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How to determine if the track is truly "Lossless" FLAC.

tim81517lh

Not recorded very badly, but rather mastered very badly. Modern music wants to be as loud as possible on any device, so studios record their stuff and then opt for the loudest mastering possible because mainstream devices don't have high-end audio solutions and a quality, artistic mastering wouldn't mean much to most consumers because they won't hear the difference between artistic mastering and as-loud-as-possible-mastering. They'd prefer the as-loud-as-possible solution because it comes across as more impressive when you compare it directly to lower level mastered records even though in the mastering process a lot of details got lost which could've been preserved if the producers had opted for the more 'quiet' mastering. This would've given lower listening levels, but had preserved more details and a better frequency range.

 

Edit: Here's what regular vs. audiophile mastering looks like:

 wGPijdn.jpg

Hmm. Yeah so I was wondering if perhaps Audacity could help verify the FLAC's...? Some sort of trick? Identify just by looking at the frequency graph?

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Hmm. Yeah so I was wondering if perhaps Audacity could help verify the FLAC's...? Some sort of trick? Identify just by looking at the frequency graph?

Just tested this and here's the result comparing 24bit FLAC Vinyl with 192kbps MP3 (top = FLAC, bottom = mp3, song is Dani California by RHCP).

 

laNsoAX.jpg

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I have no troubles at all determining between a lossless source and 320 kbps.

Then you shouldn't have any problem acing this test, right?

 

I have prepared some ~30 seconds audio clips from different songs. I have encoded them to AAC with various bitrate at ~320Kbps, Vorbis/OGG at ~224Kbps, and I have also threw in a lossless FLAC file.

All 3 files are originally from lossless FLAC files with a bitrate of ~1000Kbps. So, let's see if you guys can hear the difference between ~224Kbps, ~320Kbps and 1000Kbps.

 

TL;DR: Download the songs, listen to them and then tell me which one out of 1, 2 and 3 sounds the best, and which one sounds the worst.

List of songs (don't mind the names):

Africa

Boombox

Champion

Dango

DeskCar

D_Rock_City

Genesis

God

Gonna_Be

Haruhi

Hello

Intro

Island

Kanon

Mami

Moon

Platinum

Sooner

Squid

Tsukihi

Wolf

Working

 

 

Anyway OP, there is no way of being 100% sure unless you rip it yourself from a CD. Either that or download a ton of versions of the same song and then compare them with a spectrograph or something like that.

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Not recorded very badly, but rather mastered very badly. Modern music wants to be as loud as possible on any device, so studios record their stuff and then opt for the loudest mastering possible because mainstream devices don't have high-end audio solutions and a quality, artistic mastering wouldn't mean much to most consumers because they won't hear the difference between artistic mastering and as-loud-as-possible-mastering. They'd prefer the as-loud-as-possible solution because it comes across as more impressive when you compare it directly to lower level mastered records even though in the mastering process a lot of details got lost which could've been preserved if the producers had opted for the more 'quiet' mastering. This would've given lower listening levels, but had preserved more details and a better frequency range.

 

Edit: Here's what regular vs. audiophile mastering looks like:

 wGPijdn.jpg

Oh, look everyone ^^^^   an educated voice of reason in the internet forest of guesses and opinions.

 

 

This is most probably the crux of the issue.  The level wars killed good audio for everyone, however if you don't have decent enough gear, are eclectic enough to have samples of music that has been mastered properly or simply prefer volume to quality then you probably won't ever notice.

Grammar and spelling is not indicative of intelligence/knowledge.  Not having the same opinion does not always mean lack of understanding.  

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  • 4 months later...

to the OP,  checking for authenticity ...well you are going to need the original to compare with.   once you have the original file..Load the two tracks into your DAW, align them exactly, so that there's no delay between the two tracks (check at a very high zoom level that the waveform is crossing the X-Axis at the same position). Then phase reverse one of the tracks and bounce the mix to a new track. The new track will only contain information that differs between the two original tracks. if the two tracks are identical.....there will be nothing at all left, nothing to hear. 

 

if you dont have the original... you can use tau analyzer, audio checker, or http://y-soft.org/English/products/auCDtect-Task-Manager/     ..

 

 

as far as high resolution formats go,  there is no evidence at all that human beings can diffrentiate between say...a redbook rip and 320 mp3.   .  there are some reasons that using higher SR/Word Lengths is adviseable...(ie when one is doing a lot of post processing...this assures e have sufficient headroom)  but for regular listening?  absolute rubbish.

 

ripping vinyl at 24 bit is partiularly dumb.  vinyl has at best 12 bits of resolution. redbook is plenty.

 

the level wars only effected the mass market products....radio music. indies/self produced (which comprises all of my listening) do not have the monetary resources to be able to pay to have their records destroyed!  yet another reason to go indie. 

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