MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - FLAC Support Coming to Chrome and Firefox this Month.

drofgnal · 01-20-2017, 11:34 AM

FLAC quality will vary depending upon the source. You can currently buy flac recordings for download that are 192 Khz/24bit, 96/24 , 48/24, or 44/16. 44/16 is the current audio CD standard. You'll hear varying opinions (and see many forum arguments) on whether or not the higher sample frequency and greater bit depths provide any real advantage over the CD standard of 44/16. The Nyquist theorom says that you can completely recreate the original analog wave form of the original if you limit the frequency range to the sample frequency/2. Hence, CDs and players have a brick wall at 22 kHz, rejecting any signal with higher frequencies. For high rez audio, that brick wall is moved further out allowing for more ultrasonic frequency content, but that content is beyond the range of human hearing.

The high rez audio community defends this by noting that every note played on an instrument is not just a single frequency, but a fundamental frequency plus overtones of ever increasing frequency, and that ignoring ultrasonics somehow results in less than a pure tone of that instrument. Mostly true for wind and string instruments, not electronica type music, if at all.
Myself, I'm not sure. I do have several SACDs and FLAC recordings from various sites like HD tracks, 2L, and Linn records. There are many now. One thing I do know, is that much greater care is usually taken by the label in mastering for release and these high rez recordings are generally of better quality, coming from a quality master (192/24 is the usual for studio digital masters unless recorded direct to DSD. The Beatles created 192/24 digitial masters for their 2009 remaster release, but only released a 44/24 FLAC version on the apple thumb drive. You also generally avoid the 'loudness wars' with high rez recordings that is prevelant in modern CDs where dynamic range is lowered (dB difference between lowest and loudest sound.

As far as flac itself for normal cd content 44/16, there is nothing unique about it. To say it's compressed is misleading as it's 'data compressed' not audio compressed. It will play 1:1 true to the original, but so will apple lossless, AIFF, etc. They should all be in the end idential in sound quality.

01-20-2017, 11:34 AM	#32
drofgnal Wizard Posts: 1,415 Karma: 10519918 Join Date: Dec 2009 Device: Ipad Pro/Kindle Oasis 3/iPhone 13 Pro Max	FLAC quality will vary depending upon the source. You can currently buy flac recordings for download that are 192 Khz/24bit, 96/24 , 48/24, or 44/16. 44/16 is the current audio CD standard. You'll hear varying opinions (and see many forum arguments) on whether or not the higher sample frequency and greater bit depths provide any real advantage over the CD standard of 44/16. The Nyquist theorom says that you can completely recreate the original analog wave form of the original if you limit the frequency range to the sample frequency/2. Hence, CDs and players have a brick wall at 22 kHz, rejecting any signal with higher frequencies. For high rez audio, that brick wall is moved further out allowing for more ultrasonic frequency content, but that content is beyond the range of human hearing. The high rez audio community defends this by noting that every note played on an instrument is not just a single frequency, but a fundamental frequency plus overtones of ever increasing frequency, and that ignoring ultrasonics somehow results in less than a pure tone of that instrument. Mostly true for wind and string instruments, not electronica type music, if at all. Myself, I'm not sure. I do have several SACDs and FLAC recordings from various sites like HD tracks, 2L, and Linn records. There are many now. One thing I do know, is that much greater care is usually taken by the label in mastering for release and these high rez recordings are generally of better quality, coming from a quality master (192/24 is the usual for studio digital masters unless recorded direct to DSD. The Beatles created 192/24 digitial masters for their 2009 remaster release, but only released a 44/24 FLAC version on the apple thumb drive. You also generally avoid the 'loudness wars' with high rez recordings that is prevelant in modern CDs where dynamic range is lowered (dB difference between lowest and loudest sound. As far as flac itself for normal cd content 44/16, there is nothing unique about it. To say it's compressed is misleading as it's 'data compressed' not audio compressed. It will play 1:1 true to the original, but so will apple lossless, AIFF, etc. They should all be in the end idential in sound quality. Last edited by drofgnal; 01-21-2017 at 04:49 AM.