Article: Is It Time To Rethink Lossless?

[GillesP]

There was a difference: I remember in the early days of CDs, buying an AAD version of a Mozart symphony when there was not that many recordings available, and returning it to the store because of the huge hiss in the background...It was an historical version by conductor Bruno Walter I was told, but didn't know. I bought a different DDD version and for a while I did check these codes a lot!

[actuel audio]

3 hours ago, Luposian said:

Anyone still remember when CD’s used the AAD, ADD, DDD nomenclature?  I was always happy when I bought a CD with the DDD. 😁

I’ve been buying used CDs lately and often end up with the first AAD, then ADD versions. Because of the loudness wars, the AAD often sounds lovely. Kind of Blue ADD was particularly awful. I’m no analog snob. But remastering often ruins things.

[The Computer Audiophile]

SPARS codes had nothing to do with sound quality. Sound quality is about the people creating the album. If good people are involved, and they are free to create a good sounding album, they will. If unskilled people are involved or those involved are forced to crush dynamics, it'll sound terrible. AAD, ADD, DDD it doesn't matter. 

[fas42]

It turns out that if a playback chain is 'good enough', then the point of something being "lossless" becomes meaningless - the technically crappiest tracks still shine through ... and the reason for that is because the listening mind can compensate for the deficiencies. As I have said many times, only experiencing this many times, and being aware of what's going on, will probably convince a lot of doubters - so, either refuse to listen to any but the "best recordings", or, improve the integrity of the replay mechanism ... your choice, .

[Jud]

"Lossless" actually tells me something useful because I have low expectations. 🙂

 

If any compression was used, the uncompressed version (whether original, highest resolution available, etc., or not) can be reconstructed from it without any loss of data? Good enough for me. Anything beyond that - provenance, quality, available resolutions, upsampling, downsampling - needs further investigation if I care enough to know about it. *Should* we have information on these latter types of qualities? It would be nice, but on the other hand we wouldn't have @Josh Mound's "The Best Version Of..." series then would we? 😉

[GWBasic]

On 11/12/2023 at 9:39 PM, Luposian said:

If you restrict or reduce or alter the original (source) recording to any degree, regardless of method, you can no longer call it lossless.  That’s is what I mean by lossless is lossless. No loss. No change.

 

Maybe you need to complain to the FTC? Marketers will twist any definition to sell something.

 

That's why I said that lossless is turning into the word "Natural" as opposed to "Organic." You can slap the word "Natural" on anything, but "Organic" is a regulated term.

 

BTW: MLP, which stands for "Meridian Lossless Packing," was the codec used on DVD-Audio. Due to the limitations of DVD, it did require that producers occasionally lower resolution. Take a look at https://web.archive.org/web/20010810061610/http://www.meridian-audio.com/w_paper/mlp_jap_new.PDF , Section 9.1, "Compression adjustment"

 

Granted, lowering the sampling rate from 24 bits per sample to 22 bits per sample is still excellent audio quality, but it does "restrict or reduce or alter the original (source) recording" and is still considered "lossless."