Do different lossless files vary in sound quality?

Lossless is exactly what it implies. During playback, it's an exact copy of whatever it's fed.

There can be errors during ripping, but not typically encoding. Error checking, and checksums like AccurateRip, will prevent those or notify you of them.

However, if you feed it lossy files it'll sound like a lossy file. And if you feed a lossy file to another lossy format, it'll sound more lossy even if that other format is higher bit rate. How exactly are you looking to "download" these albums with different sizes?

1) Both could be fakes. Flac like many other lossless encoders offer different compression level options. A higher compression level is just as lossless as no compression at all but at the cost of much higher CPU usage to encode but also decode.

Different filesizes could also result from tagging (e.g. album art included in the tags in every file ...).

2) I don't know if itunes is able to do proper rips. Take a look at this: http://dbpoweramp.com/spoons-audio-guide-cd-ripping.htm Most of this applies to any CD ripping tool (eac, foobar2000 etc.).

The easiest way to verify that you setup and ripped correctly is to check your rips with AccurateRip.

The problem with lossy files you can find on the net is that there's no way to tell what happened to the files. Maybe they were transcoded (from 128 kbps to 320 kbps). Maybe the rip wasn't done properly. Maybe an old, buggy, bad or simply outdated encoder was used. And so on.. All of this can cause a severe quality loss with lossy codecs.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Perplexed 

So a couple of examples:

 

1) if I was looking to download an album in Flac, and I found one that was called "EAC Flac - 320.1MB" and the other just "Flac - 334.8MB" does it matter at all which one I go for?

 

2) If I ripped a CD once with my laptops bog-standard CD drive using iTunes into WMV, and then the same CD using some "high end ripping software" on my good PC (again to WMV) with a high-speed drive and even a *different version of FLAC*, will the files be exactly the same size and quality?

 

At the moment I'm confused, it seems as though after the battle of getting lossless audio, you then have to battle to get "better" lossless rips.

 

Do the files only vary in size due to compression, and all contain *exactly* the same information, or will some have tiny blips due to errors or something? I don't understand how it can be lossless but still have errors.

 

 

And a kind of extra question - is this the same with MP3s? Shouldn't all fixed-rate 320kbps files be exactly the quality? I seem to find people saying that other people's mp3 encodings are "trash" etc. surely the data is there, 320kb of it every second - what's to complain about?

 

An explanation would be much appreciated, thanks

 

 

1) Nope! The only difference will be that the larger file will be decoded faster, i.e. there will be less time between clicking the file and hearing the music. Practically, assuming you're not running 90s era hardware, this will amount to a difference of probably microseconds -- so don't worry about it.

2) If I understand what you're asking correctly...

- The speed of the CD drive has no impact on the quality of sound, which is determined by the codec your ripping software uses.

- Do you mean WMA? WMV is a video file format, if I'm not mistaken. Anyway -- it's the codec you use, not the software, that determines sound quality. If the file output was WMA, you didn't use the FLAC codec to encode the CD, in which case it's probably not lossless (unless you used the WMA lossless codec).

Lossless audio is lossless audio -- think of its compression like WinZIP or WinRAR. The encoding software only takes redundant bits and schematizes them without actually altering the essential data.

3) To answer your extra question -- no. MP3 is a lossy file format, meaning the encoder uses an algorithm to cut out data that it deems "insignificant." There are different algorithms you can use to define "insignificant" -- 320kbps of the most significant data would play you something very close to the original, uncompressed file, whereas 320kbps of less significant data could be, say, nothing more than white noise.

If they were ripped correctly then the difference in file size is probably due to the amount of [lossless] compression of the files or one of them contains extra stuff aside from the lossless files.  FLAC, for example, has compression levels 1-8, with 8 being the most compressed.  No, there will be no difference in quality, otherwise it would not be lossless.

Lossy encodes can be bad if they are converted from another lossy format or the guy goofed up the ripping process somehow before encoding to mp3 or something.

How the files are tagged and the album art will affect the size of the mp3 (or flac) a little bit, but not the quality.

Sound the same, might be of a different size

Quote:

Originally Posted by poeticEnnui 

- Do you mean WMA? WMV is a video file format, if I'm not mistaken. Anyway -- it's the codec you use, not the software, that determines sound quality. If the file output was WMA, you didn't use the FLAC codec to encode the CD, in which case it's probably not lossless (unless you used the WMA lossless codec).

WMA is a container format. It can contain either audio or MP3. Regular WMA is lossy, but wikipedia says that there is a lossless version - it seems to be very rare though and require a separate codec.

Quote:

Originally Posted by scuttle 

WMA is a container format. It can contain either audio or MP3. Regular WMA is lossy, but wikipedia says that there is a lossless version - it seems to be very rare though and require a separate codec.

WMA is a suite of codecs. WMA lossless is one of those codecs, the original one (simply called "WMA") is lossy. Saying WMA is a container is like saying FLAC is a container.

Anyway, I wouldn't choose any WMA codec since it seems to be a dying format.

Quote:

Originally Posted by xnor 

Saying WMA is a container is like saying FLAC is a container.

Not really, no. Container format has a definite technical meaning, even if you don't understand it. While wma is a suite of compression codecs, most (or all? I can't remember) wma file will actually be an example of a Microsoft ASF  file. This is a container format wrapping a compressed file and identifying metadata to identify the type of compression and DRM.

Flac otoh is always flac. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by scuttle 

Not really, no. Container format has a definite technical meaning, even if you don't understand it. While wma is a suite of compression codecs, most (or all? I can't remember) wma file will actually be an example of a Microsoft ASF  file. This is a container format wrapping a compressed file and identifying metadata to identify the type of compression and DRM.

Which makes ASF the container and WMA the codec, so WMA is not a container. That's all I'm saying, even if you don't understand it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by xnor 

Quote:

 

Which makes ASF the container and WMA the codec, so WMA is not a container. That's all I'm saying, even if you don't understand it.

 

 

Yes, but once again FILES LABELLED AS WMA ARE OFTEN (or maybe always? it's years since I worked with these codecs) ASFs! 

(And, no, I don't believe that you knew that as you are now pretending to! Because if you did, and didn't make that point, then that was an even sillier error than posting about the format without understanding it. But if you want to claim a reputation for misleading pedantry, be my guest.)