If you’re not the audiophile kind of guy this might bore for you. Nevertheless, it’s worth thinking about it.

FLAC stands for “Free Lossless Audio Codec” and that’s what it is. It’s a compressed audio format that can be decompressed to the original audio without loosing any bit of quality. Audio formats like MP3 and AAC (M4A) on the other hand do lossy compression. Even if you might think that they sound very good, they don’t sound as good as a CD does. FLAC however sounds exactly like a CD.

The downside is that FLAC files are larger. Lossy compressed audio files are relatively small. Depending on their compression they have 1–2,5 MB per second (128–320 kbit/s). FLAC on the other hand has 4–8 MB per second. That means that it takes 2–3 times as much space as MP3 files. However, they have exactly the same quality as uncompressed WAV files and these have enormous 10 MB per second.

FLAC compresses your audio without any loss of quality. That makes it so cool. Sadly many mobile audio players don’t support FLAC yet. But your computer most likely does.

You should keep in mind that once you use lossy compression and don’t keep the original, the original quality will be gone forever. You’ll always be stuck with the lossy sound. Indeed you could convert MP3 to FLAC. But that would be like scaling a 5 megapixel picture to 10 megapixel. It won’t gain any quality. So you might want to think about starting to use lossless compression today or in the near future. The good thing is that once you use lossless compression you can convert it to any other lossless format without loosing quality, be it Apple Lossless, Real Audio Lossless, or Windows Media Audio Lossless.

And let’s be honest. Current digital audio players have 16 to 64 GB of memory. And they grow continuously. Today’s average hard drive has a size of 1500 GB. That’s 178 days of lossless audio. Who the hell should listen to over 4000 CDs? Your audio player will have the same capacity in about 10 years and probably 300 GB in five years. By then you won’t care about the size. But you won’t get back what you already lost.

Somewhere Over The Rainbow by Israel Kamakawiwo’ole on YouTube.

The song “Over The Rainbow” was originally written for the movie “The Wizard of Oz” and was sung by Judy Garland. In 1993 the Hawaiian musician Israel Kamakawiwo’ole released an ukulele version of the song on his album “Facing Future”. Since then his interpretation was used in various films and commercials. Israel Kamakawiwo’ole died of weight-related respiratory illness at the age of 38 in 1997.

References:

• Wikipedia: Over the Rainbow
• Wikipedia: Israel Kamakawiwo’ole

Over And Over by Hot Chip on YouTube.

Probably the track with the best groove I heard for years.

Your Woman by White Town on YouTube.

This song is an example for how good and successful a song can be despite its lacking of variation and arrangement complexity. It samples a recording of “My Woman” performed by Al Bowlly and the Lew Stone and the Monseigneur Band in 1932. The song was originally written by Bing Crosby, Irving Wallman, and Max Wartell.

White Town adds some really simple loops which don’t change throughout the whole song. The bit of variation there is comes from the individual presence and absence of the looped instruments and the vocals.

Reference: White Town – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Always On My Mind by Pet Shop Boys on YouTube.

This song is definitely one of my all time favourites. It became famous after Elvis Presley recorded it in 1972. The Pet Shop Boys performed it for an TV special at the tenth anniversary of Presley’s death in 1987 and later released it as a single.

Another possibility have been the Lorino piano pieces. But I wasn’t sure whether they would suit to the other participant’s music or not. I guess they range of music styles of the winning songs will be very wide, because the contest isn’t just about picking the best free available songs and pressing them on CD. It’s probably also about highlighting the diversity of free music on the internet. But acoustic piano songs?

After talking to one of the hosts of the contest I also submitted “Lorino – Music Made Me Think Of You”. I told him about the two different projects LXDU and Lorino and that I have them because I like to be at least a little consistent with the style of tracks a project releases. He said it would be okay to register one track for each of the projects.

Submission deadline is 31st of August. Hurry up!

I’m Not In Love by 10cc on YouTube.

It’s only about a year ago that I came across this brilliant song and decided to buy it. Of course I heard it several times before. But I never really paid so much attention. A week ago I found this awesome making of.

Making of: 10cc – I’m Not In Love on YouTube.

We are! At least that’s what a Swedish company is saying. WeSC—short for “WeAretheSuperlativeConspiracy”—is a clothing brand mainly focussing on skateboarding style. The company was founded about ten years ago.

Last autumn after some sightseeing in Stockholm I accidentally ran into their home shop in some side street. I didn’t know anything about WeSC, but the shop looked like fashion and I was looking for some clothes. I was instantly thrilled to see about thirty headphones in many different colours hanging on an iron rod. They were obviously designed to go with the shirts and sweaters on the table below and I couldn’t get around taking the picture you can see above.

Since then I’ve seen many people on the streets of Sweden wearing WeSC headphone. I think they are looking very good as a fashion accessory. As I can tell from my own experience Swedes (and probably also Norwegians) are pioneers in terms of fashion. They wear one or two years in advance what will then become trend in Europe and other countries. Certainly I don’t like everything of these new trends and I hope that some won’t spread. But I definitely like the phones. Over the last six months I’ve been watching out for people wearing WeSC phones in Germany. I’ve seen about half a dozen in Munich and Berlin, but apart from that there’s not much. I’m curious how long it will take until we see them all over the place.

My Koss PORTAPRO—which I love and wear with pride—are broken at the moment. There’s a loose contact somewhere inside the plug. Fortunately Koss offers a limited lifetime warranty on them, so I sent them in for repair. Hope they will be fixed soon. Anyway, I started thinking about buying new headphones which I could wear outdoors. Sometimes I don’t like ear canal phones even though some sound quite good. I usually use them for listening to news podcasts when I’m on my way. But having 5 cm wide speakers on your ears gives you a way better experience when listening to music.

This week I went to the only shop in my city which sells WeSC phones. I wanted to know how good they sound. The salesclerk was nice and it was no problem testing them. Currently there are basically five models:

• Alp Horn (DJ, 100–120 €)
• Bag Pipe (DJ, 130–150 €)
• Bongo (premium, 60–80 €)
• Maraca (retro style, 80–100 €)
• Oboe (street, 40–60 €)

I started with the Bongo because two of those have a really fancy colour pattern. Bass and mids seemed quite good. But the highs were quieter than the rest which led to a lack of clarity. Maybe most people who aren’t into music so much won’t be bothered by this. But I’m more the audiophile kind of guy and I won’t be happy with a sound like that. Therefore I didn’t even test the cheaper Oboe.

In contrast the Maraca sounded very good and I was on the verge of buying one, because I really like the retro style shape it has. But sadly the Maraca doesn’t have a beautiful colour pattern like some Bongo have. Maracas are at most simply two coloured.

A mentionable feature of the Maraca is the unexpectedly low weight. They are pretty comfortable to wear. One thing which also caught my eye was the short cable. It is only 50 cm long. There’s an extension included which gives you another metre. But the reason this made me uneasy was that I once had ear canal phones with extension. That was annoying when carrying my MP3 player in the trouser pocket. I had to use the extension for that and plug and socket were so heavy that the cable was constantly pulling on my ear. However, this is no problem with the WeSC phones.

Finally I brought myself to order the Maraca Dark Shadow today. For me it’s the colour that fits best with the retro style of the phones. Other colours are white, black, red, and turquoise. The black one would be my second choice because it seems ageless. Third would be the stylish white one. But turquoise and red aren’t my favourite colours.

Let’s see how long it takes my new phones to reach me.