[Hzwwwc2]

Question: If the file is lossless, does bit rate still matter?
 
I have some ape and flac, their bit rates vary from 500-1400. I know that the maximum from a CD is around 1400 bit rate, but since it's already in lossless version, does bit rate still matter? 
 
Does the 1400 bit rate ape has a better SQ than that of 500 bit rate?
 

 

[Head Injury]

If it's lossless, bitrate doesn't matter. It's just file size divided by time.

 

[Hzwwwc2]

Thank you for the answer. But I still wonder why the same song has different bit rates since the time in both file is the same. 

 

[andrewberge]

A more complicated song is harder to compress, so it's bigger.
That's... all there is to it, really. I don't know the details, but if you compare your tracks, you'll see that the ones with higher bitrates are usually a lot more complex.

 

[Hzwwwc2]

thank you. That's interesting, I'll go check it out. 

 

[Prog Rock Man]

On my itunes the lowest bit rate for lossless is some Mozart at about 400kbps and the highest is Blondie from a live album at about 1100kbps. The Mozart is simple piano, the Blondie live with an orchestra.

 

[Hzwwwc2]

Haha, I got it thanks man.

 

[Hzwwwc2]

But how come in  one of my modern pop album, every single song is 1411 bit rates? It doesn't make sense all of them reach the maximum bit rate.

 

[Head Injury]

Quote:

But how come in  one of my modern pop album, every single song is 1411 bit rates? It doesn't make sense all of them reach the maximum bit rate.

Are you sure it's a losslessly compressed format, or is it something like WAV? Is it a 16/44.1 file, or is the bitrate/sampling rate higher?

 

[Hzwwwc2]

It's a wav file with a cue file. the foobar shows all the songs in it are 16bit/44100hz

 

[Head Injury]

WAV isn't compressed. It's always 1411 kbps if it's 16/44.1. 16 x 44100 x 2 channels = 1,411,200 bits per second.

 

[Hzwwwc2]

Oh you mean since most cds are 16bit/44.1khz, so if I rip them off to wav, they're 1411kbps. But if I convert the wav to other lossless formats like ape,flac, they won't necessarily be 1411kbps because of that?

 

[Hzwwwc2]

I just confirmed from other source. Thank you very much!

 

[umvue]

oic. so for higher bit rate flac/ape files, that means they are harder to compress

 

[TickleMeElmo]

Think of it this way. Imagine that all the data was stored in terms of single digit integers.
 
If you have a recurring string of numbers alternating between 1 and 7 that was 1000 digits long and you wanted to send this to your friend. You could either send the 1000 digit long string. Alternatively you could tell your friend that x@y means that the string x (in this case 17) is repeated y (in this case 500) times, so you could just send him 17@500. Now this is predicated on the notion that both you and your friend know this code and you would therefore only have to send 6 characters to him instead of 1000. However if you were to send him a random string 1000 digits long and this string did not have any repeats you could not use your code and would have to send him the data uncompressed. The negative of having this code is 1. both you and your friend need to know the code 2. it takes some amount of processing by both parties to relay the message.
 
The same thing is happening but to a far more complicated scale with the FLAC codec. WAV is basically sending the data without truncating any of it while FLAC attempts to shorten the data as much as possible. The reason some files come out a lower bitrate is because the sound can be expressed in more simple terms (I don't want to say compressed because it brings up different connotations). You are trading processing power (which computers these days have plenty of as far as audio codecs are concerned) for a shorter message, but the message is the same regardless of how you sent it.
 
Therefore dead silence is obviously very easy to compress while something that has a lot of dynamic range and a lot of nonlinear sounds will be quite difficult.