Lossless Music

[theking 35]

I tried to search the forum, but didn't find a thread and thus, created one.

Lossy Music:

Lossy compression enables even greater reductions in file size by removing some of the data. Lossy compression typically achieves far greater compression than lossless compression by simplifying the complexities of the data. This of course results in a reduction in audio quality, but a variety of techniques are used, mainly by exploiting psychoacoustics, to remove the data that has least effect on perceived quality. The loss in data (and thus quality) may not always be easily perceived through casual listening. The popular MP3 format is probably the best-known example, but the AAC format found on the iTunes Music Store is also common. Most formats offer a range of degrees of compression, generally measured in bit rate. The lower the rate, the smaller the file and the more significant the quality loss.

Flac:

FLAC stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec, an audio format similar to MP3, but lossless, meaning that audio is compressed in FLAC without any loss in quality. This is similar to how Zip works, except with FLAC you will get much better compression because it is designed specifically for audio, and you can play back compressed FLAC files in your favorite player just like you would an MP3 file.

How To tell between a 'real' FLAC and a 'fake' FLAC:

(Not possible with good encoding, except when compared to Original Soundtrack (OST) or CD)

(Reason for check: There have been times when the OST is converted to a lossy format and then converted to flac.)

Still, some methods to check when you don't have the OST:

-Software: Spectro
Homepage: http://spectro.enpts.com/

See the attached screenshots, one with flac and other mp3 (320 KBPS). If you see the mp3, it has a cut-off. So, if a flac is made from mp3, it will have the same cut-offs.

It's a bit arbitrary and or misleading sometimes at least.

-One more way:

Lossless Audio Checker:

-There have been various other utilities like audiochecker, True Audio Codec Software - Tau Analyzer , etc

These programs can only "guess" if the source was lossless by looking at the spectrum and trying to detect artefacts that are inherent to lossy codecs, e.g. a low pass filter.

[Vinod Nayak 443]

Good find bro, my friend and i have been backing up a MASSIVE cd collection to flac since a long time

Maybe you should update the thread with available freeware which converts cd to flac.

Edited February 24, 2014 by Vinod Nayak

[silent_god 121]

I tried to search the forum, but didn't find a thread and thus, created one.

Lossy Music:

Lossy compression enables even greater reductions in file size by removing some of the data. Lossy compression typically achieves far greater compression than lossless compression by simplifying the complexities of the data. This of course results in a reduction in audio quality, but a variety of techniques are used, mainly by exploiting psychoacoustics, to remove the data that has least effect on perceived quality. The loss in data (and thus quality) may not always be easily perceived through casual listening. The popular MP3 format is probably the best-known example, but the AAC format found on the iTunes Music Store is also common. Most formats offer a range of degrees of compression, generally measured in bit rate. The lower the rate, the smaller the file and the more significant the quality loss.

Flac:

FLAC stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec, an audio format similar to MP3, but lossless, meaning that audio is compressed in FLAC without any loss in quality. This is similar to how Zip works, except with FLAC you will get much better compression because it is designed specifically for audio, and you can play back compressed FLAC files in your favorite player just like you would an MP3 file.

How To tell between a 'real' FLAC and a 'fake' FLAC:

(Not possible with good encoding, except when compared to Original Soundtrack (OST) or CD)

(Reason for check: There have been times when the OST is converted to a lossy format and then converted to flac.)

Still, some methods to check when you don't have the OST:

-Software: Spectro

Homepage: http://spectro.enpts.com/

See the attached screenshots, one with flac and other mp3 (320 KBPS). If you see the mp3, it has a cut-off. So, if a flac is made from mp3, it will have the same cut-offs.

It's a bit arbitrary and or misleading sometimes at least.

-One more way:

Lossless Audio Checker:

-There have been various other utilities like audiochecker, True Audio Codec Software - Tau Analyzer , etc

These programs can only "guess" if the source was lossless by looking at the spectrum and trying to detect artefacts that are inherent to lossy codecs, e.g. a low pass filter.

any real good / free / practical method to convert audio cassettes into flac ? My dad has huge collection of such hardware history & would like to store it in other format, before major companies stop producing cassette players.

[ami1 237]

Converting audio cassettes usually introduces some amount of distortion since heads pickup a faint sound of the tape motor.

Quite a long time back I had converted some of my cassettes which were no longer available in the market, but I had to use a few apps for removing noise etc.

In such a case, probably a good bitrate mp3 is good enough.

You need to connect your tape player output (preferably line-out else headphone out) to your audio card input and then record with any software you want including windows sound recorder etc. You can record in WAV first (which is uncompressed so file size will be quite large ~ 100 MB/song of 5 min i think) and then convert to mp3 / flac / wma at leisure.

[theking 35]

Good find bro, my friend and i have been backing up a MASSIVE cd collection to flac since a long time

Maybe you should update the thread with available freeware which converts cd to flac.

http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/