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Originally Posted by GtrsRGr8
I had forgotten how complicated all of that was. I don't remember ever knowing that FLAC was compressed. I'm guessing that it's at such a low level that it can be uncompressed to exactly what quality it was when it was produced (sung, played, whatever) (I guess that that's what lossless means)?
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Basically. It works like ZIP compression, but especially optimized for music.
Let's say you do this:
A --zip--> B --unzip--> C.
Then A and C will be exactly the same, bit for bit.
If you do this:
A (wave) --make mp3--> B (mp3) --reconvert to WAV--> C (wav)
Then, because creating the MP3 throws data away, A will be of better quality than C.
FLAC works like the ZIP-method. It throws nothing away, and you can go from WAV to FLAC and back as often as you like. You can even go from WAV to FLAC and then to any other lossless format and back to WAV again at any point, and you still get exactly the same WAV as you started out with.
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My "ears" would not be able to detect the difference between an MP3 and a FLAC, I'm pretty sure.
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Mine can't either, if the MP3 is 192 kbps or higher. The reason I use FLAC though, is so I can reconvert to any other lossless format in the future, if necessary, without losing any quality.
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Isn't vinyl considered the medium with optimal sound quality?
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No, it's not optimal. It can be scientifically proven that a CD can attain a much higher sound quality than an LP record. However, there are several reasons why people like vinyl more.
1. They just like the sound signature better. (They *do* sound different from a CD.)
2. Ever heard of the loudness wars, where CD's are remastered at extremely loud levels? That destroys the music. All soft/loud peaks are gone, and some music actually distorts. You can push digital music to MUCH higher levels than an LP. At some point, it's just not physically possible to make the LP louder. Therefore, an LP can't be destroyed (as much) as a CD when pushing loudness.
3. And then there are the people who always think everything was better 'back then'.
If you think that 'all' LP's sound better than 'all' CD's, always and without question, then you either fall into groups 1 or 3, or you just never heard a properly mastered CD.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DrNefario
The variable bit rate would be because some sections compress better than others, I guess.
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Yes. Silence can be compressed pretty well. An orchestra can't. Therefore very low bitrates are used for silence, and high bitrates are used for the orchestra.