Lossless audio?

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Hey

Just been listning to some of this audio format on youtube, it sounds a lot better than cd'd IMO

How do you get more of this stuff, I only have the free spotify.

Or am I just wrong

Thanks
 
Yes, because I'm confused at what you;re asking - I'd be surprised if anything on youtube is lossless. Spotify isn't lossless, it runs at 320k (but is extremely good for all that). But yes, in my experience lossless audio through a decent DAC tends on the whole to be at least a match for your average CD player.
 
isnt lossless just a term that indicates that data (in this case music) has been copied to whatever format , usb , hard drive , cd etc with no data loss ?? ie , an exact replica of source ....
 
Yes what I am really asking is:

1. is lossless audio the best sound quality, apart from blu-ray music, which there does not seem to be much about.

2. were can you get lossless audio as like you said it tends to be the best format for quality.

Thanks
 
i reckon there is no such thing as lossless audio , lossless just describes the means of copying ?? no ??
 
Max what are you talking about? Lossless means a digital source, eg cd, has been compressed without throwing away any data, ie flax or alac or that it's been encoded without compression, ie wav or aiff, as opposed to compression that throws away data, such as mp3.
 
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...

i was referring to lossless in the context of copying , or downloading , i understood lossless transfers to be uncompressed ? as opposed to compressed mp3 transfers etc that can lose data..

perhaps i should
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until i know what im on about
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canada16:
Yes what I am really asking is:

1. is lossless audio the best sound quality, apart from blu-ray music, which there does not seem to be much about.

2. were can you get lossless audio as like you said it tends to be the best format for quality.

Thanks

1 - yes as all data remains. But, many struggle to hear a difference between lossless and the better higher bit rate lossy formats.

2 - by importing CDs or from a few downloading sites.
 
Lossless Compression isn't better than your cd (at least a new, unscratched cd!) - at best it's equivalent. You may get a better sound from a streamer than your cd player but that's a separate consideration.

PS. WAV isn't necessarily uncompressed - it's a container into which compressed or uncompressed media can be stored.
 
ok , you buy ten cds , are they lossless ?? if so why ?? uncompressed??

you download ten albums from itunes , you have a choice , lossless , more data , uncompressed ??

or lossy , compressed , less data , faster download ??

you copy your ten cds to your pc , do you have a choice of copying losslessly ?? an exact copy ?? or compressed , lossy .. some data loss ??

if the above is correct , then isnt lossless just a form of data transfer ?? the audio/data isnt lossless in itself ??
 
so much nonsense talking and no answer

please people

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lossless_data_compression

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_data_compression

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lossy_data_compression

in short .......to answer all the doubts asked here and without too much mathematics , encoding,compression algorithms, telecomunications and infromation theory ..........

https://www.hdtracks.com/index.php?file=staticpage&pagename=faq#2
 
What I suppose I am trying to get at is this:

People spend tons of money on Hifi and they buy normal cd's and people who watch films get a massive jump in sound quality through Master HD.

Why dont they have cd's that are on the same level as the Master HD movie quality.

I notice a massive difference between my CD and a music track on a HD movie.

So were can you get HD music from that sounds better than a CD
 
alien123:
so much nonsense talking and no answer

please people

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lossless_data_compression

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_data_compression

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lossy_data_compression

in short .......to answer all the doubts asked here and without too much mathematics , encoding,compression algorithms, telecomunications and infromation theory ..........

https://www.hdtracks.com/index.php?file=staticpage&pagename=faq#2

can you fill us in alien ? in laymans terms please
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What you're looking for is recordings made with higher sampling frequency/bit-depth than CD's 16-bit/44.1kHz. The reason you can't get better quality - ie higher sampling rates/bit depth - on CDs is that there just isn't room: a standard CD's capacity is about 80min of 16/44.1, and that's it.

To get higher resolution you either have to go for a different disc format with greater capacity - such as DVD, SACD or Blu-ray - or go for downloaded music. Do that and you can get up to 24-bit resolution, and sampling rates of 88.2, 96 or even 192kHz.

You can buy hi-res downloads from the likes of The Naim Label, Linn Records or, as mentioned before, HDTracks.

However, while not impugning any of the sources mentioned above, not all apparently hi-res recordings have been made from high-resolution masters, or sampled at high bit-rates/sampling frequencies from analogue originals. There have been cases in the past of some apparently hi-res releases actually being upsampled from existing CD masters.

That said, you are getting a bit confused about lossless encoding and high-resolution: lossless compression, as has already been stated, is a method of compressing music down to occupy less storage space, not a means of achieving higher quality than the original recording.

Bear also in mind that a Blu-ray recording of the music may appear to sound better because there's a picture. Honestly: if there's a visual stimulus such as a video picture, our ability to listen critically is greatly reduced, simply because the visuals take up so much of the brain's limited processing power.

That's one reason why I often turn off the display when assessing the sound of a home cinema system or component, so I'm actually listening to the sound alone, rather than being fooled by all those pretty pictures and trying to listen past them.
 
canada16:
What I suppose I am trying to get at is this:

People spend tons of money on Hifi and they buy normal cd's and people who watch films get a massive jump in sound quality through Master HD.

Why dont they have cd's that are on the same level as the Master HD movie quality.

I notice a massive difference between my CD and a music track on a HD movie.

So were can you get HD music from that sounds better than a CD

they do .....
 
canada16:
What I suppose I am trying to get at is this:

People spend tons of money on Hifi and they buy normal cd's and people who watch films get a massive jump in sound quality through Master HD.

Why dont they have cd's that are on the same level as the Master HD movie quality.

I notice a massive difference between my CD and a music track on a HD movie.

So were can you get HD music from that sounds better than a CD

Forgive me, but I can't see a CD player in your signature.
 
Also forgive me, but ALAC and FLAC are only approx 60% of the size of the original CD file. Now I have maths and physics A-levels and to me there's something fishy about a file that claims to be 'lossless' yet is only 60% of the size. If it's magic...

Results of 'lossless' don't compare to CD at my house, which further suggests smoked mackerel pate.
 
swore I'd never bother to post on this forum again (yes I know no great loss (pun intended)) but a simple question for

fishy Joel. What data is "lost" when you compress a Word file for instance using Winzip WinRar or whatever ?
 
Joel you've had this explained so many times it's getting boring now. If you're not even going to bother trying to understand what people are telling you then you're just wasting everybody's time, not to mention making yourself look foolish into the bargain and you're no fool.
 
so then .. lossless audio is compressed , to make it easier to fit it onto cds , so it takes up less space on a pc , usb stick etc , but it then can be uncompressed and played back with all the data there ??

i wish someone would explain this stuff in laymans terms , cant be that hard if you understand it can it ??
 
the_lhc:Joel you've had this explained so many times it's getting boring now. If you're not even going to bother trying to understand what people are telling you then you're just wasting everybody's time, not to mention making yourself look foolish into the bargain and you're no fool.

Take Joel's view with a pinch of salt - he is a non believer, that's all.

I recently had a Penguin over for lunch and he brought his Arcam cd player with him. I think it's the 73. Decent cd player but my system, lossless files via Popcorn Hour to DacMagic beat it far easily than I expected it too. Now the difference here is that Joel has a fairly high end, circa £2k cdp.
 
maxflinn:so then .. lossless audio is compressed , to make it easier to fit it onto cds , so it takes up less space on a pc , usb stick etc , but it then can be uncompressed and played back with all the data there ??

You really haven't read this thread have you? No, the original audio recording can be compressed in two basic ways, in order to fit more of more of it onto a storage medium:

- You can use lossy compression, such as MP3, which throws away some of the data to reduce the file size. Think turning a word document into a plain text .txt file, losing all the niceties of formatting, font type/colour,hyperlinks and so on, in order to create a smaller file.
- Or you can use lossless compression, which retains all the data, but creates a file that's larger than an MP3, but smaller than the original audio. To use the word analogy, it's like using WinZip or Stuffit or whatever to create an archive.

Frankly if you're thinking of using FLACs or ALACs or Apple Lossless, I personally don't see any reason not to just store WAV files, given how affordable storage is these days.
 
This thread highlights the issues with downloads and lossless - the complexity and understanding of all the variables that most people dont quite get (me included).

Lets see if someone can help my own limited understanding - most of my music is on CD which i prefer as a source for convenience. I do have some on PC which i play via i-touch, wadia dock to get the digital input and then a v-dac.

So CD sounds excellent. The downloads from itunes and amazon are decent through the itouch and dac but not as good as CD. But i know these are heavily compressed and so i should expect this. A few tracks ripped from CD via lossless itunes sound pretty good and very close to CD quality.

But if i download from say Linn a high resolution file better than CD its in a format FLAC or WMA - and then i want to then play the track on the itouch it needs converting by itunes and at this point wont it compress it back to a poorer quality hence wasting my extra spend on the high resolution ?

Alternatively if i want to stream it from my PC (not near my stereo) i can get something like a Squeezebox or a forthcoming Arcam dac which supports bluetooth - but again wont some of the quality be lost in the mechanics of streaming due to bandwidth etc ?
 

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