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Sonic difference between lossless compressed and uncompressed?


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Has anyone ever reported hearing a difference between a lossless compressed format and uncompressed? My music collection is in FLAC format, but I have a new 1TB drive and I don't need to save space anymore. I'm wondering if there would be any benefit to switching to AIFF or another uncompressed taggable format.

 

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Many has reported this claim. FLAC must be decompressed, this requires more system activity then uncompressed audio. System activity generates more sample rate jitter.

Search a forum like http://www.audioasylum.com/

 

Counterclaims are that is a placebo effect only, most of these claims are not substantiated by a ABX test. Modern processors are so powerful that decompression might require less then1% of processor capacity.

 

The right answer if of course, rip a couple of tracks to FLAC and AIFF and do a ABX test, then you know for sure before you embark on a possibly senseless conversion of your collection

http://thewelltemperedcomputer.com/KB/Perception.html

 

 

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I'm with Tim and the lossless is lossless camp.

 

With regards compression, this from the Hydrogenaudio Knowledgbase;

 

Lossless compression is a compression methodology in which the result of the compression can be restored faithfully, i.e. bit-by-bit identical with the uncompressed data.

 

In a nutshell, it is somewhat like compressing a Waveform file with ZIP or RAR.

 

The difference between 'mere' ZIP/RAR is that lossless compression algorithms are especially tuned and designed for the characteristics of Waveform data, thus achieving compression far greater than can be achieved by generic compression utilities.

 

As lossless compression preserves all information of the original Waveform file, audio compressed with lossless compression will unavoidably be larger than audio compressed with lossy compression. However, this disadvantage is more than offset by lossless' ability to be transcoded to other lossless format without any quality degradation.

--

djp

 

Intel iMac + Beresford TC-7510 + Little Dot MK III + beyerdynamics DT 231 = Computer audiophile quality on the cheap! --- Samsung Q1 + M-Audio Transit + Sennheiser PX 100 = Computer audiophile quality on the go!

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Lossless equals lossless

Compressed lossless has the same data as uncompressed lossless

The timing info is not part of this data

Not all bit perfect rippers are the same

Different configuration settings in the same ripper can produce different audio results and still be bit perfect

Different CD drives with the same ripper can produce different audio results and still be bit perfect

Bit perfect at 16/44.1 is not the same as bit perfect at 16/48 or 24/88.2 or 24/192.

 

Is there any wonder why there is confusion?

Is there a need for a better ripper?

Can a bit perfect ripper ever be improved to produce higher quality audio files?

 

 

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