FLACS??

[partypanda64]

Alright, so I downloaded some flacs, and it says that it's at a 1066kbps compression rate. Is this any good? I am completely new to HiFi audio, so I probably sounds really stupid. 

[eLucid]

Bit rate > compression rate

[partypanda64]

1 minute ago, eLucid said:

Bit rate > compression rate

is 1066kpbs a good bit/compression rate?

[The Flying Sloth]

Just now, partypanda64 said:

is 1066kpbs a good bit rate?

Yes

[eLucid]

1 minute ago, partypanda64 said:

is 1066kpbs a good bit/compression rate?

It's fine. Also, if you're downloading torrents - most of them are trash (generally speaking).

 

Go to HDtracks instead.

[Enderman]

run spek ot make sure its a real flac and not a converted shitty mp3

[partypanda64]

1 minute ago, eLucid said:

It's fine. Also, if you're downloading torrents - most of them are trash (generally speaking).

 

Go to HDtracks instead.

anywhere to get them free, I've looked at HDtracks and it's pretty pricey

[partypanda64]

3 minutes ago, Enderman said:

run spek ot make sure its a real flac and not a converted shitty mp3

ran it on spek, this is what I got, is it legit?

[PlayStation 2]

FLAC is a lossless compressed format. If it's a 16-bit 44100Hz FLAC, this is good albeit not a whole ton compression is being applied.

[partypanda64]

Just now, Dan Castellaneta said:

FLAC is a lossless compressed format. If it's a 16-bit 44100Hz FLAC, this is good albeit not a whole ton compression is being applied.

thanks

[mariushm]

FLAC is a lossless audio compressor, meaning it compresses audio just like Winrar or 7zip would compress a file - the original and decompressed FLAC files would be identical.

MP3 or AAC are lossy encoders, they determine what's very hard to perceive by human ears and cut those bits out from the audio and compress the rest, the decompressed file is not identical to the original file.

 

Because FLAC is lossless, files don't compress as well as with lossy encoders. For example, a 44.1 kHz 16 bit stereo audio file would have a bitrate of 1400 kbps and FLAC would reduce this to around 50-70% of original size - in your case 1066 kbps sounds good.

 

From the picture above, you can tell the original audio was of relatively good quality. You can tell it wasn't originally an MP3 or AAC file because these audio encoders would remove pretty much everything above around 15.5 - 16 kHz because that's the limit of what the majority of humans can hear (and speakers or headphones reproduce) in order to make it easier to compress (in less bits)... here's an example, you can pretty much see how there's nothing above around 15.5 kHz :

 

 

So basically, the exact value doesn't tell you anything. With FLAC though, you can be relatively sure you got as much quality as it's possible.

 

There's some tricks that one can do to make FLAC compress audio files with some very small audio quality loss but very few know about it or do it (for example, process the original audio file a bit so that it's like 98% of the original quality, still way way above lossy encoders and practically impossible to distinguish differences between original and processed audio file, then pass this processed audio file to FLAC to compress without losing quality.

[Enderman]

1 hour ago, partypanda64 said:

ran it on spek, this is what I got, is it legit?

yup

[Pomfinator]

spek is generally not a 100% sure way to tell if something is actually a lossless file.  You can never be sure unless you direct downloaded it from Bandcamp or ripped the CD yourself.  However a couple of communities have managed to build up trust with people so generally a well-organized FLAC album complete with album art and a EAC log file is good enough for a 99.99% chance it's a lossless file.

 

You can also use the bit-rate as a judge of what kind of song it is.  For 16bit/44.1khz, a classical piece will normally hover around 400-600kbps, older rock and acoustic music will be around 800-1000kbps, modern music will generally exceed 1000kbps and electronic music normally goes well past 1100kbps.

 

For comparisons sake, a fresh WAV straight out of a CD will always be 1411kbps, the constant bit-rate of a CD.

[partypanda64]

19 hours ago, Pomfinator said:

spek is generally not a 100% sure way to tell if something is actually a lossless file.  You can never be sure unless you direct downloaded it from Bandcamp or ripped the CD yourself.  However a couple of communities have managed to build up trust with people so generally a well-organized FLAC album complete with album art and a EAC log file is good enough for a 99.99% chance it's a lossless file.

 

You can also use the bit-rate as a judge of what kind of song it is.  For 16bit/44.1khz, a classical piece will normally hover around 400-600kbps, older rock and acoustic music will be around 800-1000kbps, modern music will generally exceed 1000kbps and electronic music normally goes well past 1100kbps.

 

For comparisons sake, a fresh WAV straight out of a CD will always be 1411kbps, the constant bit-rate of a CD.

got it from here: http://rock-music.info/2014/11/blink-182-greatest-hitsuk-bonus2005flac/

[Pomfinator]

2 minutes ago, partypanda64 said:

 

I would suggest you remove that.  Linking directly to a pirated music download site is a no-no.