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: EAC. why different bitrates when I use Flac and therefore lossless? (Read 2006 times) previous topic - next topic
0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Re: EAC. why different bitrates when I use Flac and therefore lossless?

Reply #25 –
Quote from: LauraQ on
from the CD and if 1.411 can be taken it means that that data exists and is there the possibility of doing so is that more data can be extracted than the 839 that EAC extracts from me
EAC reads 1411 from the CD.
Then it packs them into fewer using FLAC.
Still the same audio.

Re: EAC. why different bitrates when I use Flac and therefore lossless?

Reply #26 –
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

Re: EAC. why different bitrates when I use Flac and therefore lossless?

Reply #27 –
Quote from: LauraQ on
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.

Quote from: LauraQ on
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.

Re: EAC. why different bitrates when I use Flac and therefore lossless?

Reply #28 –
Quote from: LauraQ on
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.

Re: EAC. why different bitrates when I use Flac and therefore lossless?

Reply #29 –
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.

Re: EAC. why different bitrates when I use Flac and therefore lossless?

Reply #30 –
Quote from: LauraQ on
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.
.halverhahn

Re: EAC. why different bitrates when I use Flac and therefore lossless?

Reply #31 –
Quote from: john33 on
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.

Re: EAC. why different bitrates when I use Flac and therefore lossless?

Reply #32 –
Quote from: LauraQ on
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.

Quote from: LauraQ on
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.

Re: EAC. why different bitrates when I use Flac and therefore lossless?

Reply #33 –
Quote from: korth on
When the 'Parameter passing scheme' is set to 'User Defined Encoder' (as is necessary to use the FLAC encoder) the 'Bit rate' and 'Quality' settings are ignored.
Quote from: .halverhahn on
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.
korth

Re: EAC. why different bitrates when I use Flac and therefore lossless?

Reply #34 –
Quote from: LauraQ on
but I understand perfectly what you are saying. I'm just telling you that the Internet is full of articles that say the opposite :)
The internet is also full of articles about the "Flat Earth theory" and the "Moon landing conspirancy".
.halverhahn

Re: EAC. why different bitrates when I use Flac and therefore lossless?

Reply #35 –
Quote
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.
I'm sorry, but you are being distracted by people who really have no idea what they are talking about. If you don't believe us at HA, conduct your own tests, the data does not lie.

Re: EAC. why different bitrates when I use Flac and therefore lossless?

Reply #36 –
Quote from: Sunhillow on
Quote from: LauraQ on
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.

Quote from: LauraQ on
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.

my doubts come precisely from these oddities. I was wondering why EAC, which, I assume, is written by very expert people and controlled by millions of people, leaves a function active when it shouldn't be and misleads so many people?
But I understand that I raise doubts that you don't have and, reading above, I already understand that I have bored you enough.
So I thank everyone for the help and... obviously I ONLY trust what you recommend, otherwise I wouldn't be here ;)

Thanks for all ^_^

Re: EAC. why different bitrates when I use Flac and therefore lossless?

Reply #37 –
The 'External Compression' tab doesn't know what 'User Defined Encoder' you're using. It's well uh 'user defined'.
The EAC configuration wizard can setup FLAC for you but the encoder is still considered 'user defined'. It is not a preset.

The options 'Bit rate' and 'Quality' are ignored when using 'User Defined Encoder'. As %bitrate% or %islow%...%islow% and '%ishigh%...%ishigh% can be added to the command-line to make use of these otherwise ignored settings, the options cannot be grayed-out or disabled.

Below link shows examples using %bitrate% or %islow%...%islow% and '%ishigh%...%ishigh% in the command-line with the LAME mp3 encoder set as 'User Defined Encoder'.
https://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=EAC_and_Lame#Advanced_Command_Line_Usage
korth

Re: EAC. why different bitrates when I use Flac and therefore lossless?

Reply #38 –
all clear, thanks :)

Re: EAC. why different bitrates when I use Flac and therefore lossless?

Reply #39 –
I love your drawer analogy!!!   If you work harder and take more time, the stuff takes-up less space!

CDs are 16 bits x 44.1K samples per second x 2 channels =1411kilobits per second.  There are 8-bits in a byte so that's 176 kilobytes per second, or about 10MB per minute. 

You can rip a CD to wave with the same settings and the data is identical (with an identical bitrate), but in a WAV container.

Uncompressed 24-bit files are 50% bigger.   48kHz files are about 10% bigger.  (not including any embedded artwork.)

The same ratios approximately carry-over to FLAC files.  A 24-bit FLAC is about 50% bigger than a 16-bit copy of the same file.  But FLAC is "smart" and if you make a 24-bit FLAC from a 16-bit original it will be the same size as a 16-bit FLAC.   Or if you have a "mono" CD* with the same audio in both channels it will be about half the size of a true-stereo FLAC.

Some audio compresses easier than others, so with the same FLAC setting different files can give you different bitrates.  I've never tried making a silent FLAC but I'm sure it has a low bitrate.

*CDs are always 2-channels.   It's the only format I know of with that limitation.   A mono (1-channel) file will play through both speakers.
 

Re: EAC. why different bitrates when I use Flac and therefore lossless?

Reply #40 –
everything is clear and I'm glad you liked my example with the drawer ^_^