ALAC, FLAC, And Why Lossless Audio Rarely Is

You can Store it Losslessly, but Can you play it back? The challenge of Lossless audio that Most players don't do it justice, so all those extra bits that ALAC and FLAC store get lost in the mix. Literally in the Mixer.

[Radio.Raptor]

According to wikipedia, it inherently does, albeit through changing bit-rate and format. The trend is 64kbit mp3 for 240p, 128kbit aac for 480p and 192kbit ogg vorbis or aac for 720p and 1080p. For more info see article 'youtube#Quality_and_codecs' on wikipedia.

[rancosteel]

In a blind listening scenario an Audiophile can't tell the difference between equipment brands or design types. However, anyone that listens to or creates music can tell what roll off and distortion sounds like, and that's why FLAC is so important to use for storage. All the other formats just don't cut it on the storage side. It has nothing to do with being pretentious. It's about critical listening. Something most people don't do these days that's why they don't know anything.

[maplmage]

once you go lossless, you don't go back.

[nwimpney]

If you don't care much about size, I'm sure a 320kbit mp3 will sound fine. If your player supports ALAC that would work too (and would still be lossless).

To a lot of people, the main advantage of flac is not necessarily having the most perfect playback, but to have a perfect copy stored for when you do want to make a lower quality copy for a portable player, etc. without getting the additive losses of re-mp3ing something that's already been at a different bitrate.

[MisakaMikotoDesu]

Your car speakers and the inside of a car itself are anything but good, even in the very best cases.

[DunNotCome]

I have to agree with Brandon's view on lossless audio. Most people would simply assume that any cheap audio equipment will produce lossless audio good enough, but its not true because of the precision of the equipment used. Lossless playback require a very good speaker to play them, not to mention room acoustic. Good DACs typically cost >1k, thus $400 receivers aren't good enough. Lossless playback may improve the quality on your cheap systems, but its fullest potential will not be realised .

[CutThroat]

With current technology, no audio or video playback is ever going to be completely lossless for one reason: interference.

You probably won't be able to hear it, but every type of interference degrades the signal a small amount. Electrical and acoustical noise are two major sources. Small bits of electrical signal leak into the PCB of the receiver/sound card/whatever and modify the signal a small amount. However, flac files will always be less distorted than mp3 files under the same conditions.

[DunNotCome]

FLAC and WAV files are lossless codecs, which is the reason why you do not hear the difference between them. They are generally accurate format when it comes to the sound detail. Nevertheless for all audio codecs comes their bitrate which determines the accuracy of the audio file. However, audio playback and source is a different thing altogether, the computer does not have the D/A converter that is accurate enough to realise the sound of FLAC as compared to a vinyl turntable.

[nwimpney]

You can convert them to any format you want. It's exactly the same as if you had the original CD. This is probably the main advantage of flac. Archival. I'm converting all of my CDs to flac so I can box up all the physical media in my closet, From there I can convert it to ogg or mp3 for my portable players, or play it as flac on my PC, and I don't have to worry about generational losses from transcoding between formats.

[ZombifiedDuder]

Folder compression & WAV?
Wouldn't folder compression & FLAC be better, since the starting file is smaller, and you'll be getting the same percentages anyway?
Or does folder compression not work with FLAC since it's already compressed?

[mv]

@BlackwaterOpsDotCom Ah, so it's still going through some bits and pieces before it leaves the computer to the device. Actually, on recommendation from others, i installed one of the foobar plugins called Windows Audio Session API (WASAPI), they said this would help with the stream to the device. I am a bit of a novice producer but i wouldn't use this for mastering, up until now i have just been listening to music.

[ja]

I can hear hear the difference between lossless and lossy without any equipment, only a 320kbps lossy file sounds almost like the lossless (with the lossless sounding a bit like an open soundstage) im glad i havent lose hearing as of yet

[DunNotCome]

To be exact and even more blatant with what I am saying and why i mention DVD without going into its detail, it was referring to digital VS analog recording. By pure fidelity, you don't even have to look in digital, analog is already the winner without question. Digital may offer modern advantages, but do note that you can custom record a 5.1 recording even with an analog by using a different stylus and record, however which is not feasible.

[BrandonWirtz]

@mv19891989 What brand? I don't believe that your USB device is Decoding the file I also don't believe that it has studio grade DAC, And how is it connected to the Speakers?

[williammurray]

"Direct" output high resolution digital audio to HDMI.

[mv]

@BlackwaterOpsDotCom It's an Audio GD NFB-12, i use it with headphones but it can be used with speakers. I believe it has 2 Wolfson WM8741, considered to be a very good DAC. I use a USB straight into my laptop and i use the foobar2000 player and select the NFB-12 as a SPDIF audio output, it also has Coax and Optical inputs which i use for other things. Headphones simply use a 6.3mm jack.

I'm sure i could be wrong i'm certainly no expert, but would you see any errors?

[argo]

Just for clarification. The Official YouTube audio bitrates for each resolution are as follows. (1080P / 720P = 192kbps AAC / OGG) (480P = 128kbps AAC) (360P = 96kbps AAC) (240P / 144P = 64kbps mp3 Mono) Some videos in HD resolutions are converted to either the WebM video codec, or the MP4 video codec. WebM on YouTube uses the OGG format. I have also tested and verified these settings to be true. The current audio bitrates were enacted back in July of 2012. (All bitrates sampled at 44.100KHz)

[DjGiantG]

Also, as mentioned countless times in the comments: FLAC and ALAC "know" how to compress audio better than disk compression algorithms as they have been optimized for audio.

Sounding better is subjective and up to the listener.

[Neojhun]

I did mention "ASIO" Audio Stream Input/Output is a great piece of old tech. It's a pitty in most OS ASIO is not a default option and takes a lot of effort to get it working right just to Directly Stream PCM to a DAC.

[nintendomaniac]

Many of my own videos have it since they are just music with a static image, but they pre-date when YouTube started using 192kbps AAC. However, at the time "Original" had the same audio quality as 1080p and 720p.