Why do we use lossless? - Page 6

No, you do it so you have a complete copy of the original.

Lossy formats were developed as a workaround to limited and expensive storage.

Today, storage is big and cheap. There's no reason not to use lossless.

None of my friends even know what lossless is, how is it pretentious at all?

Q: Why don't we use deadpan sarcasm on the internet?

A: Because it can be misconstrued as being serious.

 

To be the one person in the group who knows what it is and can hold it over others heads. That's the definition of pretentious.

 

 

I just said, I don't brag to my friends about lossless being any better than MP3's. And I don't feel any sense of superiority over them because I listen to it. I know that MP3 is a better format for them because of its size, compatibility and the fact that they listen to music almost exclusively in their cars, so there wouldn't be much point in explaining lossless to them. If that's what works for them then that's great.

Edited by Synergy Sound - 8/17/11 at 7:26pm

Cool picture and defensive post. Mods will like it. Also you never said anything you just claimed to have in a previous post here.

Edited by keanex - 8/17/11 at 7:28pm

Quote:

I said none of my friends even know what lossless is. Hence I don't brag to my friends about lossless being any better than MP3's.

 

Super late reply but I just did a simple blind test today to compare FLAC and VBR V0. Basically I put 2 identical tracks in Mediamonkey's playlist (VBR was converted from the FLAC), minimized the player and hit the "next track" hardware button on my laptop a random number of times, play, write down what I think and open the player to check if it was the VBR or FLAC. Repeated this 15 times (not a lot of sample but took me 1 hour+). Sometimes I had to stop the track and play from the beginning if I wasn't sure but all with the hardware button and player minimized. I got 11/15 correct or 73.3%. This is done with a recording I'm familiar with and has plenty of cues to listen to. The song is Clubbed to Death by Escala.

 

I'm not sure if 73.3% is statistically relevant. The weirdest thing is that if I focus too hard on a sighted test as in trying to pinpoint the differences between FLAC and VBR, I can't do it but with blind test I can just about hear the overall differences between the 2 tracks. Like there's just a bit less extension >15kHz or a bit less tight bass or 1/4 inch closer imaging (joint stereo). Very subtle but in combination clear enough for me to notice. 

 

I also tried doing the same test with a recording I'm less familiar with and with less cues / dynamic range / instruments / etc. (What if I Leave by Rachael Yamagata). Unfortunately I was wrong in too many accounts it probably was less than 50% guess rate! It could be that I was hearing for the wrong things or wrongly memorized the FLAC as VBR and vice versa.

 

FWIW, I've started using VBR for portable use. Spent the whole day converting yesterday but my blind test with Escala today is beginning to give me faith in FLAC again. 

 

Lossless is valuable when there are subtle details as you might expect from a recording of an orchestra in a concert hall. Or one of those Chesky disks. However, many recordings are engineered in a studio or close-miked and compressed such that lossless may not be more enjoyable than mp3 format. So I am inclined to use whatever is satisfactory for the source.

That's very, very strange. The noise floor of a 16bit recording is encoded into the recording (it's called dither). If you transcode your 16bit file to a 24bit file or even 32bit file, the noise floor will still be at the 16bit level. If you can hear a higher noise floor when your unit is playing back a 16bit file but not when you play a 16bit recording transcoded to 24bit, there must be a fault with your unit.

G

 

6 pages of posts here, so forgive me if this is redundant:

 

OP: Why do we use lossless?

 

Me: In the words of dBPowerAmp: "Rip once, rip right".  I rip my new CD's to FLAC, then put the CD in a box and never see it again. From the FLAC's, I can do anything I need to, create ALAC, mp3, AAC, whatever. Having an exact copy of the orginal CD on my hard drive provides many options, not the least of which is convenience.

 

'nuff said.

+1 Rip and dump into NAS also, VBR does not go with some instrumentals. Ripped "The Players" (New-age) into EAC before converting to VBR, I had lots of clipping all over the place with V0 but with 320 cbr it was alot better. But for Pop and other stuff vbr works out nicely usually.

Original question: why use lossless?

My answer: because you do it once, and don't have to do it again. You have an exact copy. If you want to make mp3 files you can. Vorbis files you can. Other lossless files you can...without any of that transcoding and hoping that you don't run into some artifact. I have the space, so why NOT lossless?