Plextools 2.18, FLAC and APE

Yesterday I tried 2.18 (had been using 2.17), but I think there are some weird problems with lossless compression during DAE.

First, Monkey's Audio. When I try to DAE to this format, the disc spins up, but the extraction doesn't happen. Sometimes it'll get up to about 4% and hang; other times it'll sit at 0%. The Cancel button works (ie. stops the operation), so Plextools isn't actually hung. I've tired all four compression levels, and it behaves the same way on them all. APE works fine under 2.17.

Next, FLAC, which is new in 2.18. Although this does complete, the compression levels seem wrong. I tried a particular track, whose WAV file is 27,708kb. After ripping to FLAC, compression level 8 (max), the resulting file is 25,753kb. Hardly any compression at all. If I run FLAC (version 1.1.1) on its own from the command line (or from within EAC), the result file is 18,451kb. At compression level 5 (standard FLAC default), Plextools gives a file of 26,248kb, while FLAC alone gives 18,516kb.

Anyone else noticed this? What FLAC engine does Plextools use? Is there something I need to configure to get Plextools to use FLAC properly?

Have reverted to 2.17 for the time being.

System: PX712A (Ultra DMA mode) as master on second IDE controller on an ABit KT7A mobo (VIA KT133A chipset), Athlon XP2400+, Win98SE.

Hi cliveb,

I can confirm the issue with flac and version 2.18. The same happens to me. Thanks for spotting it out, it is a serious bug.

About the APE problem, with DAE->APE I experienced a crash at the 2nd or 3rd try, and in a couple of instances
I had a "Read error" at the end of track 1 (well, I was reading at full speed and maybe it was a problem with the CD...
but I had never experienced a read error like that in a DAE). But I tested the extraction about 20 or 30 times,
and in all other cases it went fine.

Best regards,

ET

Noticed that too. Just tried this again with Plextools 2.19a. FLAC seems to work OK now. Compared to FLAC 1.1.0 the results at a compression-setting of 1 or 8 are almost identical. Plextools even manages to ge approx. 4KB better in each case.

regards
hwp