Vinyl Asylum

I guess the point might be that many of the commercial web sites. . .

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Chris from Lafayette

B

In Reply to: RE: Was going to ask that myself. posted by Tre' on September 12, 2020 at 10:53:24

. . . seem to have standardized around FLAC. Also, I think there are various degrees of FLAC file compression (all of which play back losslessly) - IIRC, you can actually create uncompressed FLAC files, although you hardly ever see this. (Somebody jump in here if I'm misstating things.)
But, to your point, storage and bandwidth are cheap these days, so there's no reason not to deal in WAV or AIFF files directly that I can see - except that things have become somewhat standardized on FLAC. Not really a big deal IMHO.

Edits: 09/13/20

Follow Ups:

RE: I guess the point might be that many of the commercial web sites. . . - frankwm 11:45:52 09/12/20 (6)
I've created zillions of FLAC files from PCM dubs: the % depends on the modulation levels ~55% + reduction may be an average (16bit)...using Audacity level 8 ('best').
If you put WAV files into a ZIP folder there is a ~15% + reduction in total size.

Jim Lesurf carried-out some FLAC testing in 2015:-
see...
- FLAC testing (Open in New Window)
- Welll, there's my answer, I takes up less space on the hard drive. nt - Tre' 14:07:19 09/12/20 (1)
  .
  Have Fun and Enjoy the Music
  "Still Working the Problem"
  - RE: Welll, there's my answer, I takes up less space on the hard drive. nt - rivervalley817 14:13:37 09/12/20 (0)
    I may not know you well Tre`, but well enough to know that you had your answer before asking the question
    
    regards,
- RE: I guess the point might be that many of the commercial web sites. . . - John Elison 13:36:46 09/12/20 (3)
  Can you give us the bottom line regarding FLAC? Is it lossless relative to WAV or is there some loss occurring with FLAC?
  
  Thanks!
  John
  - Maybe It's All In The Mind! - frankwm 14:25:41 09/12/20 (1)
    Years back I'd offer files (CD-RW derived: Pioneer/TEAC) as WAV+FLAC as was 'convinced' I could hear a slight difference (albeit on Sony desktop active sqeekers (SRS-58) from Dell Inspiron 6400 Headphone-out: hi-definition as it bypassed the usual circuitry): but did comment that, mathematically, one could, apparently, reconstruct the original data from FLAC.
    So I sort of put it down to possible real-time FLAC-to-WAV conversion audio anomalies and didn't really pursue it as people can appear quite happy with what I'd find unacceptable - and also, apparently, couldn't discern a difference between 16 and 24bit - which, from LP, I consider preserves more dynamic freedom as a 24bit FLAC - 16bit sounds 'truncated'..
    
    Irrespective of the above 'mathematically perfect' conversion, Jim's data does shown some slight variation.
    
    I'd personally be happier if WAV was the default - but file sizes get pretty big for (ie) stereo 24/96 - and I save as a 32bit float.
    - "stereo 24/96"? That's nothing! - Chris from Lafayette 20:41:02 09/12/20 (0)
      What about 5.1 DSD256 or 5.1 DXD? ;-)
  - RE: I guess the point might be that many of the commercial web sites. . . - Tre' 14:02:13 09/12/20 (0)
    FLAC is lossless but compressed in terms of how much space it takes up on the hard drive.
    
    Wav is to audio files what Raw is to image files. Wav is the whole stream without trying to make it take up less space on the hard drive.
    
    Tre'
    Have Fun and Enjoy the Music
    "Still Working the Problem"

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