Skip to main content

Notice

Please note that most of the software linked on this forum is likely to be safe to use. If you are unsure, feel free to ask in the relevant topics, or send a private message to an administrator or moderator. To help curb the problems of false positives, or in the event that you do find actual malware, you can contribute through the article linked here.
Topic: How the beeep do I make LossyWAV-files easy. (Read 9032 times) previous topic - next topic
0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

How the beeep do I make LossyWAV-files easy.

Hi

First of all I’m brand new here, so hello everybody 

I’m no alien to computers, software or encoding to MP3 files, but I wonder if there’s an easy way to make LossyWAV-files. My wife and my son both have cars with a very integrated stereo, stereo that can’t play compressed files, my own car and the rest of our equipment eats formats like MP3.

If I understand the LossyWAV format correctly, it goes in normal CD-players just like ordinary WAV-files. I tried to convert a 16 bit 44.1 KHz WAV to 16 bit 32 KHz, that works in the cars but don’t save that much space on the CD’s.

I understand that much, from reading about it, that LossyWAV has to be combined with something else, like FLAC for example.

So far I’ve tried:

GermaniX Transcoder 8.5.12.610 that gets: a 37.2 MB FLAC, and a 15.7 MB FLAC when LossyWAV Plugin is chosen as Preprocessor 1. That seems right, but how do I a dot WAV-file from that, as expected just renaming the file don’t work.

xrecode II 1.0.0.199 portable version: that I’m not sure how to use at all, but if I choose RAW I there is an option where I can choose external (lossyWAV.exe). When I doo that and press “Test” under configuration, it just tells me that the configuration is wrong.

%lossyWAV Error% : No input file given.
Processen forsgte at skrive til en pipe, som ikke findes. (translated, the process tried to write to a pipe thet dosen’t excist.)

So I might be able to find out what has to be changed, I didn’t change anything.

Foobar2000 1.2.3 portable installation: Seems like xrecode II to need a lot of configuration, but if this is the easiest way I have to, but hoped for easier solutions like many other formats.

It’s my plan to try CUEtools and EAC too, and others if they can make LossyWAV, but I haven’t found other software that seems to do the trick.

Best regards DanishDude

How the beeep do I make LossyWAV-files easy.

Reply #1
On CD (as CDDA), lossyWAV will save you no space whatsoever. lossyWAV only saves space when compressed with a lossless codec which takes advantage of wasted bits.

Other than using the command line, my tool of choice is foobar2000 using one of the transcoding presets available in the wiki.
lossyWAV -q X -a 4 -s h -A --feedback 2 --limit 15848 --scale 0.5 | FLAC -5 -e -p -b 512 -P=4096 -S- (having set foobar to output 24-bit PCM; scaling by 0.5 gives the ANS headroom to work)

How the beeep do I make LossyWAV-files easy.

Reply #2
GermaniX Transcoder 8.5.12.610 that gets: a 37.2 MB FLAC, and a 15.7 MB FLAC when LossyWAV Plugin is chosen as Preprocessor 1. That seems right, but how do I a dot WAV-file from that, as expected just renaming the file don’t work.


Foobar, sox, or most any program used to convert wav to flac should be able to convert the other way too.  Lossywav/flac only has an advantage in that storing the file takes less space than a plain flac file..  Once you convert back to wav or CD  (or to mp3 for that matter) there is no space advantage in the final product.

How the beeep do I make LossyWAV-files easy.

Reply #3
Hi Nick

Got the first one, the LossyWAV is preparing the file for treatment with a loosless codec. I haven’t read everything about LossyWAV, but I did read a lot and sometimes al this reading confuses, more than it enlightens. In my attempt with GermaniX Transcode everything looked right, to my untrained eye, my problem was to get the file-ext. needed. I’ll try to move on with foobar2000 in the nearest future, to see if that gives me the result I hope for.

The whole thing began, because the wife and son has a bunch of CD’s lying all over there cars. That’s why I decided to start all over again, re-ripping the whole collection with EAC and encode all files to different formats and quality. The plan is small size for portable and quality for the living room in MP3 and LosstWAV. The old collection is MP3 128 CBR made with Audiograbber and an older LAME, so I can get both smaller files and/or better quality now.

Thanks!
Best regards DanishDude

How the beeep do I make LossyWAV-files easy.

Reply #4
OK, you want to re-rip your CDs. Do that the right way, using an AccurateRip-aware application (EAC/dBpoweramp/CUETools), and you have a lot of folders and files type
Artist [year] ¨ Albumname\Artist [year] ¨ Albumname ¨ Tracknumber ¨ Songname.losslessfileformatsuffix

So what do about them.

- Keep the losslesses, with a backup. And likely you may playback from those for the living room if you are using computer (if you are using a portable device/phone, see next).

- You want a smaller files? If you want to use LossyWAV, you have to [possible reservation at the bottom in case some tech-savvy user corrects me] use a supported lossless format to exploit the size reduction. Is it worth it? Me for one would certainly not have two FLAC files with the same name and different content. I would just transcode to AAC/MP3/OGG/whatever . (Why choose LossyWAV at all? It does not have any of the advantages of psychoacoustic models, but decoding FLAC is extremely fast and it could very well be that it outweighs the additional I/O (from larger files) in terms of e.g. battery usage.)



... anyone: the WAV container does not allow for any linear PCM wordlength between 8 and 16 bits? Or if it does, will any portable device support it?

How the beeep do I make LossyWAV-files easy.

Reply #5
... anyone: the WAV container does not allow for any linear PCM wordlength between 8 and 16 bits? Or if it does, will any portable device support it?

PCM samples shall be byte aligned in the WAV container.
Therefore, 12bit PCM shall be stored in the same layout as 16bit PCM (4bits on LSB being zeroes), and just declared as 12bit in the extensible header. In other words, it's useless for file size reduction.

How the beeep do I make LossyWAV-files easy.

Reply #6
- You want a smaller files? If you want to use LossyWAV, you have to [possible reservation at the bottom in case some tech-savvy user corrects me] use a supported lossless format to exploit the size reduction. Is it worth it? Me for one would certainly not have two FLAC files with the same name and different content.


On the name front I've read (and set the conversion up for it) to insert "lossy" into the file name, like "11 Goat Rodeo.lossy.flac"

Quote
I would just transcode to AAC/MP3/OGG/whatever . (Why choose LossyWAV at all? It does not have any of the advantages of psychoacoustic models, but decoding FLAC is extremely fast and it could very well be that it outweighs the additional I/O (from larger files) in terms of e.g. battery usage.)


Whether the space savings are worth it compared to straight flac is a personal decision.  For a working copy, one advantage of not using psychoacoustic models is that a hearing (or equipment) defect won't break the model and (not being human-centric) it will sound good to your pets.  That may be an issue if you are into using recorded bird/animal calls in the wild in hopes of a response.

I've been mulling over whether there's any disadvantage at all compared to flac if the source has limited S/N to begin with, like rips from vinyl or analog tape.

How the beeep do I make LossyWAV-files easy.

Reply #7
Me for one would certainly not have two FLAC files with the same name and different content.


Two points to make in response to this:

1) lWAV-processed FLAC will, in my experience, be instantly recognizable by nothing more than the sheer difference in file size and bitrate from the original lossless, even if you used preset -I and you encode your lossless at -8.  The only exception I can imagine to this is if you're encoding vast amounts of silence.
2) It's not terribly difficult to mark for differences between them, both in tagging and filename.

It does not have any of the advantages of psychoacoustic models


Would you not consider adaptive noise shaping to be a feature of a psychoacoustic model?

but decoding FLAC is extremely fast and it could very well be that it outweighs the additional I/O (from larger files) in terms of e.g. battery usage.)


Bingo.  Between this, the reasonable bitrates for ~4-minute tracks, the lack of audible artifacts (short of blasting samples at ~95-100dB, I have not identified consistent ones at preset -X), and being impervious to further lossy transcoding artifacts as compared to the lossless original (via my own ABXing), I find good reason to continue using it.  I will continue to keep lossless originals around for albums I cherish and good sample-testing material, but otherwise I have no qualms going straight to lWAV when I rip a CD.
FLAC -2 w/ lossyWAV 1.3.0i -q X -i

How the beeep do I make LossyWAV-files easy.

Reply #8
Me for one would certainly not have two FLAC files with the same name and different content.


Two points to make in response to this:

1) lWAV-processed FLAC will, in my experience, be instantly recognizable by nothing more than the sheer difference in file size and bitrate from the original lossless, even if you used preset -I and you encode your lossless at -8.  The only exception I can imagine to this is if you're encoding vast amounts of silence.


Not always the case.  As I found by searching (after it happened to me), some music like solo piano gets bigger in lossyflac because it compresses very well in plain flac and the bit trimming doesn't save as much as it costs to force block size to 512. (which you could presumably also use to identify lossyflac if you had to)


How the beeep do I make LossyWAV-files easy.

Reply #9
Thanks everyone!

From what I read it sounds like I misunderstood everything, or everything around LossyWAV that is, wouldn’t be the first time if you ask my wife 

Maybe I read too much between the lines, what I got from my reading was:

FLAC = lossless FLAC-files.
LossyFLAC = lossy FLAC-files.
LossyWAV = lossy WAV-files (but they are still lossy FLAC-files).
What got me, was the change from LossyFLAC to LossyWAV.

The need is for two cars that have a normal CD-player, and my car that also plays MP3 and WMA, has to do the first ones in normal WAV then.

MP3 or other popular format for the cell phones, all newer Android units, and for other portable players.

On the TV I got a 1TB HDD that I shared in two, the C-drive is for the PVR, the D-drive contains some ripped DVD’s, the plan is to keep music on that HDD too in good lossy quality or lossless.

I know that good quality is different from one person to an other, but my ears is just over 50 years old and has been exposed to motorcycle riding, F1 races and rock concerts with out protection, so they’ve been better.

The surround amp. has a USB-connection too, and even if the manual states USB-stick only, it can read the 1TB HDD too, but it takes quite some time compared to the TV. The overview over directories and files is of cause much better on the TV, and the sound goes through the amp. Anyway.

Best regards DanishDude

How the beeep do I make LossyWAV-files easy.

Reply #10
FLAC = lossless FLAC-files.
LossyFLAC = lossy FLAC-files.
Ok up to here.
LossyWAV = lossy WAV-files (but they are still lossy FLAC-files).
No - lossyWAV files (i.e. name.lossy.wav) are RIFF WAVE files. lossyWAV only reads and writes RIFF WAVE.

lossyFLAC is simply a lossy.wav file compressed losslessly with FLAC.
lossyWAV -q X -a 4 -s h -A --feedback 2 --limit 15848 --scale 0.5 | FLAC -5 -e -p -b 512 -P=4096 -S- (having set foobar to output 24-bit PCM; scaling by 0.5 gives the ANS headroom to work)

How the beeep do I make LossyWAV-files easy.

Reply #11
Maybe I read too much between the lines[…] What got me, was the change from LossyFLAC to LossyWAV.
The article for lossyWAV on our wiki explains:
Quote
lossyWAV is based on the lossyFLAC idea proposed by David Robinson [2BDecided] at Hydrogenaudio, which is a method of carefully reducing the bitdepth of (blocks of) samples which will then allow the FLAC lossless encoder to make use of its wasted bits feature. The aim is to transparently reduce audio bit depth […] In this way the user can enjoy audio encoded using the same codec (which may be all important from a hardware compatibility perspective) at a reduced bitrate compared to the lossless version.

Nick Currie ported the original MATLAB implementation to Delphi […] Subsequently, lossyFLAC proved itself to work with other lossless codecs, so the application name was changed to lossyWAV.

How the beeep do I make LossyWAV-files easy.

Reply #12
FLAC = lossless FLAC-files.
LossyFLAC = lossy FLAC-files.
Ok up to here.
LossyWAV = lossy WAV-files (but they are still lossy FLAC-files).
No - lossyWAV files (i.e. name.lossy.wav) are RIFF WAVE files. lossyWAV only reads and writes RIFF WAVE.

lossyFLAC is simply a lossy.wav file compressed losslessly with FLAC.


So I should get WAV files from for example fobar2000, that I can burn on a CD and play in a normal player.

How the beeep do I make LossyWAV-files easy.

Reply #13
LossyWAV is useless for you -- it won't make WAV files smaller.

How the beeep do I make LossyWAV-files easy.

Reply #14
On the name front I've read (and set the conversion up for it) to insert "lossy" into the file name, like "11 Goat Rodeo.lossy.flac"


Yep! That's what I've recommend to others too, but still I wouldn't use my primary lossless format for it. If I fix tags and auto-fix filenames, I'd screw up fairly quickly. (Heck, I even store my pre-emph CDs as WavPack in order to make sure I know where I got them in case I accidentally delete tags.)


1) lWAV-processed FLAC will, in my experience, be instantly recognizable by nothing more than the sheer difference in file size and bitrate from the original lossless, even if you used preset -I and you encode your lossless at -8.  The only exception I can imagine to this is if you're encoding vast amounts of silence.


That's if you compare them side-by-side and know which ones to compare. I wouldn't be surprised to find a remaster which is louder, requires higher bitrate, and would after LossyWAV treatment be ... what, compared to the original release?


Thanks for the correction on the noise shaping though.

 

How the beeep do I make LossyWAV-files easy.

Reply #15
So I should get WAV files from for example fobar2000, that I can burn on a CD and play in a normal player.
If you want to play them in a normal CD player, burning an audio CD is your only option, or make an MP3 CD if the unit supports those.

Processing with lossyWAV before either would be pointlessly reducing the quality of the signal for no reason. As I hope the thread has indicated by now, lossyWAV is only meant for use before encoding to a lossless codec, as it makes the WAV more compressible and thus makes the resulting losslessly compressed file smaller. The trade-off is a slight reduction in quality but one that is likely to be inaudible and alters the signal in a more predictable/universal way than normal perceptual codecs.