Lossless Audio Formats: Are They Worth It?

The title states it all: are lossless audio formats really worth it? Although they are much larger in size, they supposedly offer greatly superior audio quality to compressed formats. But, can one really notice a difference on, say, a portable media player through headphones or a portable media player plugged into a stereo?

Also, I have heard that lossless audio drains battery faster. Is that true?

I guess the whole point of me making this thread was because the family is getting a new car with an axillary audio port, and I was thinking about reloading all my CDs onto my Zune as WMAlossless to get better sound quality than the 128kbps WMA files I have now. Think I will get better audio without battery drain...?

yeah...

You can indeed get better sound than 128kbps wma files, but you don't need lossless for that. I tried using lossless files only to realize that yes, they take more space. And since I have read about testers not being able to distinguish between mp3 files encoded in higher bitrates, I am happy with losslittle formats.

For sound editing, however, I stick with pure bytes.

Delever said: You can indeed get better sound than 128kbps wma files, but you don't need lossless for that. I tried using lossless files only to realize that yes, they take more space. And since I have read about testers not being able to distinguish between mp3 files encoded in higher bitrates, I am happy with losslittle formats.

I don't see the point in high-bitrate lossy compression. You only save a wee bit over lossless, but you lose the losslessness.

Anyway, I'll say this: for archival, yes, for portable devices no.

bruce89 said: I don't see the point in high-bitrate lossy compression. You only save a wee bit over lossless, but you lose the losslessness.

Right. I probably don't pay much attention to file sizes anymore :D

Delever said: Right. I probably don't pay much attention to file sizes anymore :D

It depends what you call high I suppose. I'd say over 300 kbps is pointless.

I suppose I was saying that for the quality, it seems pointless to use a high lossy compression, as it is still lossy.

There's some very good reasons to keep lossless compressed formats around, other than for listening. Archiving files in order to preserve those precious MoFi CD's or even doing back ups of vinyl is reason enough. But since you ARE talking audio quality...

Yes, of course the difference is a major one when comparing to lower bitrate files, but as has been stated, you don't necessarily need lossless, especially when you consider what you're playing those files ON and through.

The DAC in your Mp3 player likely isn't taking full advantage of those lossless files, for one. Secondly, if it was, you'd also likely be using a portable amp, and some very good headphones. The kind of headphones which in the first place, would make a differnce in how you perceive those 1's and 0's coming out of them. It's all about synergy.

If you're using an iPod and standard white buds, you'll get nothing extra out of those lossless files. And I guess that is the main point I'm trying to make. This of course begs the question:

What is your primary listening equiptment ?

Doug

It depends how much hard drive space you have :)

And yeah, like you said, the quality of your listening equipment.

But to be honest mp3s are pretty poor quality, it's such a shame they became the de facto standard.

dizee said: But to be honest mp3s are pretty poor quality, it's such a shame they became the de facto standard.

I was annoyed when a BBC article said that MP3 was a "Open Standard". It most certainly is not.

This depends. If you're an audiophile (like me) who's really picky about sound quality/has a really good sound system, then yes. If you don't care, and listen to music through your ipod earbuds or laptop speakers, then you may as well just save the space.

bruce89 said: It depends what you call high I suppose. I'd say over 300 kbps is pointless.

I suppose I was saying that for the quality, it seems pointless to use a high lossy compression, as it is still lossy.

I wouldn't go as far as to say that it's pointless. Hardly actually. Those reports of blind or double blind tests where people say they can't hear the difference between 128kbps files and 320kbps files are nothing but random random cases.

Age for one, makes a difference. Every 10 years or so our ears, as we get older start to lose some of their sensitivity and in turn the frequency range we hear coming from any music also begins to lessen. But the point here is that everyone is different. As is getting different results from different people using different audio equipment.

When I use a pair of my not so great cans vs a much better set of cans (sorry, headphones) I can easily hear the difference between what frequencies the not so good ones vs. good ones are missing. This is usually most revealed in percussive instruments such as cymbals and high hats, as well as in breathy female vocals.

Mp3's aren't so bad. Far from bad, actually. Nor are Ogg files. I think that purists will always argue that they are, but it makes very little difference and it's a stupid argument. Listening to Mp3's on consumer grade products is MORE than good sounding. But hey.. if we're talking about playback of a very well produced album (which let's face it, is RARE to happen these days outside of Indy labels) on reference equipment, then sure, we can have that conversation.

Sweet Spot said: I wouldn't go as far as to say that it's pointless. Hardly actually. Those reports of blind or double blind tests where people say they can't hear the difference between 128kbps files and 320kbps files are nothing but random random cases.

So why do online shops insist on bloody huge bitrates then (or, at least I think they do)?

It all depends on what you're doing with the audio, and what your personal preference is.

If I'm recording a song that I've written, lossless is the only way to go.

If I'm putting together a DVD full of music to play in the background, then MP3 is the way to go.

If I'm actually sitting back and listening to music on my stereo system, lossless is what I prefer.

For me, I like lossless because it allows to transcode and use the music in whatever way I want. Try converting an mp3 to ogg without serious loss and you'll know what I mean.

If you got the drive space, lossless is the way to go imho. With simple plugins the lossless files will play without having to uncompress them first.

I'd like to raise another question here.

I have an mp3 file.

If I take that file, convert to WAV or FLAC, then convert it to OGG, will it sound better than converting it straight up from mp3 to ogg?

Eisenwinter said: I'd like to raise another question here.

I have an mp3 file.

If I take that file, convert to WAV or FLAC, then convert it to OGG, will it sound better than converting it straight up from mp3 to ogg?

no, because ogg is itself a lossy format. the original mp3 is the best it will sound.

edit: after re-reading your question... the above is still true, although the conversion program used might offer slightly but most likely indistinguishable differences. mad will supposedely convert to wav very properly.

Eisenwinter said: I'd like to raise another question here.

I have an mp3 file.

If I take that file, convert to WAV or FLAC, then convert it to OGG, will it sound better than converting it straight up from mp3 to ogg?

No. In every case, you cannot improve the quality of a media file no matter what you do, or how hard you try. If you start with a lossless file, then cut it to a 320kbps mp3 file, you will lose quality. If you then cut it to a 256kbps aac file, you will lose quality. If you then convert it to a 320kbps mp3 again, *you will still lose quality*.

The point is that every conversion can only make it worse by chopping off bits and bits. It can't add the original sound back in.

EDIT: I should add that there are artificial ways to "add sound back in", but it's only for a trick on the ears; it doesn't actually improve the quality of the file.

My only portable digital media players are iPods, so therefore the only formats I can play in that context would be AAC and MP3. Naturally, I choose MP3.

Without a doubt, bit rate is a major factor in sound playback quality. Now, that being said, it also depends on the quality setting of the encoder used. I have heard 128 bit files that were horribly slurry, and ones which were excellent. Naturally, if you're ripping your own stuff, then you're in complete control of that.

As for your question about differences in processing power (i.e. "battery consumption") between playing a lossless format vs. a lossy one, I would think more processing power is required for a lossy format, given it has to sit there and kind of re-encode a non-lossy playable data stream (for the benefit of pushing out to your speakers), whereas a lossless format can probably be very nearly dumped straight to the speakers. In reality, however, my guess is that the processing power differential is negligible, principally because the CPUs in these systems (along with their related firmware) is so extremely optimized for this kind of task.

One of the features of FLAC format is to use the lowest processing power during playback and push all the processing power into creating the file. I think lossless will consume less processing power than an compressed format.

And is it worth it? Well first not all of us hear the same way so for example I notice all sorts of annoyances when hearing music while my brother and my girlfriend don't notice it. For archiving lossless is the best, you never know when you want to convert your library into a new format and if you already have mp3's you're doomed. Also as said before it depends on the device you use. I usually notice difference between 128kbps mp3 and 198kbps one so on my iPod I use 198kbps. At home I use FLAC and my Sennheiser phones ( http://flickr.com/photos/28001191@N04/2876390511/ ) and yes those phones makes compressed music sound bad and the uncompressed one look really good (that's because you can hear all the bad artifacts in a 128kbps compressed mp3).

Oh and yes more disk space is needed but... that's very cheap today, and if you say that you have 100000000000000000 or more :D songs on your pc and it would take too much disk space having a FLAC format for example, then may I ask how much did you payed for all those songs? ;) and if you instead downloaded mp3's from the net you don't get any advantage in converting those into a lossless format anyway.

Aiello said: The title states it all: are lossless audio formats really worth it? Although they are much larger in size, they supposedly offer greatly superior audio quality to compressed formats. But, can one really notice a difference on, say, a portable media player through headphones or a portable media player plugged into a stereo?

Also, I have heard that lossless audio drains battery faster. Is that true?

I guess the whole point of me making this thread was because the family is getting a new car with an axillary audio port, and I was thinking about reloading all my CDs onto my Zune as WMAlossless to get better sound quality than the 128kbps WMA files I have now. Think I will get better audio without battery drain...?

yeah...

I can't hear any difference between 2xxkbps and lossless on my pc boxes (and they are pretty good, subwoofer included) and for me that is all that matters, as I only listen to music on my pc.

Well, seeing as though I have a little over 200gb on my Windows partition, I'm not worrying to much about space on my compy, but I only have about 24gb left on my Zune. Any idea who large an album would be in WMAlossless.

Aiello said: Well, seeing as though I have a little over 200gb on my Windows partition, I'm not worrying to much about space on my compy, but I only have about 24gb left on my Zune. Any idea who large an album would be in WMAlossless.

In that case you will run out of space with lossless very quickly. One track is on the order of 20-30MB.

I tried converting my CD collection to FLAC once and came to the conclusion that I'm goingt to run out of space very quickly and I have 750GB+ of space.

mp3 or ogg at high bitrate will suffice for me, I keep my cd's in a safe place and only use copies of them if I need to take them anywhere.

I have a 7000 song collection with mostly MP3, some OGG, FLAC, and some WMA. The bitrates are all sufficiently high that I don't hear poor quality.

I also did a blind comparison of some Dragonforce songs between.. I think 192kbps, and FLAC, and I chose FLAC both times.

i use FLAC for archival(i keep an updated copy in both mp3 and ogg for portable use.)

occasionaly i need to retranscode. (like when i determined that i couldn't tell the difference between the bitrate of oggs i had encoded and a lower bitrate one, so i decided to save some space) if i chose a lossy codec for archival there would be quality lost with every transcoding and it would progressively get worse until i needed to re-rip.

Well, I decided to re-rip everything as lossless. It came out to be about 15gb (I don't have alot of music). Guess I still have the space to throw some movies on there!

I was kinding of hoping that this whole thing would give me an excuse to by a Zune 80 or 120. Oh, well. Saved myself $250.

Heh, I just thought of something.

If I burn the mp3 files as an audio CD, (cda format, I think), and then rip them into FLAC, will it still sound worse when I convert them to ogg?

I think it will probably sound the same doing that as converting directly from mp3 to ogg. Not sure though.

someday the argument for lossy may be mute. Storage size capacity will someday be measured in multi 1000 terabyte drives for all of us.

Eisenwinter said: Heh, I just thought of something.

If I burn the mp3 files as an audio CD, (cda format, I think), and then rip them into FLAC, will it still sound worse when I convert them to ogg?

Sound quality cannot be increased. The mp3 files burned onto the CD will always be the same or less quality than the original mp3 files. When ripped back onto the computer, they will still never sound better than the mp3 files originally did, no matter what format you rip them in.

In a word, NO. A good lossy codec is one where you can't tell the difference between it and the original. If you can't tell the difference, then the question is no different than asking if a tree falls in the woods, and nobody is around to hear, did it make a sound? Well sure, technically, but who cares?

There are plenty of poor quality encoders out there, but lame encoding in high quality variable bitrate mode producing an average of about 160-190 kbps can't really be distinguished from the original, even on top notch sound equipment by people with excellent hearing. I personally prefer ogg vorbis though since it isn't patent encumbered.

As for trans coding, at this point it is about time to pick a format and stick with it. Why bother transcoding ever again?

sdowney717 said: someday the argument for lossy may be mute.

Storage size capacity will someday be measured in multi 1000 terabyte drives for all of us.

(And by then, MSWORD will need that much space just to keep it's scratch files.) :p

Seriously though, if the Zetta File System (ZFS) takes off, then one day we may indeed have multi-exabyte storage devices in even the trivial devices we own, and then keeping uncompressed audio (heck, even video data!) on the disk will be trivial.

Short answer, no. The human ear can only hear a frequency of about 20 kHz. To prevent aliasing in the signal, 40 kHz is used. .mp3 is 44.1 kHz. Past that it's bit rate and frankly I just can't hear that quickly. :)

If you're a real audiophile, http://www.mp3-tech.org/tests/gb/index.html says to use 256 kbs sampling.

Yep, it all depends on your hearing, one of my ears thinks they are a total waste of time, the other one doesn't know what its missing. :-)

Eisenwinter said: If I burn the mp3 files as an audio CD, (cda format, I think), and then rip them into FLAC, will it still sound worse when I convert them to ogg?

Yes, it will, because the signal already has been damaged by the conversion to MP3. Nothing you can do will undo that damage. You can add to the damage, though.

psusi said: A good lossy codec is one where you can't tell the difference between it and the original. If you can't tell the difference, then the question is no different than asking if a tree falls in the woods, and nobody is around to hear, did it make a sound? Well sure, technically, but who cares?

Actually, you should have written "where you can't tell the difference *ceteris paribus*", meaning "when everything else remains unchanged".

Things that may change after the lossy compression:

• You want to play your music for someone with more accurate or better trained hearing
• You buy better equipment, starting from the playback device and ending with the speaker or phones
• You train your listening capabilities
• You start actually listening to your music and do so in a quiet environment.

I agree that you might get away with conservatively applying a lossy compression.

Shwefty said: Short answer, no. The human ear can only hear a frequency of about 20 kHz. To prevent aliasing in the signal, 40 kHz is used. .mp3 is 44.1 kHz. Past that it's bit rate and frankly I just can't hear that quickly.

Short answer, wrong.

Compression is not about the sampling rate but about the number of bits of storage used for a given duration of sound. Hence, 44.1 kHz is the sampling rate which may or may not suffice for reproducing the desired signals with their harmonics and phases. CD quality is at nominally 16 bits for each sample. That yields 44.1*2*16*1000 bits per second, not counting the overhead for the framing and error correction and such, of course.

handy said: Yep, it all depends on your hearing, one of my ears thinks they are a total waste of time, the other one doesn't know what its missing. :-)

WHAT? WHAT DID YOU SAY?!?

</sarcasm>

:p

Five past two, p.M.

bruce89 said: I was annoyed when a BBC article said that MP3 was a "Open Standard". It most certainly is not.

It is a universal standard, but not open standard...perhaps thats what they meant?

pp. said:

Actually, you should have written "where you can't tell the difference *ceteris paribus*", meaning "when everything else remains unchanged".

Things that may change after the lossy compression:

• You want to play your music for someone with more accurate or better trained hearing
• You buy better equipment, starting from the playback device and ending with the speaker or phones
• You train your listening capabilities
• You start actually listening to your music and do so in a quiet environment.

I guess I forgot to say, a good lossy compression is one where you can't tell the difference even with the best hearing and equipment. A high quality VBR lame encoded mp3 with an average bitrate of at least 160 kbps is one such.

i'd say anything over 192kbps is just taking up space