FLAC question

[SniphzR]

Ive heard about Tidal a few days ago, I registered and im super happy with all the FLAC quality music on it. I started thinking about how they get all that uncompressed audio files, and why is it so rare? How can they even get it? From the ppl who make the songs? If yes then why cant everyone get it from them? And if someone makes a song and "renders" it (or idk what its called when it comes to audio) then will it be FLAC automatically?

 

Its pretty hard to understand the quesitons ikr, sorry for the bad english.

[Fredrikmikael]

A reason why it is so rare or non-existent on other services is probably due to the extra storage and bandwidth needed.

[SniphzR]

2 minutes ago, Fredrikmikael said:

A reason why it is so rare or non-existent on other services is probably due to the extra storage and bandwidth needed.

Probably, thanks, 1 answered

[Marshnt]

7 minutes ago, SniphzR said:

Ive heard about Tidal a few days ago, I registered and im super happy with all the FLAC quality music on it. I started thinking about how they get all that uncompressed audio files, and why is it so rare? How can they even get it? From the ppl who make the songs? If yes then why cant everyone get it from them? And if someone makes a song and "renders" it (or idk what its called when it comes to audio) then will it be FLAC automatically?

 

Its pretty hard to understand the quesitons ikr, sorry for the bad english.

You should do some reading on how audio codecs work. The reason why FLAC isn't popular is because .mp3 is good enough for most peoples so why spend money on band with if the cheaper option is sadly good enough. Side note it apple offers lossless audio the codec is called ALAC.

[mariushm]

FLAC is lossless compressor / codec - it compresses the sound like ZIP or RAR or 7Zip, it's just smarter about it, specialized for audio.
MP3 and AAC are lossy compressors / codecs - they look at the audio and decide what your ears won't notice easily if it goes away, and remove some of that information to reduce the file size.

 

The pros of FLAC are : there's no quality loss, what you get is exactly what the artist wanted.

The downsides of FLAC  is that the file size is bigger compared to lossy codecs and the amount of data that has to be downloaded for each second of audio can vary a lot : a second of sound with silence or just some person speaking would compress much better and could use let's say 100 kbps , but the very next second where somebody would clap or maybe some drums start beating could take a lot more data, let's say 800 kbps

 

In comparison, when you're using codecs like MP3 or AAC you're basically configuring a bitrate - let's say 256 kbps vbr, meaning try to stay around 256 kbps give or take about 10% - and the audio codec will constantly look at the seconds of sound and decide what pieces you will notice less if they're missing or distorted, and throw those away to reach the desired 256 kbps.

 

Because you know the bitrate will be constantly around 256 kbps, indeed it's better for companies like Apple or Spotify to predict how much bandwidth to buy each month and how many computers they should have available for people to connect to. For example, they know a server with a 1000 mbps internet connection could in theory serve a 256kbps +/-10% aac stream  to around 950 * 1000 kbps / 300 kbps = 3150 people at the same time.

 

However, they're not using mp3 or aac only for this reason.

 

iTunes and other big stores of music used people with AAC  and MP4 - Apple originally used AAC not because it was the best but because it was one of the formats that allowed for easy implementation of DRM (anti piracy measures) ... and because the alternative back then MP3 was still suffering from the bad image it got from p2p file sharing lawsuits (kazaa and others).

 

People are so familiar with AAC and MP4 that a lot of them wouldn't understand what this FLAC is about (or for example Opus audio which is higher quality than mp3 or aac or ogg vorbis for example) so pretty much only the hip people, the tech knowledgeable people would know about FLAC and its benefits. Any store that wants to sell stuff now pretty much has to also offer AAC or some other popular format.

 

MP3 is now patent free unlike AAC, companies no longer have to pay license fees to compress music to MP3 legally.. but even so you won't see it used more often these days. For a company like Apple, the few millions of dollars they may pay in licensing fees for AAC are a drop in the ocean and worth paying because this whey they're not confusing their buyers by changing the format to MP3 and not paying a few % more in bandwidth costs (as you'd have to use 320kbps mp3 instead of 192-256kbps aac to retain quality)

Like I said, Opus audio is much better than all lossy codecs (aac, mp3, vorbis, ac3) but you won't see Apple move to it soon for the same reasons i explained above.

 

 

Tidal basically banked on the fact that their audience was/is teenagers and 20-40 years old people that will know about FLAC , but stores like iTunes also sell to much older people who only know about AAC

 

It wouldn't be that much of an extra cost for a store to allow downloads in FLAC or some other lossless format. It's basically 3-4 times the bandwidth for downloads.. which are rare, you download an album maybe 2-3 times after you bought it. 

 

Streaming, it's another story... because you can also have people who simply forget the stream running and fall asleep .. I know I sometimes leave Soma.fm playing in background while I read a book in bed and fall asleep waking 8-10 hours later with the stream still playing.  That's a lot of bandwidth I wasted for that radio.

 

[anothertom]

11 minutes ago, SniphzR said:

How can they even get it? From the ppl who make the songs? If yes then why cant everyone get it from them? And if someone makes a song and "renders" it (or idk what its called when it comes to audio) then will it be FLAC automatically?

So FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) is just a container (or codec) for a digital music file, just as mp3, AAC and WAV are codecs. All it really determines is the quality of the stored file in relation to the original file. An example of this is if you buy a CD, we can then take this as a reference for any encodings we make. If i take the CD and encode it to a FLAC file and an mp3 file there will be differences. The FLAC file will, when decoded and played, produce a bit for bit identical output to the original CD, this is due to the lossless aspect of the codec. The mp3 file will, when decoded and played, produce an approximation of the original CD, it will not completely replicate the original file, and any lost data can not then be recovered, this is known as a lossy codec.

 

In relation to Tidal, the quality they brand as HiFi is a FLAC encoding of a 16bit 44.1kHz original. This is equal to what you get from a CD, so it is likely they get a encoding directly from the music label at the same stage they create the CD files.

 

The quality of any music produced and made available is wholly determined by the quality made available by the producers. From there, we can only use what they've given us and use lossless codecs to retain that information.

[SniphzR]

Holy S, thank u guys