Lossless audio codec with no filesize/length limit?

[SlyCooperReloadCoded]

For a personal project, I'm making a 100-hour-long audio file that will loop perfectly. I don't feel like explaining why, it doesn't matter. What I've been looking for is an audio codec/file format that is lossless or audibly lossless and has no file size limit or length limit. I WOULD use Google to search for this info, however searching "filetypegoeshere length limit" gives me pages and pages of online audio converters rather than the information I'm looking for. I even looked on Wikipedia and found nothing. Is there some kind of knowledge base for this kind of thing, like a website that has everything you could ever want to know about every single audio codec/file format? It seems like Google is intentionally censoring this information for some reason.

For the time being though, is there an audio codec/file format that is lossless or audibly lossless and has no file size limit or length limit?

[Cornucopia]

RF64, the 64bit successor to WAV, has a max filesize in the exabytes.

My calculation of what is necessary for 100 hrs is ~64GB (16bit, 48kHz,stereo). Doable.

For looping, I have found it appears more seamless when you do the loop crossfade in the MIDDLE of the clip, with the ends cut at the same point. The loop crossfade is best done on a section that is rhythmic enough to match the waveforms down to the sample, and the waveforms of both ending and beginning sections have identical trajectories. IOW, no abrupt transitions in the progression of samples. Also be mindful of bkgd elements, especially ambience, as it is noticeable if a reverb tail doesn't decay normally all the way.


Even if/when you create this, you may have issues with players, as some try to cache the entirety of the clip in memory, and some have issues counting beyond 24 hours. And not all players do loops seamlessly, especially when the file is long/large.


Scott

[SlyCooperReloadCoded]

RF64, I've never heard of it. Can foobar2000/Audacity convert to it? If not, is there a plugin for it? I've not seen this in any tool. I don't need segments to loop, the entire thing will be a perfect loop, so that's not a problem.

[Cornucopia]

Audacity supports it. Haven't checked the other.


Scott

[SlyCooperReloadCoded]

Crap, Audacity 2.3.3 doesn't support it. I'm not comfortable using anything newer due to Audacity's new owners and what they did to the program.

[jagabo]

I just created a 126GB, 183 hour, mka file with stereo flac compresssed audio using ffmpeg:

General
Unique ID                                : 226358058694959593151823089436959757486 (0xAA4AF9F160FADE53DBB675455FF8D4AE)
Complete name                            : E:\Temp\output.mka
Format                                   : Matroska
Format version                           : Version 4
File size                                : 127 GiB
Duration                                 : 183 h
Overall bit rate mode                    : Variable
Overall bit rate                         : 1 646 kb/s
Writing application                      : Lavf58.76.100
Writing library                          : Lavf58.76.100
ErrorDetectionType                       : Per level 1

Audio
ID                                       : 1
Format                                   : FLAC
Format/Info                              : Free Lossless Audio Codec
Codec ID                                 : A_FLAC
Duration                                 : 183 h
Bit rate mode                            : Variable
Channel(s)                               : 2 channels
Channel layout                           : L R
Sampling rate                            : 44.1 kHz
Bit depth                                : 24 bits
Compression mode                         : Lossless
Writing library                          : Lavc58.134.100 flac
Default                                  : Yes
Forced                                   : No
DURATION                                 : 183:23:48.388000000

flac in mp4 and AVI (ODML 2) were fine too (similar file size). Though support is flac in MP4 is "experimental" -- some players may not support it.

And similarly large files are fine with uncompressed PCM in MKV, and AVI.

[El Heggunte]

Crap, Audacity 2.3.3 doesn't support it. I'm not comfortable using anything newer due to Audacity's new owners and what they did to the program.

You can disable the automagic updates in the Preferences applet, besides blocking Audacity with a firewall.
But if your paranoia is huger than mine you could give a try to this fork:

https://github.com/SartoxSoftware/audacium/releases/tag/18fbae6

[SlyCooperReloadCoded]

Would Tenacity have this? It's built on top of Audacity.

[SlyCooperReloadCoded]

Okay, it does, I'll be using this. Thanks!