Topic: FLAC 1.4.0 released

[Xire]

Hi Ian,

In case you've missed it - https://xiph.org/flac/2022/09/09/flac-1-4-0-released.html
- FLAC can now encode and decode 32 bit-per-sample audio. This means the FLAC format is now one step closer to being fully implemented. Note that this is 32 bit integer samples, not 32 bit float samples.

[Ian @ un4seen]

Thanks for the reminder. BASSFLAC was actually updated to use the FLAC 1.4.0 code a few days ago, but I found that performance was degraded due to CPU-specific assembler/intrinsic decoder optimizations being removed in the FLAC 1.4.0 release. It's still pretty fast compared to other formats but not as fast as it used to be. Every little bit of performance is helpful (I'm thinking particularly with packed soundfonts), so I would like to check if those optimizations can be reintroduced before a BASSFLAC update is released.

[Xire]

Thanks for the reminder. BASSFLAC was actually updated to use the FLAC 1.4.0 code a few days ago, but I found that performance was degraded due to CPU-specific assembler/intrinsic decoder optimizations being removed in the FLAC 1.4.0 release. It's still pretty fast compared to other formats but not as fast as it used to be. Every little bit of performance is helpful (I'm thinking particularly with packed soundfonts), so I would like to check if those optimizations can be reintroduced before a BASSFLAC update is released.

I tried the BASSFLAC 2.4.5 and it worked fine for me, but some users started to report the crash of the app when decoding simple, non-32bit flac files (going back to BASSFLAC 2.4.4.7 solved the issue). So I wonder if there are some optimizations in there which don't run on older PCs? The BASS version I'm using is 2.4.14, could that be the reason?

[MB_SOFT]

it was fixed yesterday https://xiph.org/flac/changelog.html

[Ian @ un4seen]

I tried the BASSFLAC 2.4.5 and it worked fine for me, but some users started to report the crash of the app when decoding simple, non-32bit flac files (going back to BASSFLAC 2.4.4.7 solved the issue). So I wonder if there are some optimizations in there which don't run on older PCs? The BASS version I'm using is 2.4.14, could that be the reason?

I'm not sure it'll help, as I don't see any crash-related stuff in the FLAC 1.4.2 changelog, but here's a BASSFLAC update based on that for you/them to try:

   www.un4seen.com/stuff/bassflac.zip

If the crash still happens, please provide a dump file from it for more info. The ProcDump tool can be used to generate the dump file. For example, run "procdump -e -ma -x . yourapp.exe". Then ZIP and upload the generated dump file to have a look at here:

   ftp.un4seen.com/incoming/

Btw, the CPU-specific assembler/intrinsic decoder optimizations mentioned in my last post weren't reintroduced in the end for the BASSFLAC 2.4.5 release, as it turned out they weren't having much effect on performance. The degraded performance that I noticed was actually caused by another change in FLAC 1.4.0 (which double-checks the decoded data values are in valid range), and that was disabled in the BASSFLAC 2.4.5 release (and the update above).