emptage said:
I have just started re-ripping all my cd's to flac to play through my hi fi via Sonos. I am using DBPoweramp to rip them to flac. I notice that they are still compressed, 43% compared to 74% for MP3 320bps. I thought that flac was zero compression, is there another higher quality format I should rip to ?
No. FLAC is lossless. ie when it gets played back, it gets reformed into the original PCM signal bit for bit (exactly the same). The compression is very similar to that which you might use to compress documents or software in (say) Winzip...ie when you unzip it, it then works.
The higher the compression simply means it takes a little more processor time to compress and uncompress, which is trivial with todays processors (but can be a concern with battery life on compatible portable players).
If you want to test it, create a WAV from a CD track, then create a FLAC from the same track. Then take that FLAC and convert it to WAV in the same software. The 2 WAVs will be identical.