in this case the flac files will not be lossless O___O

here's what happened, be ready to loose your socks off cause this gets HILARIOUS (if you know anything about audio that is)

i purchased a digital album on CDBABY.com and they advertised FLAC files...i was suspicious so i checked with my software LOSSLESS AUDIO CHECKER and SPECTRO to find out the FLAC was a mere MP3 file turned into a FLAC...
here is the FLAC spectrum with the MP3 ver on the side... if the spectrum doesn't go near 22KHz then it's not lossless audio...



so i complained and here's the response i get:

Thank you for contacting us and I am sorry to hear of the trouble.
Here at CD Baby we are an independent music distributor, and whatever audio the artist provides to us is what we use for our store. We ask our artists to upload high quality WAV or FLAC but some upload MP3s, which we have no control over. In these cases the FLAC will not be lossless, but we are happy to offer a refund if you are unhappy with the audio quality. I have done the refund in the PayPal dispute but here is the refund transaction ID as well: 99N759413C4663533
You should see this refund appear in your paypal account as soon as paypal closes the dispute.
Thank you,
Crystal S
CD Baby Artist Services

yea i got my money back but read between the lines what they're actually saying....
it turns out i actually contacted the artist himself Henry Lai and here's what he said :





...


do you get it?
they even had the audacity to tell me that "in this case the FLAC file won't be lossless" ...i facepalmed and laughed my socks off so hard...

FUCK YOU CDBABY...fuck this E-scam

Actually when you encode something into a file it will always lose data during the conversion. The codecs basically scripts that changes the structure of the file. Most commonly these are compressing the images and audios compared to the stream.

The Flac is the same. It is a compressed audiofile much like the Ogg or MP3, but can handle much more data per second. The WAVE is an uncompressed audiofile but still lose some data compared to the stream itself.

No matter which codec you will use, the file will be lossy in the term of data quantity and quality. The true lossless audio sources are the direct PCM and DSD. The audio CDs use only these two (the PCM is more common, while the DSD the better).

However when something is lossy it not mean it is bad. When you use the basic output settings (44-48 KHz, 1,5 Mbps) these losses can't be detected. If you increase the output the music will start losing from its quality and will start fucking your ears. XD

Endymion wrote:Actually when you encode something into a file it will always lose data during the conversion. The codecs basically scripts that changes the structure of the file. Most commonly these are compressing the images and audios compared to the stream.

The Flac is the same. It is a compressed audiofile much like the Ogg or MP3, but can handle much more data per second. The WAVE is an uncompressed audiofile but still lose some data compared to the stream itself.

No matter which codec you will use, the file will be lossy in the term of data quantity and quality. The true lossless audio sources are the direct PCM and DSD. The audio CDs use only these two (the PCM is more common, while the DSD the better).

However when something is lossy it not mean it is bad. When you use the basic output settings (44-48 KHz, 1,5 Mbps) these losses can't be detected. If you increase the output the music will start losing from its quality and will start fucking your ears. XD

here was the image i made, it didn't work for some reason


you're wrong, FLAC, APE and ALAC are all LOSSLESS compression algorithm, they read as wav during playback in real time, this is why you save little space compared to mp3/ogg/m4a and all...  those would be lossy formats, aka removing some frequencies in order to save space.


FLAC is just a container, a zip/rar file for music if you will, it contains the same information bit per bit as the WAV file, you can convert wav to flac and that same flac to wav again and you would get the SAME exact file. there would be no loss.

i did my research, im an audiophile without the equipment, and my grandpa is a music collectors, mostly vinyls, but he knows a thing or two as well.

You're wrong. Anytime you compress, it always make data loss because of the less possible options. For example the "storing" type zip method cause 0,0007% data loss. The Flac is about 0,09 data loss compared to a CD stream. Comparing the audio CD to the original PCM is about 0,0007% again as they save on the disc. The "real life" sound contains about two times as many data as the best microphone can handle.

The Flac is lossless because they say it. Convert a WAV to Flac, and then compare the frames. There will be less frame with 1 in ever 12000 frame. And this is just WAV, a file with less data than an actual CD quality music. If you convert back, it will be the exact same as the Flac but with more data writed on the frames. The more data comes from the fact: every string now are unique and not produced through algorithm.

When you convert something into something it is a re-encoding process. It will be faster than a real time encoding, but work in the same way. The inputs will be read, and the output will be writed from the algorithm generated data.

your talk got too technical for me, but if understand correctly you're saying even though it's supposed to be lossless there are still minor losses of data during the converting ?

isn't the whole point of using non-analog technology to reproduce the bit perfect copying task?

i tried searching for other people saying flac isn't lossless
http://taperssection.com/index.php?topic=141327.0
but really their saying as long as the md5 hash is the same then the file is intact

i'm not sure i understand what you're saying sorry... don't get upset over this lol it doesn't really matter,
i just think it makes sense than a lossless compression reconstitutes a bit perfect copy; that's the whole point isn't?

The point is to be perfect, or at least believe it is perfect. Even the MP3 is perfect because that is the limit of a standard speaker. But yes, I mean there can't be produced perfect and lossless format. Even ifyou just copy a wav, that will generate dataloss. The hash do nothing with the caused loss, since the structure was rearranged by the very same device what created the hash. If the changes are minimal, the hash can be the same.


A life-like example: you pour water into a ball shaped cup. Now you get a cube shaped cup which has less diameter but has the same capacity. You pour the water into that cup. Now you can pack it easier. You can see that the other cup has some water inside, that is loss.


However you know exectly what is that loss. You can pour some new water inside the new cup, and will have the same 'amount'. But that will not be the same 'thing' as it was before, and has less information too.


I know this last line is strage. I mean, now that water isn't capable to describe the whole's origin.

ok, now i understand what you mean, and again you're wrong,

copying information is one of he basic computer tasks, any files is made of bianry numbers: 1 and 0s, unlike pouring water, these are not molecules, but 1 and 0, everthing even audio (digitized) is just 1 and zeros, copying a files has absolutely 0 loss because you're getting what's called a "bit perfect" copy

someone in this thread said;
http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/1233823-Does-copying-video-files-affect-quality

What he/she meant was that it equates to rendering. No change is made to the file when copied. If bits are lost, your computer automatically detects and corrects it behind the scenes. If something goes horribly wrong, you still have the original and can try the copy again.

The poster wasn't flat out wrong about what they were talking about, but what they were talking about had nothing to do with what OP was asking.

TLDR: You do not lose data when copying, only compressing/transcoding with certain formats.

you can copy a file a billion times over, look at the numer of bytes it has: same.

If you talk about bit perfect things, than the Flac is everything just not bit perfect. When you copy something, the machine isn't copying the 0 and 1 from the files, but uses algorithms. If you convert, it uses an even more complex algorithm. Comparing a Flac to a WAV there will be around 100000 bit differences if you convert back to wav.

When they say something is lossless, they mean it has extremely minimal data loss.

And just for a comparison, the Flac is four times more accurate than an MP3 at its best, and only two times as an Ogg when the Ogg use HQ. The wav is about 1,15 times more accurate than a Flac. Of course this is with the same file properities.

mmmok i not sure if that's true, but i get what you're saying, it's interesting, i never thought lossless wasn't actually 100% flawless .

what you say makes sense in your logic, i can't argue with it, i have neither the will nor the required knowledge.


you win XD

There is always two viewpoint. One if for human sense, and one for program-side. For us the music is flawless. You can increase the volume to +100 db and will not creak. For the program it is nowhere near perfect, the binary strings will be as much chaoitic as a concert. XD


I use Flac too, because it is good for my edits. And besides my computer is way too weak for a 24 MHz DSD. XD