I know some of you know FLAC, I have some questions 'bout it..

Is it pretty much 'set' in terms of encoding quality / compression? (i.e. LAME keeps having new versions, touting 'better quality'. If I do a CD now in FLAC, will they release a version later touting 'better quality'? I know it's suypposed to be 'loss-less', but if so, why are they on version 1.1.0 now?)

Thanks.
Me.

New versions are improved in speed or compression ratio. Lossless means lossless. Any FLAC file is identical to its source, just future versions of FLAC might produce smaller files in less time.

Also, there are different settings for compression. But, the default is the best trade off between speed and compression. If you're willing to wait longer for the file to encode, of course you can change the setting. But my understanding is that higher compression ratios (above the default) slow down the encoding considerably. In the third table on this comparison page, you can see the difference between a few different flac settings in terms of compression / encoding time.

New versions are improved in speed or compression ratio. Lossless means lossless. Any FLAC file is identical to its source, just future versions of FLAC might produce smaller files in less time.

Ah, okay.. So If I encode something today, with 1.1.0, it'll be acoustically identical (barring any HD errors, or other 'acts of nature') to the same track done 5 years down the road with version 3.x.x?

Coooll.. that was what I was wantign to hear.

Thanks!

Wasn't the FLAC team supposed to merge with Ogg Team? If so, what were the ramnifications? Was FLAC supposed to be a subset of the Ogg?