.flac

[Dan]

i was reading the .flac stuff online but how does taking a wave file, totally uncompressed and compressing it into a flac, how is that lossless?

Somehow it organizes it better?


Dan

oh and how good is .shn at doing that too

[Cleantone]

It's lossless because the decompression returns the file to the origional bit data. Same with SHN.

[Del]

flac's supposed to be a little better than shn... Both are somewhat lossy, but better than, say mp3... Nothing perfect has been developed yet, as far as I know...

[Cleantone]

This is just my understanding, I'm no programmer super tech wiz. Shed some light please if you know this isn't correct Del.

flac's supposed to be a little better than shn...

Flac has better compression which can make files that much smaller. It also automatically includes the information needed to allow scanning of a file (fast forward, rewind). Those are a couple reasons people use to consider it better.

Both are somewhat lossy, but better than, say mp3

I think they are both fully lossless. There is a encoding process that makes the file size smaller. But your able to decode the file resulting in a file that matches the origional 100% bit perfect. You can make a signature file to verify that. The file size definitly gets reduced, and it's not nearly as small as mp3. With mp3 you loss information for encoding that you cannot regain. That is lossy.

[Del]

I'd think you're more of an expert than I am... But I have always thought that each time something is compressed it loses just a tiny bit of it's quality... flac and shn are MUCH better than mp3, but I'm almost positive there is a small amount of loss... if there wasn't, why develop flac if shns were perfect? again, I'm far from an expert, I just used to trade and burn a lot... Just what I've heard over the years...

[Dan]

I know when i work with WAV files durring mixdowns on my multitrack recorder, they work seemlessly(sp) no matter the very large size, and load very quickly. However Mp3 takes up much greater tim. mp3 deletes what the computer thinks is undetectable frequencys that just so happen to usually take place in the drums. Its like taking a paper towel and putting it over speakers. You dont get the crisp "live" feel. And when using headphones it is very very noticable.

My previous understanding of files was that wav is pure lossless, and flac is a compressed version but remails the 10120391809kbs that wave has, shn is old and the first kind, and was pretty neat. Also Clinton were you saying that when you encode .flac back into wav it isnt loosing any fidelity(sp)?


Let me know
Dan

(all the mumbo jumbo on the flac site led me no where and i was lazy)

[Phrazz]

What is FLAC?

FLAC stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec. Grossly oversimplified, FLAC is 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.

Now a mathematical purist would argue that there's no way to compress data w/o loss, but an actual mathematician will show you how it's done. Knowing just a tiny bit about math, I can assure you there is such a thing as perfect compression, and audio is more compressible than random because of relationships in the data.

We would have to get into very esoteric areas to discuss finding music sources that were not compressible, but at a certain point, you have to talk about how bits work and quantization...after all, a digitally quantized signal is a somewhat "nonperfect" reproduction of a "perfect" analog source. However, no mic is perfect, no recording gear is w/o noise or alteration effects, and our ears are also somewhat or badly damaged, so if you take those things into account, it's much better than "good enough for rock and roll".

Now I've read about how the prediction algorithms work, but the differential encoding insures the bit discrepancies are all recorded, so if the music is very complex, it won't compress as much. Try this to see what I mean (but get a really good pair of headphones because super-accurate speakers and amps are extremely pricey ;-}).

And yes, FLAC is slightly better than SHN. I am somewhat doubtful that audio compression over 2:1 that's lossless will become reality, but the differences in most stereo signals are minimal, so you might get another integer out of that (or more if you're lucky, but 3 or 4 to 1 is pretty squashed).

Because audio is an analog waveform, this lends well to Fourier series and such, but then we're into math that 9 of 10 people here would not understand (I mean 1 out of 10... ).

[Cleantone]

But I have always thought that each time something is compressed it loses just a tiny bit of it's quality

Okay, The preface to my other post was to cover my ass in case you were a computer expert. I'm 99.9% sure the quoted statement is false. Peeple say all sorts of shit that ain't true. Thats an audio urban legend guess. Only if you lost major data from a gouge in the actual medium would you lose info. In which case the shn or flac file would not decode nor verify. Thats a corrupt file not data degradation or something. Like cassette generations of flac files. It's just numbers and bytes and stuff.

When I have an audio files "hot off the press" and then decode it to FLAC. They sound the same to every degree on playback because when your streaming the flac file it decodes "on the fly" and the output would be completly equal to the raw interleaved audio file. With mp3 you actually lose frequency content and it never comes back. If you used a low bitrate mp3 codec and went wav>mp3>wav>mp3>wav>mp3 etc... The file would get worse and worse sounding. Do the same thing with a lossless codec and the file will match every bit with the 1st one.

[Del]

Fair enough, so it begs the question - why flac? I was perfectly happy with shns, then when flacs were introduced it was supposed to be better... Why is flac better than shn?

[Cleantone]

Also Clinton were you saying that when you encode .flac back into wav it isnt loosing any fidelity(sp)?

It's my understanding that when you decode a flac file from my recordings, the resulting files is 100% the same as the file I used to make it with in everyway. No change in sound nor bit's that make up the file.

I've noticed that when the recording levels are low on a file the codec for flac can make it alot smaller that a louder track. That has me thinking but again, programing and most math are over my head.

[Cleantone]

Fair enough, so it begs the question - why flac? I was perfectly happy with shns, then when flacs were introduced it was supposed to be better... Why is flac better than shn?

I already pointed on that a little. FLAC has better encoding and faster decoding. I'm not sure if shn has caught up at all but FLAC can do 8, 16 and 24bit files and sample rates up to at least 96khz. I don't think shn does either of those.

[Dan]

I think cleantone said that you are able to search, and add data into the first part of the actulal track, if flac had id3 tags, i would use them way more often, then transfereing them to audio disks.