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Post by taxman2 on Aug 14, 2015 6:32:48 GMT -5
Hi everyone!
I am trying to solve a dilemma. Compressed or uncompressed flac files. I find a very subtle difference in SQ between uncompressed and normal compressed flac files. What bothers me more is the bit rate. I am using Adirvana Plus and the bit rate is different for compressed and uncompressed files. For example (normal compression - from 422 to 1014 kbps, while no compression - 1414 kbps) Does the compression affect the SQ in a way? I will be more than grateful if you could share some thoughts and experience here. Thank you in advance!
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Post by garym on Aug 14, 2015 9:21:04 GMT -5
The low bit rate you're seeing is for the compressed stream. Before a FLAC file is converted to analog it is uncompressed, and will be a bit-perfect copy of the original file, just like a ZIP file.
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KeithL
Administrator 
Posts: 9,958
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Post by KeithL on Aug 14, 2015 10:27:32 GMT -5
Exactly - the bits are the same (FLAC is lossless) - and, as long as nothing goes wrong, they should sound exactly the same. The only reason for them to sound different would be if the player program or computer itself had trouble processing one or the other (and actually was dropping bits occasionally or introducing a lot of jitter into the data). However, this can "go both ways". Some players with underpowered processors may actually produce occasional errors when uncompressing compressed FLAC files, or may actually even drop out every now and then if they simply can't keep up with the processing power required to do so. However, I've also seen at least one network-based player that had trouble with UNCOMPRESSED files.... because, in its particular case, the bottleneck was it's ability to handle network bandwidth, and so the larger amount of bandwidth required by the larger uncompressed FLAC file would cause IT to have occasional dropouts. The low bit rate you're seeing is for the compressed stream. Before a FLAC file is converted to analog it is uncompressed, and will be a bit-perfect copy of the original file, just like a ZIP file. |
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Post by drtrey3 on Aug 14, 2015 12:38:47 GMT -5
There was a long and somewhat controversial series in The Absolute Sound that supported compressed, even lossless compressed files sounding a smidge inferior to those without compression. With my ears, on my system, I do not hear a diff. But then, it looks like you have some wonderful speakers!
Trey
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Post by garbulky on Aug 14, 2015 12:51:25 GMT -5
The good news is that you can go compressed and if you don't like it you can uncompress them later  But with storage space the way it is, you can always go uncompressed. |
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Post by taxman2 on Aug 15, 2015 4:27:57 GMT -5
Thank you all! For all I understand - compressed or not the SQ remains the same, only the size is different. The player uses more processing to uncompress the flac files rather than playing directly uncompressed flac files.
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Post by taxman2 on Aug 15, 2015 4:33:19 GMT -5
By the way, do you think there will be any difference I set the player to resample 16b-44.1 kHz flac to 32b-352.8 kHz?
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Post by garym on Aug 15, 2015 9:04:54 GMT -5
By the way, do you think there will be any difference I set the player to resample 16b-44.1 kHz flac to 32b-352.8 kHz? Yes. You'll get more noise. If the source is 44.1/16, that's all the audio information there is in the file. Upsampling it won't add any. |
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Post by garbulky on Aug 15, 2015 9:06:35 GMT -5
I don't think there should be a difference. But for some reason when I set mine to upsample to 24 bit audio I felt very slightly like the sound was just the teeny bit better. But honestly, that could be a simple mistake. Too subtle to tell imo. Anyway, the difference was 16 bit to 24 bit NOT going from 44.1 to 192. I felt that didn't help anything.
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Post by Priapulus on Aug 15, 2015 9:44:49 GMT -5
With the huge, compact, ridiculously cheap storage available, why would anyone use anything other than the best quality, non-compressed, commonly available format available? Even cell phones have fantastic storage and bandwidth.
Sincerely
/b
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Post by garbulky on Aug 15, 2015 10:31:28 GMT -5
Priapulus My 3/4 TB desperately needs updating but all my funds are budgetted towards my audio upgrade.
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Post by qdtjni on Aug 15, 2015 11:25:47 GMT -5
With the huge, compact, ridiculously cheap storage available, why would anyone use anything other than the best quality, non-compressed, commonly available format available? Even cell phones have fantastic storage and bandwidth. Sincerely /b Since there is is no loss of sound quality when using proper players with lossless formats such as FLAC & ALAC, compression helps saving bandwidth and storage. When you have enough ripped CDs & downloaded music, more and more in higher, storage including backup and to some extent bandwidth become a problem or a least hassle otherwise. 10k CDs will use roughly 6 TB uncompressed and around 2 TB with normal FLAC compression. If you just want to store it once and one place, it's not much of a problem but if you want to back it up, re-index it, copy some of it to your car, smart, home, etc.. it get's more and more complicated. With 192 kHz 24 bit highres it gets 10 fold worse. 2k albums would require 12 TB if uncompressed. For bandwidth at home when using ethernet it's not su much of an issue but when using WLAN, but imagine what happens if you play high res uncompressed music from a your NAS at the same time as your wife watches some highres movie and your kids also plays highres music, each of them different music, some of your computers, tablets & smart phones downloads updates, etc. All of a sudden, you do have bandwidth problems. |
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Post by garbulky on Aug 15, 2015 11:36:29 GMT -5
With the huge, compact, ridiculously cheap storage available, why would anyone use anything other than the best quality, non-compressed, commonly available format available? Even cell phones have fantastic storage and bandwidth. Sincerely /b Since there is is no loss of sound quality when using proper players with lossless formats such as FLAC & ALAC, compression helps saving bandwidth and storage. When you have enough ripped CDs & downloaded music, more and more in higher, storage including backup and to some extent bandwidth become a problem or a least hassle otherwise. 10k CDs will use roughly 6 TB uncompressed and around 2 TB with normal FLAC compression. If you just want to store it once and one place, it's not much of a problem but if you want to back it up, re-index it, copy some of it to your car, smart, home, etc.. it get's more and more complicated. With 192 kHz 24 bit highres it gets 10 fold worse. 2k albums would require 12 TB if uncompressed. For bandwidth at home when using ethernet it's not su much of an issue but when using WLAN, but imagine what happens if you play high res uncompressed music from a your NAS at the same time as your wife watches some highres movie and your kids also plays highres music, each of them different music, some of your computers, tablets & smart phones downloads updates, etc. All of a sudden, you do have bandwidth problems. Well in practice you don't really have bandwidth problems even when you are doing all of this on wifi. However the individual machines may have trouble if the connection speed is low due to poor reception. |
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Post by qdtjni on Aug 15, 2015 12:01:23 GMT -5
Well in practice you don't really have bandwidth problems even when you are doing all of this on wifi. However the individual machines may have trouble if the connection speed is low due to poor reception. Multiple streams of high res content combined with normal network traffic such as backups, update downloads, etc, easily exhaust most home WLAN's practical sustained bandwidth. |
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Post by Priapulus on Aug 15, 2015 12:03:21 GMT -5
With the huge, compact, ridiculously cheap storage available, why would anyone use anything other than the best quality, non-compressed, commonly available format available? Even cell phones have fantastic storage and bandwidth. Sincerely /b All of a sudden, you do have bandwidth problems. Drives have gotten so cheap, that I don't even bother networking music. I just put a 2tb drive (now 4tb) on each machine that plays music. That also gives me multi-redundant backup. Networks are being furiously upgraded to stream 4k video; because the ISP's want a piece of the action. If you already have network problems at home, it's time to trade up from your Tandy 80. For the price of a couple of drinks you can buy a new router. Sincerely /b |
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Post by qdtjni on Aug 15, 2015 12:12:33 GMT -5
All of a sudden, you do have bandwidth problems. Drives have gotten so cheap, that I don't even bother networking music. I just put a 2tb drive (now 4tb) on each machine that plays music. That also gives me multi-redundant backup. Networks are being built to stream 4k video; that is the future. If you have network problems at home, it's time to trade up from your Tandy 80. For the price of a couple of drinks you can buy a new router. Sincerely /b Nice selective quoting there.  If you can't fit all your music into one drive and don't mind manually copying it to every new device that needs access to it, fine. I can't, my music collection is not that small. So I rely on my network and NAS and Internet connection for my. FYI, I my network is fine and the streaming 4K content is always compressed. Why the latter? Have a wild guess!  EDIT: My home network is faster than my Internet connection, emotivalounge.proboards.com/post/738982 |
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Post by Boomzilla on Aug 15, 2015 12:53:45 GMT -5
Hi taxman2 - IS there a difference between uncompressed & compressed audio files? If it's lossy compression, then probably yes. If the comparison is between LOSSLESS compressed & uncompressed, it depends on who you ask. Some (including 'The Absolute Sound" magazine) claim that the compression/decompression sequence damages the sound. The majority of critical listeners (including the majority on this Lounge), claim that any such artifacts are not measurable, and thus, inaudible. There is (as of yet) no definitive answer on that question. My take is the same as many have previously stated in this thread. Since storage is such an economic bargain, why bother with compression at all? I store in WAV format, and like the sound just fine. I previously stored in ALE (Apple Lossless Encoding). I did hear a sound quality improvement when I converted the ALE files to WAV. Why? I don't know. Maybe JRiver (which I use to play WAV files) did a better job than iTunes (which I used to play ALE files). Maybe not... Nevertheless, I heard differences. Others don't - so there! LOL In any case, I'm happy with WAV files, and don't plan to change. And as always - I could be wrong... Boomzilla |
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Post by qdtjni on Aug 15, 2015 13:14:31 GMT -5
If one insist on storing non compressed, at least use a format that supports tags for meta data.
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Post by qdtjni on Aug 15, 2015 13:18:57 GMT -5
By the way, do you think there will be any difference I set the player to resample 16b-44.1 kHz flac to 32b-352.8 kHz? You can't add any information so but it could sound identical, better or worse, depending on how filters are implemented in the DAC you're using. |
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Post by Boomzilla on Aug 15, 2015 13:29:54 GMT -5
If one insist on storing non compressed, at least use a format that supports tags for meta data. That goes back to the "Does FLAC sound worse than WAV?" question. TAS claims yes. The rest of the world says no. Without doing level-matched blind testing I couldn't say definitively, but since cover art is readily restorable from the internet, I vote to be prudent & avoid any unnecessary encoding/decoding at all. YMMV |
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But with storage space the way it is, you can always go uncompressed. 
