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'Lossless' Compression

T

The_Engineer

Gawd
Joined
Mar 20, 2005
Messages
665
I am going to build a digital libray of my CD albums and trying to decide on which 'lossless' format to use. First off, are any of these truly lossless? Also, i've all but decided on FLAC as it appears to be a good codec that, while won't work in most portable devices, will compress well enough to save alot of space over just .wav files and still be great quality audio.

Does anyone here use losless compression? or do you just stick with .mp3 or .ogg because its what everyone else uses?
 
Well, 'lossless' compression is only lossless if you can rip a cd bit-perfectly (hence the reason why people always recommend EAC). Otherwise, it should be a perfect CD audio copy.

I'm always ripping to FLAC. Sure, it takes up more space than MP3, but it's lossless! Rip once and forget the CD! It's also easier and faster to make lossy audio files from lossless copies rather than the original CDs (great because I can't make up my mind as to what lossy compression I want to use). Transcoding from lossy formats is a big no-no if you care about quality, hence the reason why my primary format of choice is FLAC.

I don't (yet) have the high-end audio equipment to discern between lossless and high-bitrate lossy compression, but it's mostly the concept of lossless compression that appeals to me. After all, I'm a bit of a perfectionist. Besides, hard drive space is fairly cheap, so the size of lossless files is not much of a concern.

In my opinion, it doesn't matter too much which lossless compression format to use. After all, it's all lossless so you can transcode to another lossless compression format without any loss in quality. Besides, very few portables support any form of lossless compression; there's no universal 'standard' for portables like MP3 is for lossy compression. FLAC has a tiny bit of hardware support, which is better than no support that many other lossless formats have.
 
FLAC or APE (Monkey's Audio) are the two big ones. FLAC is open source. They both compress about the same. I'd pick FLAC because of Rio Karma and Slimdevices Squeezebox2. APE, being closed source, is less attractive to hardware implementation.

Definately use EAC for ripping, either way.
 
I second using FLAC. I've used it for all my ripping for awhile now, let's see here...

WOW! Haven't checked this for awhile but my Music folder is 110 Gb. Yeah get a nice big HD if you're going to rip everything in FLAC or Monkey's Audio.
 
The_Engineer said:
I am going to build a digital libray of my CD albums and trying to decide on which 'lossless' format to use. First off, are any of these truly lossless? Also, i've all but decided on FLAC as it appears to be a good codec that, while won't work in most portable devices, will compress well enough to save alot of space over just .wav files and still be great quality audio.

Does anyone here use losless compression? or do you just stick with .mp3 or .ogg because its what everyone else uses?
Click to expand...


Yes they are truely mathamatically lossless. Just like a ZIP file, except the compression algorithm is optimized to specifically compress PCM audio.

In my experience FLAC does very well with classical type music or instrumentals. I've seen it compress some files to less than half of their original size! (48% of original!)) On modern pop/rock/alternative it generally achieves compresses files to around 60-70% of their WAV file size. The space savings do add up :)
 
stevewm said:
Yes they are truely mathamatically lossless. Just like a ZIP file, except the compression algorithm is optimized to specifically compress PCM audio.

In my experience FLAC does very well with classical type music or instrumentals. I've seen it compress some files to less than half of their original size! (48% of original!)) On modern pop/rock/alternative it generally achieves compresses files to around 60-70% of their WAV file size. The space savings do add up :)
Click to expand...

The algorithems are also very efficient for decompression. I've never seen more than 2% CPU usage when playing back a FLAC file. Monkey's Audio might get a slightly (1-2%) better space compression but CPU usage can be around 5% for replay. That's why FLAC can be supported in mobile players I think.
 
This thread is very bennificial to me. I always thought Ripping to like 320KPBS MP3 or M4P AAC would be concidered "lossless" or the highest quality you can convert to.

What tools (programs) do I need to convert CD audio of a FLAC? Lossless file?

Thanks...
 
USMC2Hard4U said:
This thread is very bennificial to me. I always thought Ripping to like 320KPBS MP3 or M4P AAC would be concidered "lossless" or the highest quality you can convert to.

What tools (programs) do I need to convert CD audio of a FLAC? Lossless file?

Thanks...
Click to expand...

My process, though I'm sure there is a better one, is to rip to wav, then use foobar to encode to FLAC.
 
USMC2Hard4U said:
This thread is very bennificial to me. I always thought Ripping to like 320KPBS MP3 or M4P AAC would be concidered "lossless" or the highest quality you can convert to.

What tools (programs) do I need to convert CD audio of a FLAC? Lossless file?

Thanks...
Click to expand...

You can also use the FLAC frontend available here:
http://members.home.nl/w.speek/flac.htm
 
i started with mp3's but now i only do flac...

wish i could go back and redo all those CD's now alot are scratched or lost


 
That's gotta be one of the best things about FLAC. When you do scratch up or lose a CD, you can hop on your computer and burn yourself essentially another original from your FLAC archive. My master plan is at some point to have all my CDs FLAC'ed onto my hard drive with burned copies of each in a book for the car (in case somebody decides they'd like to steal it). Then I can put the originals in their cases in a CD rack somewhere around the house and rest easy.
 
Elec said:
That's gotta be one of the best things about FLAC. When you do scratch up or lose a CD, you can hop on your computer and burn yourself essentially another original from your FLAC archive. My master plan is at some point to have all my CDs FLAC'ed onto my hard drive with burned copies of each in a book for the car (in case somebody decides they'd like to steal it). Then I can put the originals in their cases in a CD rack somewhere around the house and rest easy.
Click to expand...

That's what I did. I've got a CD collection with probably 120 CDs which I leave at home. Here in college I've got only burned copies and the FLAC files on my HD. Hmmm, now I should get back to studying for my finals...
 
I use FLAC - it streams perfectly with a squeezebox 2, which is what I use instead of an HTPC, so it just made sense for me.
 
GodsMadClown said:
A RAID 5 array of 3 200gb drives would be cool.
Click to expand...
:eek: I wish.

Thanks all for the great input. Glad i thought to ask as this has eased my worries about it not actually being Lossless as i was afraid it still didn't make a full quality copy. Glad to hear its solid!
 
stevewm said:
Yes they are truely mathamatically lossless. Just like a ZIP file, except the compression algorithm is optimized to specifically compress PCM audio.

In my experience FLAC does very well with classical type music or instrumentals. I've seen it compress some files to less than half of their original size! (48% of original!)) On modern pop/rock/alternative it generally achieves compresses files to around 60-70% of their WAV file size. The space savings do add up :)
Click to expand...


Prove it! :D

[For anyone who doesn't understand what I'm talking about, it's impossible to prove that an audio compression scheme is truly mathematically lossless, much in the same fashion that many commonly accepted scientific hypotheses cannot be proved mathematically. However, as with the aforementioned theories, FLAC being lossless is true =]
 
LOL :D

Well technically a CD is not lossless either (and I'd prefer not to get into Nyquist as I've seen 20 page arguments about this where nobody could really agree) so compression is not a lossless version of the original music. But it may be a lossless version of what's on the CD, which tends to be good enough for most ;)
 
Sure, i'll prove it.

Step One: md5sum somesong.wav
Step Two: flac compress somesong.wav to somesong.flac
Step Three: uncompress somesong.flac to somesong2.wav
Step Four: md5sum somesong2.wav

notice the two md5sums are identical.

I know it ain't irrefutable, but it's proof enough for me. :)
 
AdamW said:
Sure, i'll prove it.

Step One: md5sum somesong.wav
Step Two: flac compress somesong.wav to somesong.flac
Step Three: uncompress somesong.flac to somesong2.wav
Step Four: md5sum somesong2.wav

notice the two md5sums are identical.

I know it ain't irrefutable, but it's proof enough for me. :)
Click to expand...
Great test! Definatley good enough for me too!
 
AdamW said:
Sure, i'll prove it.

Step One: md5sum somesong.wav
Step Two: flac compress somesong.wav to somesong.flac
Step Three: uncompress somesong.flac to somesong2.wav
Step Four: md5sum somesong2.wav

notice the two md5sums are identical.

I know it ain't irrefutable, but it's proof enough for me. :)
Click to expand...

Good thing you aren't a physicist or mathematician then =]
 
Those are the mechies...

Hey, my summer job as chemical engineering student is to play with dirt....
okayadvanced ceramics, but its still dirt.

I wonder if you can build a cool enclosure with this stuff...

If you are so concerned about good quality, then bring the musicians with you from place to place (anyone see the Starbucks Doubleshot Commercial?)... lol, lets see audiophiles afford that!
 
Mister X said:
A good example of why engineers should stick to driving trains. :D
Click to expand...
Choo Choo!

Honestly though, for all intents and purposes unless i had a speaker that, instead of analog audio, played 0's and 1's as 'music' and someone wanted to listen to the silliness that would reproduce, this compression is close enough to perfect. While currently unable to be mathematically proven, the md5sum test proves quite handily that the file does remain completley intact through compression of the audio. At least, for those of you who know anything about md5sum's, which are, in and of themselves a mathematically hazy area.

Maybe the term lossless is debatable if only on the point that it can't be proven by equations and mathemeticians... but for my ears, it will work well enough.
 
Mmm... My vote would go with FLAC. I now rater dislike MP3s and i just rip all of my crap to WAV (i dont have that much music) so i get perfect quality heh. Only problem is, each song is like 60meg :eek:. Well... my new stacker can hold 12hdds for a reason i suppose lol.
 
I'm just giving you a hard time =]

FLAC, and all the other lossless schemes, are in fact mathematically lossless for all known tests. Sure, it can't be proved conclusively, but it is known to be true for all pratical tests ever conducted. I guess that one way you COULD prove it was to design a bit generator that counted up from 0 to 700MB in binary, compressing each count with FLAC and comparing MD5's. That could at least prove that FLAC is lossless for any given content that can be stored upon a CD =]
 
BO(V)BZ said:
FLAC, and all the other lossless schemes, are in fact mathematically lossless for all known tests. Sure, it can't be proved conclusively
Click to expand...
Well, I believe FLAC breaks audio into chunks to encode, so all you have to do is generate all the possible chunks that encode to a single frame. A text description of how this is done is here. So it's not quite as hard as it sounds. This would prove flac correct for all chunks, and thus for all things that can be cut into chunks, which is presumably everything...

Also, using md5 to compare this many samples is a bad idea. md5 is not perfect, there are hash collisions, so it's best to do a direct bit-for-bit comparison.
 
This has turned into a much more educated thread than I ever intended. This is why I love the [H] - Lots of information, very little BS.

Great info guys. Thanks alot.
 
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