[Seyley]

Back to basics for this question...

Having searched through numerous threads, I cant quite find the answer to my basic question.

I downloaded from Qobuz a couple of CDs 16bit 44.1kHz in flac format, one example of confusion shows an album with numerous tracks which has as it's information a bit rate kps of 861 but the next track played at 961kps, if I 'rip' the CD using uncompressed flac as an option I get 1412kps across all tracks.
I find it odd then that Flac is a lossless 'container' where no information is lost 'alledgedly' but when I download flac from Music download sites, (I understand that compression has been done), why is there variation between tracks in kps???
So I'm obviously missing something in my understanding. Which then leads to my next question about the two albums that were labelled as Hi-Res, again there was a variation in kps for bitrate, is that due to the 'sound recorded' in otherwords a full orchestral work will have more kps bitrate than a flute solo?
Finally (phew)..
Is there a download site that you can recommend that will allow uncompressed CD or Hi-Res Flac downloads as I don't have an issue with disk space and now that full fibre broadband is being rolled out here in the Southeast of the UK, download times will be minimal (!!!)

Thanks in advance for any responses

 

[sander99]

why is there variation between tracks in kps???

The more complex the signal, the more data is needed.
If you would convert a file with for example only one sine wave to FLAC the result would be very small.

 

[sander99]

Also different compression levels can be used.
From Wikipedea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLAC :

Compression levels
libFLAC uses a compression level parameter that varies from 0 (fastest) to 8 (slowest). The compressed files are always perfect, lossless representations of the original data. Although the compression process involves a tradeoff between speed and size, the decoding process is always quite fast and not dependent on the level of compression.[12][13]

According to a .WAV benchmark running with an Athlon XP 2400+,[14] using higher rates above default level −5, takes considerably more time to encode without real gains in space savings.

 

[castleofargh]

Flac is a compressed format that is lossless, meaning that once extracted, the file is the original. Like with a .zip or .rar. so concerns over fidelity are unwarranted, and if that was your concern, case closed.
Now why is the bitrate is different for flac and not for wav files? It's simply that flac compresses the file and some signals are easier to compress than others so you can see a variation in the final size of a track, and as a consequence, a difference in the bitrate.
On the other hand, uncompressed PCM(wav) will have a fixed number of samples per second, each coding a 0 or 1 for every bit of the sample. So the bitrate remains the same no matter what signal you encode at the same resolution, and will be:
sample rate X number of channels X number of bits

Flac just tries to save some space when the signal could be defined in a simpler "lighter" way. but again, that's only done under the condition of remaining lossless.

 

[bigshot]

Audio file containers are like boxes from Amazon. A whole bunch of the box is filled up with those little air filled plastic pillows you don't need.

If you are giving someone instructions on how to your house, you can say, "Exit your front door. Take a step. Take another step, Take another step... take another step, etc. turn left take another step take another step etc. turn left take another step etc. Knock on my door. That is like WAV.

Or you can say Exit your front door, take thirty two steps, turn left, take 118 steps, turn left take 15 steps and knock on my door. That is like FLAC.

Or you can say Exit your front door and walk to the sidewalk, turn left and go to the corner and turn left. My walkway leads to my front door. That is lossy.

The second one doesn't omit any information from the first, it just condenses it. The third one eliminates some info, but it is just the information you really need. They all get you to the same place.

 

[Seyley]

Thanks for all the responses, very helpful...

 

[Chris Kaoss]

Audio file containers are like boxes from Amazon. A whole bunch of the box is filled up with those little air filled plastic pillows you don't need.

If you are giving someone instructions on how to your house, you can say, "Exit your front door. Take a step. Take another step, Take another step... take another step, etc. turn left take another step take another step etc. turn left take another step etc. Knock on my door. That is like WAV.

Or you can say Exit your front door, take thirty two steps, turn left, take 118 steps, turn left take 15 steps and knock on my door. That is like FLAC.

Or you can say Exit your front door and walk to the sidewalk, turn left and go to the corner and turn left. My walkway leads to my front door. That is lossy.

The second one doesn't omit any information from the first, it just condenses it. The third one eliminates some info, but it is just the information you really need. They all get you to the same place.

Best explanation i've seen so far.
Should be included to a "hifi for d"-wiki.

 

[bigshot]

glad it helps. stick around sound science. lots of good info here.