is more than 5-10% more effective.

I vote for MP3.

Just my $0.02.

How about this: Create only FLAC files and leave instructions on how to properly encode them as mp3 (which bitrate to use etc) in case people want to. People can create the slightly less powerful mp3 from the FLACs, but not the other way around.

Putting a task that delicate and important into the hands of people who are not uniformly paying attention, using the same software, understand how delicate an operation that encoding is, etc. will result in many of them accidentally or otherwise unintentionally stripping out the subliminal audio, and leave me no way to know if they did or not. Which would make a mockery of my work and kill confidence in my subs... and my bottom line. That is, therefore, not an option.