[Jasper994]

Quote:

Originally Posted by wanderman You can encode mp3 to lossless it is just not practical.

Well, yes, and yet, no...

You can transcode an mp3 into a lossless format, but you cannot make an mp3 become lossless again (once the data is gone, it's gone, converting to a lossless format does not return the data).

 

[mcluxun]

mp3 is not a type of lossless
see the result of rmaa you may know how much information has lost in encodeing

 

[HeavyBassMan]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jasper994 Well, yes, and yet, no... You can transcode an mp3 into a lossless format, but you cannot make an mp3 become lossless again (once the data is gone, it's gone, converting to a lossless format does not return the data).

Just for the heck of it, I played around with trancoding some MP3s to FLACs. The result was larger files. I am wondering how on earth this happens? Where does the extra file size come from? I just can't figure this out. It bugs me.

 

[Skylab]

Quote:

Originally Posted by HeavyBassMan Just for the heck of it, I played around with trancoding some MP3s to FLACs. The result was larger files. I am wondering how on earth this happens? Where does the extra file size come from? I just can't figure this out. It bugs me.

It's because of what Breez said -- the file gets converted to PCM first before being converted to FLAC.

 

[Laptopia]

Quote:

Originally Posted by K2Grey Well, first of all, I feel it's important to have a lossless copy of your CDs on your hard drive. Then you'll never have to rip them again since the lossless files are exact duplicates (ok, they're not, but for practical purposes they are) of the CD. If you change your mind about bitrates or formats or whatever, you can just transcode the lossless files to this format at that bitrate or whatever. If you rip your stuff to mp3 and then you decide you want to rip it to ogg, you'll have to pull out the CDs again since mp3 -> ogg is not as good as CD -> ogg, but CD -> ogg is the same as lossless -> ogg. Second, lossless and lossy refer to methods to get information from your CD to your computer. Lossless means no information is lost. There are a bunch of formats that are lossless and they compress the data in different ways but are generally similar. FLAC is the most common one, Wavpack and Monkey's Audio are others. Lossy formats trade sound quality for file size. They use psychoacoustics to minimize the loss of sound quality as much as possible. Mp3 is a lossy format. There are two things that determine how good a mp3 is: there is the bitrate, which determines the file size that is being aimed for. The higher the bitrate, the less information has to be thrown away. If you drop the bitrate enough, like to 96kbps, then there will be sound quality issues. If the bitrate is higher, though, like 192kbps, then you're giving the mp3 encoder enough to work with that it can generally produce very convincing results. The second thing is the encoder. The encoder decides what stuff is thrown away and what isn't. It's as important for the right stuff to be thrown away, as it is for not too much stuff to be thrown away. The best encoder is generally thought to be LAME. Look at wanderman's posts for info on exactly how to do the conversions. I use EAC to rip CDs to FLAC lossless, and then convert from FLAC lossless to LAME v2 mp3. Edit: Well, technically lossless and lossy refer to ways to transcode one file into another format, but for these purposes it refers to CD to computer.

I've managed to figure out how to set up EAC to rip to individual FLAC files (tracks), but I have read that the best way to catalog your CD collection in lossless form is to rip each as an entire (one-track) album, and save each along with its "Cuesheet" that contains the specs for that large FLAC album file. I have not figured out what is supposed to be done with that large file and Cuesheet hould one want to just take a single track along on a FLAC-capable DAP. I believe that, with the right magical tricks, you could rebuild a CD using that large FLAC file and Cuesheet. This whole lossless thing has proven more complex for me than I expected at the beginning . . .

 

[Laptopia]

Quote:

Originally Posted by The_Duke_Of_Eli "How do you encode mp3 to lossless? " You can't.

I second that.

 

[Skylab]

Yeah, lossless is a lot easier in iTunes

 

[wanderman]

Quote:

Originally Posted by breez What do you think happens in a lossy to lossy conversion? Or just plain listening to a lossy compressed song? It is decoded to PCM data (that is uncompressed). Therefore "lossy-lossless-lossy" is the same as "lossy-lossy" and won't sound any more tolerable

It did for me, I will try to reproduce it but it may have just been a fault in the program I was using. I understand what happens how all lossy and lossless music is decode in to raw pcms and played. Let me work on cutting up song, transcoding, and comparing wave forrms. Compared I found no difference, I wonder where I got that idea from.

edit:mp3 can be and is transcoded to lossless I do it all the time, everytime I abx

 

[Febs]

Quote:

Originally Posted by wanderman It did for me, I will try to reproduce it but it may have just been a fault in the program I was using. I understand what happens how all lossy and lossless music is decode in to raw pcms and played. Let me work on cutting up song, transcoding, and comparing wave forrms. edit:mp3 can be and is transcoded to lossless I do it all the time, everytime I abx

I just did this experiment with an mp3:

Original mp3: 8,203 KB

original mp3 transcoded directly to 320kbps CBR: 18,661 KB
original mp3 transcoded to WavPack and then 320kbps CBR: 18,661 KB

original mp3 transcoded directly to 96kbps CBR: 5,599 KB
original mp3 transcoded to WavPack and then to 96kbps CBR: 5,599 KB

Conclusion: the result of transcoding from mp3 to mp3 or from mp3 to lossless to mp3 is identical.

 

[Ooztuncer]

OP, I also have the zen xtra and you can find useful information in this thread that I created last month: EAC and others

Basically, I am using:

1) EAC: settings are in mentioned thread (high quality variable bit rates), I am converting from wav to mp3 on the fly (first ripping tracks from cd and then compress them - at the same time).

2) mp3tag (when necessary): sometimes my cd's cannot be found in the online databases so I am entering the tags by using this software. Be VERY careful when you change the tag information (creative's media source doesnt recognize them if you change the name's - you need to change the description).

3) MP3gain: normalizing sound to 89 decibel (details are in mentioned thread)

4) Creative's software: worlds most annoying program. Need to create playlists, then copy tracks, etc...

Good luck.

 

[wanderman]

I ran a test too, and found the same thing. You posted when I was testing. I arrived at the same conclusion. I am upping my test clips if anyone wants to participate in a little abx test. Simply to identify test file x. I used lame 3.92 and wavpack 4.31 (if this even matters).

I am going to post an edit with the link
edit: the link for
wav version
wv version

the test_1.ext file is the original, test_2 would be considered A, test_3(B), and test_x(X lol). Your not obligated to test the files with any methodology and you can just compare lame which has progressed even further then this.