What is the point of lossless music?
couldn't you use those 30 mb to download the full HD music video instead?
Lossless files don't lose quality over time, lossy do. The point of FLAC is storage.
Rotational velocidensity.
>>54579368
they are impermeable to digital dust which make them best for archival purposes
The space and speed necessary for collecting lossless music is a non-issue for most people nowadays. With that said, lossless music provides superior quality (even if it's imperceptible), perfect or near perfect preservation, and the files can be converted to any format without generational loss, also they are better for editing and remixing.
OK. I get that you can't tell the difference between lossless and 28kb/s .wma files on your chink ipod knockoff and dollarama earbuds.
But if your rich uncle dies and leaves you a decent stereo, your going to wish the 92 Gb of torrents you pirated were flac so you could burn some good cds.
And what if there's a breakthrough in phone audio tech 6 months from now. All you're mp3s will go into the trash.
>>54579368
>downloading music videos
>>54579375
Do you actually believe this? Do you really think that if you give it enough time, your files on your hard drive will magically degrade (=change content) all by themselves? Get real. The crappy 128 kbps mp3 you downloaded 15 years ago will sound literally exactly the same it did when you first played it. The only thing that may have changed are your speakers.
mac fags dont understand flac
they boast about theyre amazing iphone (with no expandable memory slot) and cry about flac files being to large
>>54579375
nice b8 m8
>>54579368
Idiots don't understand how lossy file formats work. They believe they will magically loose data with out moving or touching the file at all they jump on the lossless meme, flac is just the most common lossless audio
>>54579748
>Do you really think that if you give it enough time, your files on your hard drive will magically degrade (=change content) all by themselves?
They will, retard.
>>54579990
Honesty just leave this board you tech illiterate fuckwit, a simple Google search and you could have the correct answer
>>54580012
Bit rot you fucking dumbass.
I use flac because I like to pretend I have a little music museum
>>54579990
kek
>>54579748
>Do you actually believe this? Do you really think that if you give it enough time, your files on your hard drive will magically degrade (=change content) all by themselves?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_degradation#Decay_of_storage_media
>>54580024
The only time lossy files drop quality is during compression and decompression any other drop is across every file in the system and would happen regardless of format.
>>54579990
I'm gonna need some actual proof for that claim. Rotational velocidensity is nothing but a laughing matter.
The reason your 15 years old MP3s sound way worse now than 15 years ago is because 15 years ago you had worse speakers and now you can hear how crappy these MP3s actually were all this time.
>>54580035
>This article possibly contains original research.
Yeah, like I'm gonna believe that.
>>54580068
I never said anything about format. Nice backpedal.
>>54579748
>Do you actually believe this? Do you really think that if you give it enough time, your files on your hard drive will magically degrade (=change content) all by themselves? Get real. The crappy 128 kbps mp3 you downloaded 15 years ago will sound literally exactly the same it did when you first played it. The only thing that may have changed are your speakers.
>what is rotational velocidensity
Am I even on /g/?
>>54580117
Ohh fuck sorry about that forgot that every post on 4chan is a snapshot completely separate from the context of the rest of the argument
>>54579990
I don't want my music degrading over time
>>54580028
If you have a lot of music in FLAC you do have a little museum.
>>54580101
Read error rates are a manufacturer-quoted figure.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/05/07/flash_banishes_the_spectre_of_the_unrecoverable_data_error
http://www.smbitjournal.com/2012/05/when-no-redundancy-is-more-reliable/
>>54580101
https://superuser.com/questions/284427/how-much-time-until-an-unused-hard-drive-loses-its-data/312764#312764
>>54580068
FLAC has more error correction built into it than MP3
>>54579821
I have a 128GB iPhone 6s and use ALAC files for my music :^)
>>54580101
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_corruption#Silent_data_corruption
>>54580250
Does it really? I can't find any citation on that
I love how half the posts in these threads are about how pointless flac or lossless is, and the other half are about how vastly superior opus or whatever meme of the month codec is to other lossy formats.
>>54580250
>>54580321
https://xiph.org/flac/documentation_format_overview.html
All I can see is that it has CRCs built in so it can detect errors (and replace them by silent blocks instead), nothing to support the hypothesis of it including error correction.
I use FLAC because I fucking can.
I have a good sound system and I can notice the difference from 320kbps MP3 and any FLAC file over 1000kbps.
I have a ton of storage space available.
I'm also a music producer, so it's essential to use FLAC if I want to cut and stretch samples.
>>54581174
>I have a good sound system and I can notice the difference from 320kbps MP3 and any FLAC file over 1000kbps.
No you can't
>>54581233
Yes I can.
>>54581262
>open file in Audition
>look for cutoff/blocks
Here, I noticed a difference!
>>54581287
T. poorfag
>>54581287
Ebin.
>>54581312
>.T
What does this mean?
I keep seeing it everywhere.
>>54581262
How about a test. We'll send you pairs of FLACs and you'll listen to them and tell which one is a transcode on astream (including your desktop so we can see you're not cheating with a frequency analyzer).
>>54581233
You can. The creator of the MP3 codec said that MP3 would particularly deteriorate tracks with high-pitched instruments such as harpsichords.
>>54581422
And unless you're Superman or a dog, you won't register that deterioration.
FLAC IS FOR ARCHIVAL PURPOSES
THERE IS NO AUDIBLE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LOSSLESS AND TRANSPARENT LOSSY
FLAC IS THERE SO YOU DON'T NEED TO CONVERT LOSSY TO LOSSY WHEN THE WORLD MOVES ON FROM MP3
that's all, folks.
>>54579375
I like your style, we should be friends
>>54579368
The point of lossless music is to have a RIP that's identical in quality to what the sound engineers intended for distribution. If space is an issue, then just transcode to high bitrate Ogg Vorbis or MP3.
As it stands, I actually buy music rather than pirate shit wholesale and haul it. I have roughly two continuous days of music in FLAC format and the entire thing takes up 20gb. I'm certain that the affordability and capacity of flash storage will grow faster than my music library.
>>54581367
t. is short for 'terveisin'
Newfag
>>54581465
actually, there is still a noticeable deterioration
>>54581509
>>54581407 or fuck off
Archival. MP3 is not really a great format, so it's nice to be able to re-encode the audio without losing quality.
Can /g/ guess in which format I have the pic related album?
>>54581538
PCM
>>54581538
.opus
>>54581544
>PCM
its not a format..
So, wait...
flac is a lossless media, but, here is a scenario i'm interested in...
So, i have a collection of mp3's stored on my mpd server. This server is exposed to my LAN, so I can stream music whenever.
Each time I stream an mp3, it sends a copy of that data over the wire to my other device (in this example, its an android).
Now, that copy of the data is recieved on my android device, and then it is briefly cached, but ultimately, it will be deleted.
Now, if I were using my android device to send that music to other devices, then degradation would be an issue, but in this scenario- i am only sending the data over the wire one time. The original file is read, and a copy is sent. The original file wont degrade, and although the copy is going to be slightly degraded, it wont matter because the copy is discarded.
Is that all correct?
flac vs mp3 seems to be like jpg vs png.
Theres a reason why jpgs are standard. The loss doesnt matter because the server copy is always preserved.
>>54581538
Yamaha Twin VQ.
>>54580159
>>54580159
Completely underrated post
>>54579368
I think having FLAC is useless, but having the source music in its highest quality without and compression defects ensures when you want to use said music, it will be gud.
>>54581262
Well, you're completely full of shit.
I will offer $10,000 to anybody who can prove to me in a double blind listening experience that they can distinguish between MP3 CBR 320 kbps (encoded with the most recent version of LAME) and lossless.
There is absolutely no scientific evidence to support that any single human individual in the history of ever has ever been able to do this, so I have good reason to believe you also can't.
>>54581571
Have your parents dropped you on head from golden bridge while you were a baby child that you developed autism that is mixed with seizure from time to time later on or is it perhaps a permanent one?
>>54581422
>The creator of the MP3 codec said that MP3 would particularly deteriorate tracks with high-pitched instruments such as harpsichords.
He was most likely talking about 64 or 128 kbps. It's no myth that lossy codecs distort the audio as you reduce the bitrate. That's in their design.
But give any lossy codec enough bits to work with, and it will be perceptually transparent. Not just “good enough”, fully transparent.
For MP3 with recent LAME, that point of transparency is SIGNIFICANTLY below 320 kbps. At 320 kbps you're overkilling it and then some.
>>54581538
.APE
>>54579368
archiving.
especiallywhen editing
>>54581601
mp3 = listening
FLAC = archive, listening, editing, burning on CD, albums with pre-emphasis, collection value in digital form (having a 1:1 copy of rare CD rip)
>>54581571
Data is never degraded from simply copying(or at least its not supposed to be). It might be lost during transit but that's not the same thing.
>>54581653
>FLAC
forgot to mention: Encoding to other formats if necessary
So you can transcode or edit your music without a loss in quality. Archiving your media in lossy formats is shortsighted.
>>54581538
.dead
>>54581653
Why are you responding to my post?
>>54579368
>>54581601
Hearing the difference now isn't the reason to encode to FLAC. FLAC uses lossless compression, while MP3 is 'lossy'. What this means is that for each year the MP3 sits on your hard drive, it will lose roughly 12kbps, assuming you have SATA - it's about 15kbps on IDE, but only 7kbps on SCSI, due to rotational velocidensity. You don't want to know how much worse it is on CD-ROM or other optical media.
I started collecting MP3s in about 2001, and if I try to play any of the tracks I downloaded back then, even the stuff I grabbed at 320kbps, they just sound like crap. The bass is terrible, the midrange…well don’t get me started. Some of those albums have degraded down to 32 or even 16kbps. FLAC rips from the same period still sound great, even if they weren’t stored correctly, in a cool, dry place. Seriously, stick to FLAC, you may not be able to hear the difference now, but in a year or two, you’ll be glad you did.
>>54581571
jpg isnt standard. png is always better
>>54581709
Because I can.
>>54581705
I like you!
>>54581538
Musepack
>>54581748
>Musepack
jesus... who the fuck use that?
>>54581653
why not just archive at 430k? we caqnt hear above it anyway and for burning audio has fixed playback so making it louder doesnt make the quality worse, only makes artifacts noticeable
Is there a possibility to convert from MP3 to FLAC so I don't lose the so-called quality over time? I have an mp3 file you can't find anywhere on the internet of a song, and I want to stop the degradation if it's possible (not looking to make it sound better, or add any other shit, just stop the corruption that mp3 has).
if i convert an mp3 to flac (lets say the mp3 is the only known copy in exsistance), will the flac be as big or bigger than the mp3?
>>54581778
Because you archive the CD content, you don't mess with it.
>>54581784
You better leave.
>>54581804
There is no reason to use lossless compression on something that was lossy encoded.
I believe the mp3 would be smaller though probably.
>>54581571
what the fuck are you talking about? How to bits degrade?
>>54581932
Well duh, do you expect a contained glass of dirty water bring back to bottle and make it clean again?
>>54579368
>seriously responding to b8 threads
Audiophiles are mentally ill and that's a fact.
>>54581932
nono, its to make it archival i guess, so that the original stays fresh. why would the flac be larger if its still at 320kbs?
>>54581971
not the arguement
>>54582006
>not the arguement
Well it is actually!
You can't magically add the bits of the original data that was cut away when you encode lossless to lossy.
>Exercise for dummies
Take any PNG image, compress to 20% Jpeg then convert back to PNG, I'm waiting for your astonishing discovery.
>>54582006
>nono, its to make it archival i guess
Stop believing on everything you read on the internet and look up on different sources before being conclusive.
>>54582006
There's no purpose data does not simply degrade randomly. The only data degradation is hardware failure and that affects both formats.
>why would the flac be larger if its still at 320kbs?
The data that the flac compresses is completely uncompressed.
During the conversion the mp3 is deconstructed and uncompressed and it becomes like 50x larger than the source file. Then flac compresses this fuckhuge file down to like 1/3-1/5 of its original size. You're not recompressing the mp3 itself you're compressing an uncompressed copy of the data that the mp3 contained.
>>54579368
Used to be good, though MP3 progressed to the point it barely makes any difference between it (VBR) and lossless formats, so ussually there's no reason to store lossless.
>>54581422
>>54581465
Harpsichords are particularly difficult for MP3 because they have both sudden onset transients (codec would like to use short blocks to avoid pre-echo/time-smear) and extremely tonal content (codec would like to use long blocks to avoid spectral smear) at the same time.
All DCT codecs are going to have some kind of problem with that: it's a trade-off. Either it doesn't "ring" as much, or you can hear the "ring" slightly before the string gets plucked. As soon as you start removing DCT coefficients, either one or the other artefact will happen. Neither is perfect: but lossy codecs are never about perfect - they're about using what we know about the sound and the human auditory system to try to make intelligent choices about what artefacts we can get away with. Your ears care more about the specific frequencies in a flute or clarinet than a hi-hat or drum, in which the sudden snap onset is more important.
That doesn't mean that every codec makes perfect choices. MP3 has a particular problem with the short-block/long-block choice in general: pre-echo in maracas is another common "problem sample".
Opus does by far the best here - it can make the block-size choice on a per-frequency basis. That is an incredible step forward - probably the last incredible step forward in lossy audio codecs, because realistically we are about at end-game here and we are unlikely to be able to do much better.
Of course FLAC is perfect in this regard: it is lossless, and pays for that with much bigger files. And, outside of a very few select "problem samples" almost all audio content is transparent at, for example, LAME -V2, or Opus 160kbps.
Repeated ABX trials are the only way to scientifically know if you can tell the difference. If you fail an ABX, you can't tell. Where you can tell the difference, ABC-HR is one of the better tests to know which, of the versions which sounds different, sounds the closest to the original (useful for low bitrates).
>>54582265
Well creamed and memed my anonymouse friendo
>>54582265
i always wondered, can these graphs be converted into music?
>>54581932
Maybe not now, but in 50 years.
>>54582338
Would it be possible to make a better version of FLAC by using Opus to lossily encode the signal and then losslessly compress the difference between the original and the compressed signal?
>>54582918
Lossless TO Lossless = 1:1 Copy
Don't try to defy the math here
>>54582944
Did you try reading my post before you responded to it?
>>54582918
What you're saying sounds a lot like wavpack's "hybrid" feature
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WavPack#Hybrid_mode
>>54582918
The difference wouldn't pack at all.
>>54579375
This, rotational velodensity.
>>54579544
>you're
>>54579368
FLAC audio is identical to CD audio; there's no loss of quality. Right now, MP3 is the de facto audio format, but in the future, as technology advances, there might be a new lossy format that everyone switches to. Or maybe you buy a new phone that doesn't support your current codec. Now, you have to encode your already lossy music into another lossy format. If this happens enough times, the quality is going to get really bad (like a JPEG Facebook meme that's been saved so many times it's barely readable).
In short, lossless music is good for keeping perfect copies of your music that you can then encode to whatever you like. For instance, my collection is in FLAC but I have an Opus version for my Sandisk and an MP3 version for my phone.
Anyone who useless lossless audio in space/bandwidth-constrained situations like streaming or portable music players is a schmuck.
>>54583003
>>54583025
It sounds a lot like pretty much every modern lossless codec design out there. Even FLAC itself works by lossily compressing the data as good as possible and then coding the residual (difference) signal separately.
The question is whether Opus would make a better “core” for FLAC or not.
>>54579821
>theyre
>>54583081
And who said that we won't be able to encode lossless files in 1 MB size lossless format in the future as well?
>>54581571
>Is that all correct?
No, nothing in your post is correct nor does it even make any sense..
>>54583128
Information theory. You can only compress information so far without losing any.
>>54583128
1 megabyte means nothing without knowing the original size. Nevertheless, if a better lossless encoding technique is found, the audio can be transcoded to it without any issue, because it is lossless. Lossless means you can always reconstruct a perfect CD copy of the audio so you never need to worry if you're using the correct, One True Lossless Format.
>>54579375
ROTATIONAL VELOCIRAPTORS
>>54579368
It's literally on Wikipedia, read before asking. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_degradation#Decay_of_storage_media
>>54582339
Explain.
>>54582358
It's the other way around.
>>54583306
70 years for half bits to die, so flacs are also affected
just rewrite and you've got another 70 years m8
>>54583306
That article. That kind of articles are responsible for idiots screaming bit rot anywhere near mp3 files. S m h
>>54583306
>>54583346
>>54583395
>Magnetic media, such ashard disk drives,floppy disksandmagnetic tapes, may experience data decay as bits lose their magnetic orientation. Periodic refreshing by rewriting the data can alleviate this problem. Also, in warm and humid conditions these media, especially the ones poorly protected against aggressive air conditions, are prone to thedecompositionof the very material they are fabricated from. This issue is also caused by a phenom called "rotational velodensity"[citation needed].
Top kek
>>54583450
>>54583395
>>54583346
>>54583306
I will die sooner than my data will get corrupted by that shit. (also backups.....backups....)
>>54583450
>>54583306
I've removed the vandalism, cucks.
>>54579368
If you had good speakers you could tell the difference anon.
>>54579368
>willingly downloading one 30mb file of lossy music instead of one 30mb file of lossless music
I'm just dumping these:
http://productionadvice.co.uk/why-mp3-sounds-bad/
http://productionadvice.co.uk/if-you-cant-hear-it-it-doesnt-matter/
After working with audio myself the last 2 years, I can hear the difference between 320kpbs MP3 and FLAC myself, and I would've heard it faster if I had read this blog sooner.
>>54579368
I gave it a try a few weeks ago.
over 700mb for an album of 14 songs.
honestly now it makes perfect sense why people would want hard drives of multiple terabytes in their personal computer.
>>54579368
So that if better lossy formats come out, I can always re-encode without compounding errors in the data.
Because I like collecting high quality information.
So that I can poke around with an audio editor and check out the ultrasonic frequencies, etc for the heck of it.
Storage is cheap, so why not have the best copy?
>>54585587
>he doesn't have at least a 1tb HDD
>>54579368
archival purposes
in case i want to convert from the best copy i have to a new codec (e.g. flac to opus)
and many more reasons
>>54585628
I do have exactly that much. I thought it was pointless but now I see.
>>54579368
> 30 mb
> full HD music video
Weeeeew.
>>54585412
I agree with that, and sometimes even with decent speakers or headphones, with some experience we can tell the difference. But don’t even think it would be possible to do so with low-tiers headphones/speakers.
FLAC is useful when you want lossless audio with metadata that doesn’t take as much space as WAV does. MP3, depending on the compression rate chosen, removes some data, and in theory we can’t hear it, but it’s exactly the same story as jpg and png for pictures.
>>54585548
same here (well, four years on my side), being used listening all day long to audio sure makes our ears more sensible to what we are actually listening to.
>>54582358
technically, you can take that spectrograph and use the frequency data to re-generate the sound, although it'd be hilariously low quality
not impossible though
>>54582358
yep it’s possible, but as >>54585857 it really sounds weird. I already played a bit around creating sounds from pictures, using them as if they were the spectrogram of my sound, it’s often garbage but sometimes you can get awesome sounds you never imagined —the best one I ever got was from the signature of an artist on their artwork.
>>54585548
>http://productionadvice.co.uk/why-mp3-sounds-bad/
>doesn't do a double blind test
>uses "feeling" and "moves me"
He's retarded. This is literally idiot audiophile speak.
Knowing anything about what you're listening to will color it severely.
>http://productionadvice.co.uk/if-you-cant-hear-it-it-doesnt-matter/
on the other hand, he does give good advice here on the importance of what you're using, there's a bunch of people who will happily use those $9 earbuds they got on Amazon to try to really master audio with, even though the headphones are massively, wildly altering the sound since they weren't designed to be monitors
and trying to use a lossy audio source in production is a miserable, awful idea
>>54585591
As for OP, this is the right answer.
What's the point of making a thread about pretending to be retarded
>>54579368
>music video
>listening to music for which a "music video" even exists
>UNIRONICALLY
>>54581422
because MP3(and also AAC, OGG, etc) are tuned for pop music, not classical.
>>54579368
>What is the point of lossless music?
To play it on my 16 GB smartphone.
>>54579368
>HD music video
>30mb
I don't think so Tim. I have SD .avi music videos that are larger than 30 fucking megabytes, son.
I use flac because why not have the perfect version of your music? The amount of space it uses over lossy formats is insignificant.
>>54580031
Kek
>>54588132
What is hevc?
A 40 min video is 250mb in 720p, grandpa.
>>54579368
>What is the point of lossless music?
duh, you can't lose it
>>54579368
Lossy files tend to lose quality over time.
