HydrogenAudio

Lossless Audio Compression => Lossless / Other Codecs => Topic started by: DustyBin on 2008-02-25 13:12:11

Title: Why i think lossless is a waste of time
Post by: DustyBin on 2008-02-25 13:12:11
Unless you have a sound card with a high quality DAC, playing back a lossless file with a low quality DAC on cheap sound card or receiver will mean that a lossless format will not gain much.

I personnally think it would be better to save your HD space and buy a dedicated pro audio CD player what has dual high quality DACs, use the analogue outputs of it to connect to your amp. Unless of course you buy a sound card with has real high quality DACs? Do they exist?
Title: Why i think lossless is a waste of time
Post by: buktore on 2008-02-25 13:27:42
You mean "A waste of space" right? Cause lossless codec usually encode faster than lossy. 

Too answer your topic.. well.. I think I better don't, cause it's "a waste of time".
Title: Why i think lossless is a waste of time
Post by: shadowking on 2008-02-25 13:31:06
I think a low end crappy dac aka - $5 system is more risky than high end for lossy encoding. The freq response is weird, the sound is harsh and brittle. Its hard to setup an abx test in my car but I have my suspicion..

As for lossless sound gain, I'd have to agree for the majority of listeners and music there is little to no gain - can't get better than transparent and the old relic mp3 is giving them trouble even at 130 k vbr. I currently encode to lame 3.97 V3 for use in all equipment. If tomorrow my original cd's were gone , I wouldn't care much.

For a finished product lossy is fine. for multi transcoding lossless is the better option.
Title: Why i think lossless is a waste of time
Post by: odyssey on 2008-02-25 13:37:41
What a useless topic? I think that's an oppinion of each individual!

After using lossy for years, I think that's a waste of time. Why? - Because I start listening for artefacts when I know it's mp3! Now I know that something I might hear CANNOT be an artefact caused by encoding. Sure lossless takes up a lot of space, but contrary to the money I spend on CD's it's not really an issue.

I don't give much for the crappy DAC statement. I use bitperfect digital out all the way to my reciever, and let it do the conversion. Also, why spend a lot of money on a "quality" CD player, when any cheap CD player with digital out does the exact same? It's a common misunderstanding among audiofools that expensive CD players are actually worth the buck - only on scratched discs they might do a slightly better job correcting jitter.
Title: Why i think lossless is a waste of time
Post by: spoon on 2008-02-25 13:41:24
> a dedicated pro audio CD player what has dual high quality DACs

The idea behind archiving (to lossless) is to rip once and rip without error, that is a computer with a secure ripping program can try 10's of times to recover errors that the pro audio CD player would not (it is time based and has to give out audio at a certain time).

I also think a 500GB Hard drive and decent sound card will cost less than a pro audio CD player.
Title: Why i think lossless is a waste of time
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2008-02-25 13:46:21
"DustyBin" - does your name reflect where you hope your topics will be moved to?

Cheers,
David.
Title: Why i think lossless is a waste of time
Post by: kanak on 2008-02-25 13:49:30
Quote
What a useless topic? I think that's an oppinion of each individual!


I agree, a blanket statement like that is pretty useless. However, i can't resist the temptation to list the reasons why i think lossless is useless FOR ME:

1. I tried abxing and i failed to abx even MP3 V5 VBRs

2. I have an ipod classic, so my only choice would be to use Apple Lossless (yuck).

3. When a compelling reason to transcode comes (for me, this would mean a lossy that is transparent at much lower bitrates AND have good hardware support, or a lossless that uses some revolutionary technique to compress 2X better- both of which won't happen anytime soon), I'll just rerip my collection.

3. My collection is now at ~5200 albums:
a. Reripping simply to have lossless would not make the songs "sound better", but would take a lot of TIME and SPACE.


So, lossless FOR ME, in its present FORM, is useless.
Title: Why i think lossless is a waste of time
Post by: sacriste on 2008-02-25 14:06:02
I agree and my main reason is that the recording quality of 90% of recordings isn't that great and sacred to be perfectly preserved and the loss of quality is so marginal in real listening situations that is not worth the size difference. And yes is a waste of time if you have the originals as backup and make lossy your main source to enjoy music and not to sound examination.
Title: Why i think lossless is a waste of time
Post by: DustyBin on 2008-02-25 14:11:01
Im begining to understand now! I might encode all my CD collection into the lossless FLAC format, then do some more re-encoding for my ipod (car use only), 256kbps MP3/CBR using lame. Because I'm linux based, i dont want to boot into windows just to do some encoding using itunes, and as AAC and MP3 at 256 kbps / CBR using the best encoders available are transparent i may as well stick with mp3.
Title: Why i think lossless is a waste of time
Post by: Lyx on 2008-02-25 15:32:25
The point/advantage of lossless is not in "listening", but in something else. I dont do anything with my music except of listening, so i dont use lossless. For someone else, the needs may be different.

As for the topic asking a stupid question - quite a few of the answers are just as stupid as the question, so perhaps the question wasn't all that unjustified, KTNXBYE
Title: Why i think lossless is a waste of time
Post by: Heliologue on 2008-02-25 15:36:42
Yes, DustyBin.  As you'll find out here at HydrogenAudio, the "Lossless sounds better" is a tenuous statement, and one that will get the speaker in trouble unless s/he backs it up with ABX tests.  Very few people have good enough ears to tell the difference between a lossless file and a lossy file from a good psychoacoustic encoder.

The entirely more popular reason for lossless encoding is for archiving purposes:  e.g. I have everything I own in FLAC, and can transcode to Vorbis for my DAP, or to mp3 if another device requires it.
Title: Why i think lossless is a waste of time
Post by: CoyoteSmith on 2008-02-25 15:38:55
i think this is something everyone has to ask themselves. for me, lossless was the right choice, because as technology advances there's no way to "go back" on your choice unless you want to rebuy everything, which would be impossible for some of the things in my collection.
Title: Why i think lossless is a waste of time
Post by: DustyBin on 2008-02-25 16:13:16
i think this is something everyone has to ask themselves. for me, lossless was the right choice, because as technology advances there's no way to "go back" on your choice unless you want to rebuy everything, which would be impossible for some of the things in my collection.


Aye thats a good point, archive in lossless, and encode for other devices, in the future there might be different versions of encoders what do better jobs, if you have all your files stored as lossless there isnt a problem.
Title: Why i think lossless is a waste of time
Post by: Squeller on 2008-02-25 16:23:39
Aye thats a good point, archive in lossless, and encode for other devices, in the future there might be different versions of encoders what do better jobs, if you have all your files stored as lossless there isnt a problem.
Exactly. As a classical listener and for my portable needs, e.g. in car, I need to apply a DSP which pushes the low levels up (vlevel dsp/with fb2k) because of the noise in the car. Without a lossless source I'd need to transcode.
Title: Why i think lossless is a waste of time
Post by: Bourne on 2008-02-25 18:38:57
it's hard these days...

If I burn 20 albums onto a CD/mp3, when I will put it in the tray, I don't know even where to start from...

If I burn an album onto a single CD with 12 tracks, it will bore me, because I will have to pile discs and swap CDs...

Used to be fun with those vinyl and cassette tapes....
Title: Why i think lossless is a waste of time
Post by: Nick.C on 2008-02-25 19:16:13
If I burn 20 albums onto a CD/mp3, when I will put it in the tray, I don't know even where to start from...

If I burn an album onto a single CD with 12 tracks, it will bore me, because I will have to pile discs and swap CDs...
...but with all the choice (i.e. multiple discs), how do you decide which disc (1 or 20 albums on it, makes no difference really) to put in the tray?
Title: Why i think lossless is a waste of time
Post by: Scrith on 2008-02-25 19:25:12
If time stopped today, you might be right.

But who is to say that some new audio technology that makes the difference between lossy and lossless compression more obvious isn't going to come in the next 3 months or even 3 years?

I'm happy to keep all my audio in the highest quality format possible (lossless) just in case.  And given that it takes even less time to compress, and hard drive prices are rock bottom right now such that storage costs are not an issue...why not just go lossless and forget about compromising quality in the name of space (something that was important 10 years ago when MP3 was first becoming popular)?
Title: Why i think lossless is a waste of time
Post by: pdq on 2008-02-25 20:10:54
But who is to say that some new audio technology that makes the difference between lossy and lossless compression more obvious isn't going to come in the next 3 months or even 3 years?

The only way to make the difference more obvious is either for lossless to become better (not possible) or lossy to become worse. And why would anyone choose to use a lossy compression that is worse than what is available today?
Title: Why i think lossless is a waste of time
Post by: Nick E on 2008-02-25 20:31:52

But who is to say that some new audio technology that makes the difference between lossy and lossless compression more obvious isn't going to come in the next 3 months or even 3 years?

The only way to make the difference more obvious is either for lossless to become better (not possible) or lossy to become worse. And why would anyone choose to use a lossy compression that is worse than what is available today?


Perhaps he means further down the chain from the music file.  I read it as his meaning that if manufacturers were to, say, squeeze better electronics for playback in a portable player (which is where the bulk of many people's music-file listening is done) then one might be better able to hear a difference that always had been there.

EDIT: FWIW, I'm also an "archive in lossless, and encode for other devices" type of person.  There's no way I'd put lossless files on a portable with the current size of their storage.
Title: Why i think lossless is a waste of time
Post by: The Seeker on 2008-02-25 20:42:03
For a finished product lossy is fine. for multi transcoding lossless is the better option.


The above statement pretty much sums up my feelings on the matter.
Title: Why i think lossless is a waste of time
Post by: Bourne on 2008-02-25 21:43:42
Quote
...but with all the choice (i.e. multiple discs), how do you decide which disc (1 or 20 albums on it, makes no difference really) to put in the tray?


Yes, I have gone that through as well... Hard to pick up a CD in the middle of 100. LOL

I think we were happier when we didn't have to deal with tags, album art, consistency, directories and perfect ripping...

I just did an experiment here...
I chose Jarre's "Teo & Tea 4.00 AM" as a critical track to encode, and I have split this track in about 7 WAV tracks. But 4 of this selection are 128 kbps CBR fresh encodings converted to WAV. Then I merged all the files putting back the song again. So we have now 4 lossy parts and 3 lossless parts in one song.
I can't tell for the life of me which part of the song is lossy or lossless...
I tested this on a powerful amplifier at the living room & headphones too...
I chose 128kbps CBR because I wanted something "really crap"...
I think there is a reason why no one is really interested in lossless... (on contrast to us, who are interested...)
You guys should try this...
Title: Why i think lossless is a waste of time
Post by: Synthetic Soul on 2008-02-25 22:20:39
I think there is a reason why no one is really interested in lossless... (on contrast to us, who are interested...)
You guys should try this...
Reread the many posts discussing lossless purely as an archive/transcoding source.

I too use lossless solely as an archive; I'm amazed that people see the need to listen to it, but then I don't have golden ears.  As well as being a safe transcoding source it also fulfils my anal nature, which forces me to want the best quality for those things that I really want to "own".  I'm the same with video, which is why I have a PVR that will let me dump the raw transport stream to the PC.
Title: Why i think lossless is a waste of time
Post by: skamp on 2008-02-25 23:39:07
Can we lock the thread already? Either that or I'll start my own "Why I think lossy encoding is useless because of increasing storage capabilities" troll thread...
Title: Why i think lossless is a waste of time
Post by: Jebus on 2008-02-26 02:00:59
Unless you have a sound card with a high quality DAC, playing back a lossless file with a low quality DAC on cheap sound card or receiver will mean that a lossless format will not gain much.

I personnally think it would be better to save your HD space and buy a dedicated pro audio CD player what has dual high quality DACs, use the analogue outputs of it to connect to your amp. Unless of course you buy a sound card with has real high quality DACs? Do they exist?




Why does everyone assume that lossy = low-fi? Artifacts are just as easy to spot on low-end and high-end equipment. lossy files sound just as "good" (at least at reasonable bitrates) as lossless files. It's just that, once in a while, artifacts may be audible.



Equipment quality and music bitrates are almost always completely independent subjects.
Title: Why i think lossless is a waste of time
Post by: Dawnrazor-age on 2008-02-26 03:52:01
Unless of course you buy a sound card with has real high quality DACs? Do they exist?


Well, if you do have one, and yes they do exist, then you aren't going to mess with lossy. 

Get the best quality rip you can the first time.

To Scriths point I would agree but change it a bit.  Most of the people I see here are running some sort of midfi setup...pc to a receiver...blah blah blah.  No doubt it woud be hard to hear much difference on such a set up.  But think of the future.  Perhaps one day a better system awaits and then you may be sorry that you ripped to lossy and can on the better system hear the difference.
Title: Why i think lossless is a waste of time
Post by: shadowking on 2008-02-26 05:30:31
I have yet to believe that a theoretical super high end system will break good lossy encodings , Or that human ear can tell differences between mid ~ good DAC in abx.

I said it before and I know its a touchy subject, but I feel that even on a Super Fi system one could 'archive' to Lame -V4 - 160 k with little to no loss. Even if there was an audiable difference it would probably be small and for a split second. The files are small enough to play anywhere without transcoding , burn cd's for your car and your friends will never know its an mp3.
Title: Why i think lossless is a waste of time
Post by: Bourne on 2008-02-26 06:14:53
I've already fooled people with 128kbps CBR encodings...
Title: Why i think lossless is a waste of time
Post by: UrbanVoyeur on 2008-02-26 06:27:45
I agree with Spoon. The main reason I FLAC is for archiving - so that I don't have to rip again to take advantage of future codec improvements. Storage is cheap and secure ripping my music took a looooong time.
Title: Why i think lossless is a waste of time
Post by: Dawnrazor-age on 2008-02-26 06:35:00
I have yet to believe that a theoretical super high end system will break good lossy encodings , Or that human ear can tell differences between mid ~ good DAC in abx.

I said it before and I know its a touchy subject, but I feel that even on a Super Fi system one could 'archive' to Lame -V4 - 160 k with little to no loss. Even if there was an audiable difference it would probably be small and for a split second. The files are small enough to play anywhere without transcoding , burn cd's for your car and your friends will never know its an mp3.



HI Shadow,

Well, I for one have abx'd 192 vbr (I think that is Lame -V2 right?) on my little headphone rig and once I get my main system set up I'll give 320 a shot.  160k I think would be pretty easy, and one could tell without much going back and forth.  Now, I haven't tried this, but the ABX I did was with headphones, but I think on the main rig it will be even easier because I'll be able to hear differences in imaging that I don't get on headphones.  I'll let you know if I ever get set up ( I have had this damn thing in boxes for a year now, and I just unboxed them this weekend! and will get them wired tommorrow....long story) and try 320.

Also, along those lines, is there a way to abx flac?  Foobar does this, but it cheats by turning the flac into a .wav.  Any programs that will compare flac to .wav without the conversion?

I have posted the results, and will gladly post the files I used.  Just no one has told me how to cut the mp3 down to the 30 second length needed to post. 

DUH, I just thought about it.  I bet I could load that mp3 into wave lab and cut it, just like I would the .wav file.
Title: Why i think lossless is a waste of time
Post by: shadowking on 2008-02-26 06:49:10
I was merely referring to HQ non offensive encodes rather than total transparency which is much harder to achieve. You gotta make sure you can regularly pull these abx tricks and its not some limited problem tracks. IMO the party stops once you get to around -V3..You shouldn't be able to abx even V4 that easily on normal music. But  I am interested if you have really good abx results on many tracks on your good rig.

PS - Don't waste time abxing flac.
Title: Why i think lossless is a waste of time
Post by: Northpack on 2008-02-26 10:59:39
I have yet to believe that a theoretical super high end system will break good lossy encodings , Or that human ear can tell differences between mid ~ good DAC in abx.


Don't believe it! It's fault reasoning. Today's hi-fi audio systems are generally way above the boundarys of anyone's perception. So, if you already have a decent system, you won't be able to hear a drop in quality on any possible future system. However, particulary so-called audiophile equipment often introduces distortion (as tube-amps generally do), which often is subjectively considered as "better" quality and advertised with all those audiophile blabber. These distortion may add to the marginal artefacts introduced by the lossy enconding and thus makes them audible. Yet this would mean you got audible artifecats because of the actually worse quality of your enquipment, even if it you spend €10.000 in it...
Title: Why i think lossless is a waste of time
Post by: greenfoot on 2008-02-26 11:17:50
I also encode lossless for preservation, but for me it is also psycological. Whenever I recieve or listen to an mp3, it doesn't satisfy me as much as lossless format. I feel like I am not getting the whole product.
Title: Why i think lossless is a waste of time
Post by: pdq on 2008-02-26 12:51:39
Well, I for one have abx'd 192 vbr (I think that is Lame -V2 right?) on my little headphone rig and once I get my main system set up I'll give 320 a shot.  160k I think would be pretty easy, and one could tell without much going back and forth.  Now, I haven't tried this, but the ABX I did was with headphones, but I think on the main rig it will be even easier because I'll be able to hear differences in imaging that I don't get on headphones.  I'll let you know if I ever get set up ( I have had this damn thing in boxes for a year now, and I just unboxed them this weekend! and will get them wired tommorrow....long story) and try 320.

As has been mentioned here many, many times, it is generally easier to hear problems with lossy encoding using headphones than with speakers. Also, very often cheap/low quality stereo equipment may make artifacts audible which are inaudible on good equipment. We will all want to hear about your ABX results on your good system.
Title: Why i think lossless is a waste of time
Post by: probedb on 2008-02-26 13:01:06
I use lossless purely because disc space isn't an issue and it means I can convert to any lossy format I want again and again without losing any quality.
Title: Why i think lossless is a waste of time
Post by: Porcus on 2008-02-26 15:31:51
Unless you have a sound card with a high quality DAC, playing back a lossless file with a low quality DAC on cheap sound card or receiver will mean that a lossless format will not gain much.


So when you get a high quality DAC, you will want to re-rip everything?


I personnally think it would be better to save your HD space and buy a dedicated pro audio CD player what has dual high quality DACs, use the analogue outputs of it to connect to your amp. Unless of course you buy a sound card with has real high quality DACs? Do they exist?


If you distrust soundcard DACs, then buy an external one and connect it to both your CD player and your sound card's digital output.

Save HD space? A 500 GiB disc should give you capacity for *quick'n'dirty calculations*  say, 1500 CDs lossless. If you have 1500 discs,
- you do not want to rip more than once
- you will need more physical devices for back-up, so you need to count discs, not bytes
- a 500 GiB disc isn't that much more expensive than a 200 GiB (assuming they still sell the latter ...)
Title: Why i think lossless is a waste of time
Post by: ExUser on 2008-02-26 15:50:46
Also, along those lines, is there a way to abx flac?  Foobar does this, but it cheats by turning the flac into a .wav.  Any programs that will compare flac to .wav without the conversion?


Asking for a way to ABX FLAC and WAV is like asking for a way to ABX WAV and WAV. One reason foobar2000 decodes to WAV first is to remove decoder-related delays.
What you ask like asking for a way to find the difference between a ZIP file and the original uncompressed material. It really makes no sense.
Title: Why i think lossless is a waste of time
Post by: GregDunn on 2008-02-26 17:47:54
Yes, I have gone that through as well... Hard to pick up a CD in the middle of 100. LOL

I think we were happier when we didn't have to deal with tags, album art, consistency, directories and perfect ripping...


I wasn't.      It's so convenient to carry almost half of my audio collection with me wherever I go.  Any time I want to share a particularly good piece of music with a friend I just dial it up and hand them my iPod.  I don't even want to think about driving home, digging through the CDs, pulling it out, taking it to them, and then... not getting it back.    That's what it was back in 1985.
Title: Why i think lossless is a waste of time
Post by: Agent69 on 2008-02-26 18:15:33
I currently rip lossless (.wav + .cue) because I have the disk space available to do so and because it should eliminate the need to future reripping. Sure, I could save some disk space and compress them with Wavpack or Flac, but I just don't feel like dealing with it. I can use Foobar2000 to play them and, when needed, convert them to MP3 for use in my iPod Shuffle.

One can go insane with the choices we have. I say just go with what makes you the happiest.
Title: Why i think lossless is a waste of time
Post by: Dawnrazor-age on 2008-02-26 18:53:44
What you ask like asking for a way to find the difference between a ZIP file and the original uncompressed material. It really makes no sense.


Yeah, I get that. 

What I would like to hear is whether the extra computing needed to "unzip" the flac files and its effect on the electrical environment in the pc and therefore the sound...would be audible.

On my 2 pcs, Flac files do behave differently.  In a few configurations, flacs stutter like crazy and .wavs don't.

There is about 7% more processing needed on flacs on my pc.  I want to see if this extra processing can be audible.

I AM NOT SAYING THAT THE FLAC DATA IS DIFFERENT.

Everyone will cite how bad and terrible the pc's electrical environment is for a dac, but freak out at the mention that that very environment could lead to a condition where the additional flac processing could affect the sound.  At minimum we should be consistent...if the pc electrical environment with its emi and rfi and horrible powersupplies is bad for sound, then MAYBE extra processing will make a bad situtation worse and be audible.

I merely want a way to test this to find out either way.
Title: Why i think lossless is a waste of time
Post by: Lyx on 2008-02-26 18:53:52
I currently rip lossless (.wav + .cue) because I have the disk space available to do so and because it should eliminate the need to future reripping. Sure, I could save some disk space and compress them with Wavpack or Flac, but I just don't feel like dealing with it. I can use Foobar2000 to play them and, when needed, convert them to MP3 for use in my iPod Shuffle.

One can go insane with the choices we have. I say just go with what makes you the happiest.

I'd say there are two - not one - main advantages of lossless-compression over WAV:

1. lower filesize
2. metadata

The second one is significant, if one plans to transcode from lossless to lossy - i wouldn't want to do all the tagging over and over. Yes, cuesheets have some limited tagging support - emphasis on the word "limited".
Title: Why i think lossless is a waste of time
Post by: greynol on 2008-02-26 18:58:03
Who says you can't add metadata to a wave file?
Title: Why i think lossless is a waste of time
Post by: Nick.C on 2008-02-26 19:08:41
Who says you can't add metadata to a wave file?
You may be able to, but how you go about it would be all important, remembering to stay within the WAV standard.
Title: Why i think lossless is a waste of time
Post by: greynol on 2008-02-26 19:15:50
dBpoweramp doesn't seem to have any trouble.  It uses LIST chunks, I believe, and I doubt it breaks the standard.
Title: Why i think lossless is a waste of time
Post by: Agent69 on 2008-02-26 19:49:52
Cuesheets support all the metadata I need. Obviously, everyone has different needs.
Title: Why i think lossless is a waste of time
Post by: simonh on 2008-02-26 19:56:43
The only reason I have ripped all my cd's to lossless is in case anything should break mp3's dominance. Maybe a crazy law that rules they are illegal due to file sharing. You never know nowadays.
Title: Why i think lossless is a waste of time
Post by: gib on 2008-02-26 20:04:52
I'd say there are two - not one - main advantages of lossless-compression over WAV:

Another advantage is that, in the event of corruption, lossless files will tell you something is corrupt on decoding (playback, testing).  Wav files won't.
Title: Why i think lossless is a waste of time
Post by: greynol on 2008-02-26 20:06:50
Replaygain is another.

EDIT: Well it can be stored in a cue sheet for wave files, so never mind.
Title: Why i think lossless is a waste of time
Post by: gasmann on 2008-02-26 20:08:14
I don't agree that lossless is unworthy for listening purposes for two reasons:

1. Sometimes, ugly problems come up with lossy codecs (see e.g. http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=60655 (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=60655) ) even at pretty high bitrates. With lossless you're always on the safe side.
2. Lossless (FLAC at least, never tried anything else) usually decodes faster than lossy codecs, which means it saves CPU runtime (especially important on portables where cpu usage equals to power usage).

EDIT: Forgot about the topic: In the end, you'll SAVE time encoding to lossless right away because:
1. You never have to abx (very time-consuming, actually!) and eventually rerip anything to a higher bitrate because it sounds ugly (see 1. above)
2. Lossless usually encodes faster than lossy too, but that was already given by someone else.
Title: Why i think lossless is a waste of time
Post by: Bourne on 2008-02-27 04:14:00
I think that lossless is only for peace of mind. If you always listen & question... "Oops was that an artifact?" then you just need lossless for the peace of mind's sake. I think lossless is cool, and being able to play it, it's even more. For the perfectionist it's better if he keep his lossless rips secure on DVD-Rs and listen to his songs on CDs.
Title: Why i think lossless is a waste of time
Post by: twostar on 2008-02-27 07:15:13
2. Lossless (FLAC at least, never tried anything else) usually decodes faster than lossy codecs, which means it saves CPU runtime (especially important on portables where cpu usage equals to power usage).

For flash-based portables that may be the case. But for hard drive portables, the hd would have to spin more often which would decrease battery life.
Title: Why i think lossless is a waste of time
Post by: Agent69 on 2008-02-27 13:28:28
Another advantage is that, in the event of corruption, lossless files will tell you something is corrupt on decoding (playback, testing).  Wav files won't.


That is a good point. I suppose I could find a utility to create MD5 checksums of all my .wav files for later comparision, but I suspect that using a lossless encoder will be easier.