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71
FLAC / Re: EAC. why different bitrates when I use Flac and therefore lossless?
Last post by Sunhillow -
but I understand perfectly what you are saying. I'm just telling you that the Internet is full of articles that say the opposite :)
hydrogenaudio also is "internet". It is full of articles that say exactly what has been tried to teach you.

If the issue was just compression, well EAC wouldn't leave the bitrate option active when you set the flac, Google wouldn't recommend using high bitrates for flac, as I posted and there wouldn't be so many articles from people saying that it doesn't all data is extracted and therefore it is necessary to use high bitrates.
It is impossible to set a fixed bitrate for lossless compression, be it zip, 7zip, flac, tak, ape etc.
The result fully depends on the complexity of the source. If eac lets you choose a bitrate for flac, this is wrong and should be fixed.
72
FLAC / Re: EAC. why different bitrates when I use Flac and therefore lossless?
Last post by LauraQ -
You are still clearly confused. Think of a 'zip' file. You zip data - text, images, etc, and you end up with a much smaller file. It has been compressed. When you unzip the file you get back exactly what you started with - it was compressed losslessly. Because of the nature of audio data, standard 'zip' file techniques do not work, they compress very little. FLAC, WavPack, Monkeys Audio, and others, are able to analyse the audio data and compress it without losing any of it. In terms of quality, the quoted bitrate of these compressed files has no meaning. If you decompress a FLAC, WavPack, etc, file you will get back exactly the same audio data that you started with. If you play a wav file, a FLAC file, etc, in a digital audio player such as foobar2000, you will hear exactly the same output. What you say regarding "only those that are considered audible" is effectively how techniques like mp3 work. These are 'lossy' formats. The audio data is analysed, very often with the use of a 'psychoacoustic model', which mimics how we hear sounds, and discards parts of the 'total' sound that it considers the listener won't miss. In this case bitrate is quite critical as it determines how much of the original audio data has been discarded.

I hope the above helps clarify things for you.

but I understand perfectly what you are saying. I'm just telling you that the Internet is full of articles that say the opposite :)

If the issue was just compression, well EAC wouldn't leave the bitrate option active when you set the flac, Google wouldn't recommend using high bitrates for flac, as I posted and there wouldn't be so many articles from people saying that it doesn't all data is extracted and therefore it is necessary to use high bitrates.
73
FLAC / Re: EAC. why different bitrates when I use Flac and therefore lossless?
Last post by .halverhahn -
I was looking at the EAC settings and I didn't realize that I had set the bitrate to 896. Now I put it at 1024 which, by the way, is not the 1.411 I was talking about.
The bitrate setting in EAC has no effect to the FLAC compression - this is just for calculating/showing the estimated size of the compressed file. Check it out and set it to 32k - you will see the saved track has the same size as for 1024k.

FLAC is like ZIP - it compress losslessly. The FLAC compression settings (-0 to -8) just control the computing effort and therefore the resulting size of the compressd file - its NOT the quality - its still lossless like ZIP. The decompressed file is exactly the same as the input file - thats the way how ZIP and FLAC work.

The 1.411k is the original uncompressed bitrate on the CD. FLAC will compress it as good as possible.

The compression setting -0 is fast and give you larger file compared to -8. The setting -8 takes longer to compute and the file will be smaller. Decompressed still exactly (100%) the same as the original.
74
FLAC / Re: EAC. why different bitrates when I use Flac and therefore lossless?
Last post by john33 -
You are still clearly confused. Think of a 'zip' file. You zip data - text, images, etc, and you end up with a much smaller file. It has been compressed. When you unzip the file you get back exactly what you started with - it was compressed losslessly. Because of the nature of audio data, standard 'zip' file techniques do not work, they compress very little. FLAC, WavPack, Monkeys Audio, and others, are able to analyse the audio data and compress it without losing any of it. In terms of quality, the quoted bitrate of these compressed files has no meaning. If you decompress a FLAC, WavPack, etc, file you will get back exactly the same audio data that you started with. If you play a wav file, a FLAC file, etc, in a digital audio player such as foobar2000, you will hear exactly the same output. What you say regarding "only those that are considered audible" is effectively how techniques like mp3 work. These are 'lossy' formats. The audio data is analysed, very often with the use of a 'psychoacoustic model', which mimics how we hear sounds, and discards parts of the 'total' sound that it considers the listener won't miss. In this case bitrate is quite critical as it determines how much of the original audio data has been discarded.

I hope the above helps clarify things for you.
75
FLAC / Re: EAC. why different bitrates when I use Flac and therefore lossless?
Last post by Sunhillow -
this clashes with the concept of Lossless.

Please do a simple test. Take a text file, zip it and then take a jpg file and zip it. One of them will achieve a much greater compression ratio than the others, but after unzipping them they will both be exactly the same as before. The same happens with flac. Flac does never throw away any information, no matter what the resulting bitrate will be.
76
FLAC / Re: EAC. why different bitrates when I use Flac and therefore lossless?
Last post by Porcus -
I was looking at the EAC settings and I didn't realize that I had set the bitrate to
We have already - more than once - tried to educate you to ignore that when you let EAC encode to FLAC.

tells me that you can decide how much data to extract from the CD
We have already tried to educate you that this is now how it works when you let EAC encode to FLAC.

I suggest you set EAC to write to WAVE instead. Inconvenient for you, but better for those who have volunteered to try to make you wiser. I give up.
77
FLAC / Re: EAC. why different bitrates when I use Flac and therefore lossless?
Last post by LauraQ -
I was looking at the EAC settings and I didn't realize that I had set the bitrate to 896. Now I put it at 1024 which, by the way, is not the 1.411 I was talking about. And the fact that there is a Bitrate item to be set in EAC, even though I have set User Defined encoder and put the flac and the Bitrate item is active, tells me that you can decide how much data to extract from the CD and this clashes with the concept of Lossless.
But sorry, I see many articles by people who discuss what the human ear can perceive and therefore high bitrates must be used, the EAC options allow it, Google recommends using bitrates and you all tell me that it's not necessary.
I'm confused because everything I find online tells me one thing and you here (who are very expert and very kind obviously) tell me the opposite
79
FLAC / Re: EAC. why different bitrates when I use Flac and therefore lossless?
Last post by LauraQ -
"values aren't very useful in the FLAC command-line options."
I don't think there's much clarity on the subject :)
There's a reason I hid that behind a spoiler.
%bitrate% is a placeholder that can be used to transfer a selected value from 'Bit rate' to the command-line.
'Bit rate' values are a set of fixed numbers ranging from 32 to 1024.
In the FLAC command-line options you're using -8 (available values for that parameter are -0 through -8).
Values that are fixed numbers ranging from 32 to 1024 aren't very useful when the only numbers you can use are 0-8.

therefore it is not true that all the data are extracted but only those that are considered audible. But I see many articles that talk about the importance of having the highest bitrate because it is not clear what and how much the human ear can perceive. This is why we talk about bitrate. If all this were not going on, no one would have talked about it. We would only be talking about a complete copy of data to which you can decide whether to compress it more or less
80
3rd Party Plugins - (fb2k) / Re: Playlist-Manager-SMP
Last post by regor -
Well, I also added the chars to the properties. So in any case they can be edited there if desired. Will not add another menu for that though.

I created a menu to switch these status icons: loaded, active and playing playlist.

Looking at the colors, there are some inconsistencies, since the top toolbar uses the standard text color (the same than playlist files without an specific color). So I will add a new setting for the top toolbar and another one only for standard playlist files. Therefore the icons , which use the standard text color would also be configurable without affecting the rest.