Jim and All.

jim thats a v good link/treatise. kudos.

one interesting aspect is it looks like flac is one of the best alternatives to wav.
the wavpk stats were interesting vs flac.

now heres a 'BRAIN TEASER'...lol…(****see footnote at post end.)....as follows.

lets consider again that old junk pc with a slow hard drive, and lets also consider the situation where instead of playing a multitrack project from the beginning (pre loaded look ahead buffers filled)...INSTEAD…the user wants the ability to 'flit around' the time line'…ie user clicks the mouse to start playback at any time point….eg 1min30secs, 2min05secs whatever time point the user wishes…ie any time point ideally…

BUT there are problems for the poor software coder of music production software….

1..the coder doesnt know where the user might playback from ie the time points.
2..the tech foundation is not 'real time'. its just an 'illusion'. in summary its easy to create pre filled buffers when user is playing back from song start…cos they are prolly created on previous stop…BUT…WHAT ABOUT RANDOM USER DECIDED PLAYBACK TIME POINTS ?? thats the 'elephant in the tech room' !!
3..add in the fact the coder is prolly dealing with windows audio api's.
(some coders i believe use assembler sub routines i assume to keep things speedy rather than C++)

do you feel sorry for the poor programmer of music software yet ??...i do.

in summary when the user clicks on any time point then quickly those 'buffers' have to be filled with audio data. THUS…on a slow clunker pc the user might notice a 'lag' before playback starts.
now lets add more and more traks the clunker must playback (and add in fx//instrument plug ins etc)...
OOPS ! PROBLEMS !!
major LAG can occur.
which is one reason big time recordists go for custom built studio powerful pc's etc etc. to minimise lag.
but even those in the past might get lag as trak and plug in counts reached crazy levels.

in summary the programmer of multitrak software faces very interesting tech challenges…particularly with the user that cant afford a 'big boys computer'.

SO where does FLAC figure into the above discussion re the user that can only afford an old junker pc ? ?

all i can say is it seems from my testing that on an old junker pc flac offers benefits for the user that will playback from any time point where the 'audio buffers' cant be pre filled. cos with wav more audio data has to flow thru the 'pipe' per second than flac.
this results i might suggest in less 'lag' before playback using flac.

thus ive found that recording and playback of multitrak projects on a clunker pc might be more fluid compared to wav. of course there are 'limits' if the user needs insane trak counts. (note reaper even runs on very clunky pc's compared to some other software...but even reaps has limits obviously depending on trak//plug in counts)


i hope i make a modicum of sense...lol.

(****re 'brain teaser' …my doc says creating songs , and doing crosswords//soduku is great for the brain as one ages.)

merry xmas to all

om

my songs....mixed for good earbuds...(fyi..my vocs on all songs..)
https://soundcloud.com/alfsongs
(90 songs created useing bb/rb.)