[Bassix]

I've looked a lot of places, and I still do not understand what lossless or FLAC files are. I don't know how to obtain them, if you can convert music into that format, if so what program, and much extra space does the music take up, so I'll make a list.
 
What are the FLAC and Lossless formats?
 
How does one get music of this format?
 
Are there converters that make your music these formats?
 
Can they be used on an Apple 2nd Generation 8 Gigabyte iPod Touch?
 
How much space do these take up?
 
Why are these formats so prized?
 
 
 
Praying For Some Good Answers
 
Nate~

 

[Head Injury]

A lossless file stores whatever music file you feed it, and during playback produces a bit-perfect copy of the original. You can think of it as a ZIP file optimized for music. It makes it smaller by finding patterns and generating shorthand code for those patterns, so no data is discarded. They generally take between 50 and 80% of the space of the original WAV, depending on how complex and noisy the music is. That's about 600-1100 kbps, 2-4 times as much as a high bitrate MP3.
 
Lossy codecs like MP3, on the other hand, employ psychoacoustic tricks to throw away data it thinks we won't hear. High bit rates work very well, but that data can never be recovered.
 
You can put a lossy file into a lossless format and it'll store an exact copy of the lossy file (it won't add data back) but the file size will be larger, so don't do that.
 
To get your own lossless files, rip from CDs and convert the WAV files you get. Programs like EAC and dBpoweramp will do the conversion automatically for you if you set them up for it.
 
Lots of programs can convert lossless to lossless, like foobar2000. Again, don't convert lossy to lossless.
 
All lossless codecs are equal, except for some minor differences in encoding/decoding processor usage and time, and file size. So use whatever format is compatible with your iPod like ALAC. But personally I wouldn't bother will lossless on a portable player. There's a very good chance you won't hear any difference if you test yourself (there's some tests in the Sound Science forum) and it'll just take up extra space. They're great for storage and backup on the PC though, since you can recover a bit perfect copy of the original.

 

[Bassix]

Quote:

A lossless file stores whatever music file you feed it, and during playback produces a bit-perfect copy of the original. You can think of it as a ZIP file optimized for music. It makes it smaller by finding patterns and generating shorthand code for those patterns, so no data is discarded. They generally take between 50 and 80% of the space of the original WAV, depending on how complex and noisy the music is. That's about 600-1100 kbps, 2-4 times as much as a high bitrate MP3.
 
Lossy codecs like MP3, on the other hand, employ psychoacoustic tricks to throw away data it thinks we won't hear. High bit rates work very well, but that data can never be recovered.
 
You can put a lossy file into a lossless format and it'll store an exact copy of the lossy file (it won't add data back) but the file size will be larger, so don't do that.
 
To get your own lossless files, rip from CDs and convert the WAV files you get. Programs like EAC and dBpoweramp will do the conversion automatically for you if you set them up for it.
 
Lots of programs can convert lossless to lossless, like foobar2000. Again, don't convert lossy to lossless.
 
All lossless codecs are equal, except for some minor differences in encoding/decoding processor usage and time, and file size. So use whatever format is compatible with your iPod like ALAC. But personally I wouldn't bother will lossless on a portable player. There's a very good chance you won't hear any difference if you test yourself (there's some tests in the Sound Science forum) and it'll just take up extra space. They're great for storage and backup on the PC though, since you can recover a bit perfect copy of the original.

So I'd have to buy the CD or possibly try and find a download that contains these files? I doubt its possible to convert from mp3 to lossless since it can't ADD bits and pieces that are lost back.

 

[Head Injury]

It's possible, it just won't sound any better than the MP3 and will take up more space.

 

[s3er0i9ng]

You should try googling it there are sites that have free legal lossless music you can try (mostly classic). If you don't have good audio equipment you may not notice much of a difference from the mp3s though, and the files are quite large (have some songs that are over 50mb).