Splitting FLAC file into many FLAC files (is it still lossless?)

[Jibbie]

Hey guys, I'm sorry if this is the wrong forum, but I didn't know where else to put it.
 
I had a collection of albums that were ripped into one large FLAC file each (including a .cue sheet).  Using Foobar and the .cue sheet, I split each large FLAC file into individual tracks (still in FLAC format).  Before splitting one of the large FLAC files, its bitrate was 983 kbs.  After splitting, each track is now at a bit rate of 983 kbs, whereas every other album I have in FLAC has different bitrates for each track.  Because each track was apparently assigned the bitrate that the original FLAC file had, is each track no longer lossless?  I'd imagine some tracks would be less than 983 kbs and some would be over it, so I'm worried that I now have a bunch of music that takes up the memory of FLAC but is no longer technically lossless.
 
Any answers would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks!

 

[wnmnkh]

Lossless if you do it right.... Well, most of the time, it will be right ;p
 
Some helpful threads.
 
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=63621
 
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=19840

 

[shrimants]

It should be the exact same file, theoretically. As long as your converter didnt make any errors, a lossless format is a lossless format. All you really did by splitting it is shove a header into the file that says [start][end]...[start][end] instead of having just one song with a single [start][end]. The actual data of the flac file should not change at all.

 

[Jibbie]

Okay that makes sense.  I was just worried when I saw each song sharing the exact same bitrate, when all of my other albums that have been ripped into individual FLAC tracks have different bitrates for each song.  This brings up another question though, is there a difference between FLAC levels (i.e. FLAC level 5 vs FLAC level 0, which encodes the fastest and uses the most memory)?
 
Quote:

It should be the exact same file, theoretically. As long as your converter didnt make any errors, a lossless format is a lossless format. All you really did by splitting it is shove a header into the file that says [start][end]...[start][end] instead of having just one song with a single [start][end]. The actual data of the flac file should not change at all.

 

 

[shrimants]

Flac levels go from 0 to 8. No matter what you are dealing with a "compressed" lossless file. IE if you want 100% uncompressed, you make a binary image of the CD itself, but that is good for jack $#17. Nothing can really play a binary cd image and there is tons of junk in the cd image you dont need anyways, like track info, song length, etc. That stuff doesnt need to be lossless.
 
Each flac level will take the actual audio portion and rearrange the 1's and 0's that describe the sound in a different way, optimizing every way they can. The extreme compression will take an extremely long time to optimize the file, but rather than having, say, a 700mb total CD being flac'd into a 650mb cd, you'll have it shoved into the space of 400 or 500 mb. The less extreme flac levels will basically sacrifice optimization and analysis for the sake of speed, and just get that cd into the right format and call it a day.
 
Refer to http://flac.sourceforge.net/faq.html#general__lowest_bitrate
Quote:

With FLAC you do not specify a bitrate like with some lossy codecs. It's more like specifying a quality with Vorbis or MPC, except with FLAC the quality is always "lossless" and the resulting bitrate is roughly proportional to the amount of information in the original signal. You cannot control the bitrate much and the result can be from around 100% of the input rate (if you are encoding noise), down to almost 0 (encoding silence).

Quote:

It's hard to explain without going into the codec design, but to oversimplify, the encoder is looking for functions that approximate the signal. Higher settings make the encoder search more to find better approximations. The functions are themselves encoded in the FLAC file. Decoding only requires computing the one chosen function, and the complexity of the function is very stable. This is by design, to make decoding easier, and is one of the things that makes FLAC easy to implement in hardware.

 
That should clarify things for you plenty. now go flac yourself.

 

[Jibbie]

Thanks.  I'll just enjoy the lossless and not worry about the technicalities behind it