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Old 01-10-2022, 05:01 PM   #1
Catesby
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Default which format for hours of multitrack recording

Is CAF now the best choice for hours of multi track recording? Or is RF64 better? I assume they're functionally the same no? Also is it unwise to record directly to FLAC?

Also is it possible to edit all three of those types directly in reaper as one would with a wave file?
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Old 01-11-2022, 09:04 AM   #2
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I personally would go with BWF or RF64. But if drive capacity is an issue FLAC would work fine.

Yes, Reaper can edit them all.
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Old 01-11-2022, 09:45 AM   #3
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I know nothing about which audio formats this affects or not, but I'd care the most about not losing what was recorded "thus far" if the computer or reaper etc. crashes during the recording.

In video land that would mean using .MKV instead of .MP4 as a loose example since an MP4 interrupted during the recording would result in an unreadable corrupt file.
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Old 01-11-2022, 10:17 AM   #4
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CAF is best because if your computer crashes while recording the (partially written) file survives, and is still valid and readable.

RF64 is a backwards-compatible kludge, with all kinds of vestigial/legacy bullshit. And if your computer crashes while recording, the partially written file is corrupt and unreadable.
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Old 01-11-2022, 10:24 AM   #5
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I know Reaper writes an end of file mark with every bufferful of audio with wav. That leads to a wav file that can be read right up to where the power went out. The header will not include the correct length but the audio will be there. (Not a problem for Reaper to read.) I know partial or corrupt flac files are readable up to the bad part. I haven't tested the theory like I did with wav but it seems low risk.

Whatever you do, don't record to an external USB drive! This is always the advice for important recordings though.

CAF looks like an old Mac only format from back when wav files were limited to 4GB (before the extended w64 business). Probably not a lot of support at present but also no need anymore.

Last edited by serr; 01-11-2022 at 10:29 AM.
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Old 01-11-2022, 11:27 AM   #6
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CAF “looks like an old Mac only format” but WAV doesn’t look like an old MS-DOS only circa 1991 multimedia format?
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Old 01-11-2022, 11:36 AM   #7
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Other advantages:

RF64 files can’t handle sample rates with fractional parts, but CAF files can. That comes in handy when dealing with television sample rates like 47952.047952.

RF64 files can’t handle strings (text, comments, annotations,. etc.) written in non-English characters sets (without having to guess what the language is). Whereas CAF can understand all languages (Japanese, German, and Spanish - all in the same sentence).
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Old 01-11-2022, 11:55 AM   #8
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Well...

Wav looks like the uncompressed pcm format most folks have landed on. For good, bad, or in between.

I've been a forever Mac user, mind you. And now they've changed... Linux moving forward. Today OSX still works, so nothing more to do at the moment. I do know that if you want to share files and audio with Windows users that you avoid any and all weird or foreign language characters in file names. FLAC turned into the consumer delivery format (not ALAC). Tag your flac files.
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Old 01-11-2022, 01:35 PM   #9
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thank you everyone for the replies. and thanks Bob for the info on CAF. since reaper now supports it I think ill go with that for now.

interesting about the not recording to external drive. haven't heard that before. ill go check that out.

thanks folks.
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Old 01-11-2022, 03:29 PM   #10
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I could be wrong but I believe FLAC also handles arbitrary sample rates such as 47952.047952 Hz. Whether Reaper has that functionality implemented though, I'm not sure.

EDIT - OK, based on the actual FLAC website:

"FLAC supports linear sample rates from 1Hz - 655,350Hz in 1Hz increments"

So looks like arbitrary rates are not supported, but otherwise, FLAC is a great format as long as you don't need floating point. FLAC also supports bit depths from 4 to 32-bit integers so you can record in, say, 20-bit FLAC if you wanted to save some space and still have a higher bit-depth than 16-bit for mixing purposes. FLAC also supports up to 8 channels, and supports a TON of tags including custom tags, so it's an extremely flexible format.
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Old 01-11-2022, 03:36 PM   #11
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Bob Blacksheep View Post
CAF is best because if your computer crashes while recording the (partially written) file survives, and is still valid and readable.
Thanks, nice to know!
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Old 01-12-2022, 06:20 AM   #12
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Quote:
Originally Posted by vitalker View Post
Thanks, nice to know!
Yea this is a huge plus of CAF; FLAC does not always do this
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Old 01-12-2022, 06:33 AM   #13
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Lynx_TWO View Post
Yea this is a huge plus of CAF; FLAC does not always do this
That's why I used MKV for screen capturing.
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