lossless music

want2bmortgage3

i thought id try copying a few albums with lossless sound but i get 2 options. WAV lossless takes up 600 mb a cd, and WMA lossless is 200-400 approx and said mathematically lossless. so which one to choose ???

bat999

Hi

If you're not short of space use WAV.
If you want to fit more on your discs then use WMA lossless.
But if you use the WMA your options are less when it comes to playing it back, you'll always need to play it with a system that has a WMA decoder.

It's up to you.

Fifer

want2bmortgage3 wrote: »

i thought id try copying a few albums with lossless sound but i get 2 options. WAV lossless takes up 600 mb a cd, and WMA lossless is 200-400 approx and said mathematically lossless. so which one to choose ???

Personally, I'd go with FLAC. All three will sound identical, but WAV takes up twice as much room. WMA is a proprietary Microsoft format and FLAC is open source.

WAV will play on any CD player. WMA and FLAC will not. But if your playing application supports compressed files, go for them.

-TangleFoot-

Fifer wrote: »

WAV will play on any CD player.

No it won't - your average CD player can't read pure data discs, and those that can only recognise certain file types.

wolfman

WAV, ew. That'll be huge in size.

Go for a compressed lossless format. I use FLAC. It's great. Keeps file sizes more reasonable. Around 20mb a song from what I can remember. Plus you can tag it too. As mentioned it's open source, good way to go.

Fifer

-TangleFoot- wrote: »

No it won't - your average CD player can't read pure data discs, and those that can only recognise certain file types.

Fair point, but they will read WAV files burned to an audio (red book) disc which was what I meant.

weegie.geek

Fifer wrote: »

Fair point, but they will read WAV files burned to an audio (red book) disc which was what I meant.

If that's your thinking, you could burn flac etc in the same way.

Another vote for flac here, btw. And if you get an mp3 player that has rockbox firmware for it, you'll probably be able to play flac when you're out and about.

axean

want2bmortgage3 wrote: »

i thought id try copying a few albums with lossless sound

Why are you trying to copy using lossless compression? Its makes it easier to answer if we know what you intend to do with the files.

When you copy an audio file off a CD it should be in the WAV format and take up about 40MB. Best done with a piece of software called EAC (link). This file contains all the original audio data but is huge. You can reduce its size using Lossless Compression or Lossy Compression.

Lossless Compression will reduce file size without changing the original data. The 40MB file will be reduced to around 20MB
Flac is the most supported choice for Lossless Compression because its open source. Dont bother using any other format.

Lossy Compression will reduce file size by a complex process of striping out and merging sound. The smaller you you require the final file the more sound is lost/merged and the audio quality reduced.
There is competition amongst several Lossy Formats. MP3 got a good start by being available when the whole internet thing started, but its not the best. AAC, WMA and OGG have all appeared and are better than MP3, but are not supported by all players.

Important Bit You can convert you songs using Lossy Compression and have an audio file which you wont be able to tell from a CD. It requires the use of Variable Bit Rate encoding set at a level that best suits you. So you shouldnt use FLAC to listen to songs, you'll be using up to much memory. I use FLAC to store copies of CD's I've copied. This is because you cant convert a Lossy File without losing more sound quality, so its useful to have the original. You only need the Lossless Compression if you plan to do something with the file where the original data would come in handy.

Fifer

axean wrote: »

Important Bit You can convert you songs using Lossy Compression and have an audio file which you wont be able to tell from a CD.

That's debatable. It depends on your ears, your audio system and your tolerance for compression artefacts.

axean wrote:

So you shouldnt use FLAC to listen to songs, you'll be using up to much memory.

Sorry, but I completely disagree. I do all my serious listening using FLAC files. I've got the disk space and my network copes with FLAC with ease. So why wouldn't I? There is no disadvantage.

-TangleFoot-

Fifer wrote: »

There is no disadvantage.

There is if your playback device runs on batteries...

axean

Fifer wrote: »

That's debatable. It depends on your ears, your audio system and your tolerance for compression artefacts.

Sorry, but I completely disagree. I do all my serious listening using FLAC files. I've got the disk space and my network copes with FLAC with ease. So why wouldn't I? There is no disadvantage.

Thats a fair point. Any problems are linked to the users disk space and if you have the memory then use FLAC.

But I'll stick to my point that you can use Lossy Compression and achieve audio files that will sound the same as the original WAV or FLAC file. I encode using OGG and find all files transparent at -q 4 (128kbs) but I keep my files at q5 on my computer with originals saved as FLAC's on DVD's. This is a level of quality that my ears can detect so there is no point using more memory to play stuff I cant here. I'd be shocked if anyone using this site was able perform a Blind Listening Test (ABX) (link), and was able to tell the difference between the FLAC file and the file encoded in OGG using AoTuV beta 5, switch -q 7 (224kbs)