this post was submitted on 15 Dec 2024
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When people are way too smug about their wrong answer.
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do you know if anyone has tried this with a flac and an mp3 file? Theoretically all that should be left is the "loss" right? what would that sound like?
eta: I'd try myself but I'm not an audiophile and wouldn't even know where to get a flac file (legally) and doubt my crappy $20 in ears would be capable of playing it back if I did
Not a FLAC, but I tried it on this video by reencoding to an mp3 at 320 kbps, then subtracting the original, amplified it a bit, and got this. The song is definitely recognizable, but heavily distorted.
The end result sounds awesome. I would totally listen to that on its own.
you wouldn't need a flac file, you can use any wav file, the audio of both is identical.
regadring your question, you can think mp3 as the jpeg of music. both mp3 and jpeg use fourier transforms*. so, to image what mp3 is doing to the audio, you can see what jpeg does to images (spoiler alert, unless you are aggressively compressing it, it is not noticable)
(*jpeg actually use discrete cosine transform instead of fft, but it is similiar enough)
This is why I always use PNG
Another place is bandcamp. When you buy music from there you can choose the encoding.
I generally download FLACs when I can; after building an mp3 library, then adding oggs, and most recently opus, I value having a source that I can transcode into whatever new, improved codec takes the lead every few years. However, you have to be prepared for the size requirements. FLACs are still pretty big: I recently bought Heilung's "Drif", and the FLAC archive was nearly 650MB. Granted, it's bigger than usual; the average album comes in around 400MB, but still... you have to commit to find sizeable long-term storage if you keep those sources, and off-site, cloud backup can get pricey. Or, you can trust that where you buy it from will provide downloads of your purchases indefinitely.
If you want free, legal FLAC files just to play with, this Zelda fan music album is free and legal to download in FLAC format (you do need to torrent the FLAC version, yes legal torrents exist).
It also has some good tracks in it IMO.
Legal torrents, such as Linux ISOs ;)
If you own the music, you are allowed to own a backup of it in FLAC (or any format).
I've tried myself, and the "loss" is really not that much. You can see it if you zoom, but if you listen to it you can't make out the track it comes from. It sounds more like noise. That was at least on the track I tried this with, maybe in a less compressable track there is more of a difference.
Did you mess around with compressing it yourself at all? Like, if you "deep fried" it, would the difference be recognizable?
If any youtube/peertube creators are reading, I'd click that video...
HDTracks.com sells DRM free albums in FLAC format
Bandcamp too sometimes
I did it once a few years ago (IIRC with a copy of Falling Down by Muse, not for any particular reason), and compared V0 320 with FLAC.
After amplifying the tiny, tiny wiggle of a sound that was left, I was left with very slight thin echoes, mostly well above 10k.
The sort of stuff you really wouldn't worry about, unless you 100% wanted bit-perfect reproduction, or wanted to justify a £2000 pair of headphones.
Funnily enough, that was the point I stopped bothering to load FLAC onto my DAC, and just mirror everything into V0 for portable use.
Yeah, I think the difference between a FLAC and v0/320kbps is negligible.
However, the difference between a 128kbps mp3 and a v0/320kbps mp3 is massive and absolutely noticeable (and yes, it becomes more noticeable on higher quality equipment). Anything under 192kbps (or maybe 160), and you start to get noticeable degredation imo.
If anyone wants to claim that one cannot tell the difference between 128kbps and 320kbps, I'd take a blind listening test right now.
Like noise, more or less, but at frequencies that are hard to hear.
BandCamp offers FLAC downloads. There are some other sites that do too, like Quobuz and I think some Japanese ones. Soundtracks I’ve bought via Steam sometimes come in FLAC too.
You can also rip a CD.
The easiest free way I know to get a FLAC file legally is to go to your local library, borrow a CD, and rip it to your home PC direct to FLAC. You'll have to deal with the fact that your ODD might introduce some noise, but it'll be the same noise as playing it from that same drive. Then rip the same disc to MP3.
Yes, WAV is in the middle both times, but that's how you can get a FLAC file to compare legally.
The noise of the optical disc drive? I, erm, that's not how digital data works.
More to the point, the easiest way to get a FLAC file would be to record some audio in Audacity (or equivalent) and then output it as FLAC.
Fair, but the recording method comes down to microphone quality; I'm trying to go from a known good recording with something that can/will be lost in the MP3 transition.
The problem with your noise point is, I've used ODDs with less-than-impeccable lasers (either laser itself or the housing). I've had discs ripped with minor audio corruptions - I've always called that 'noise' because it's not the desired signal (and it can create literal random noise in the recording). Maybe there's a better term for it, but simply put, not all drives are perfect, not all lasers are perfect, and there is a possibility of imperfect copying. It's just a fact of life. Just like sometimes you might burn a frisbee, there's times you don't get a 100% clean rip.
Data corruption is one thing, but calling it "noise" is tremendously misleading because that's such an issue when digitising from an analogue source. I can't say I've ever experienced it due to the drive, but I have experienced it with scratched CDs. I've been using optical drives since the '90s and it's so rare that bringing it up is really muddying the waters.
With regards to sourcing audio, the emphasis was on "easiest". Most people haven't had optical drives in their computers in a long time. Ultimately they'd probably be better off finding something on Wikimedia in PCM as their "known good". Ripping audio isn't difficult for you and me but we're clearly nerdier than most!
Scratched discs are definitely a big problem, but I've had some bad drives in my time, where even good discs would get issues. I don't really have a better shorthand for the issue that's more descriptive than noise.
And you're right, I just tend to assume a very high level of nerdiness of anyone on lemmy/kbin/mbin.
Whilst it's a fair assumption usually, I think that the fact that they had to ask is indicative.
As for "noise", what's wrong with "data corruption"? A noisy recording and a corrupt recording sound nothing alike.
I think it is easier to download a test sample from a music label or any creative commons music released in flac. I can do it right now without standing up. For example.
lol, I don't even own an optical drive anymore. I'm 100% streaming these days. It looks like from other comments there are places to buy FLAC files directly (which I'd hope would be decent quality)
It's all academic though, I'm not really interested in becoming an audiophile. Streaming quality is fine for my needs.
Fair enough! But at least you know there's a method in case it comes up. Also, I suggest you get a CD/DVD-RW drive, and BD-RW drive, just on principle - and use your local library for media! Your tax dollars pay for it, so you ought to get that value back!