Lossless audio formats

Lossless audio formats

Any recording is lossy, sure. It's impossible to record the exact sound-wave field of an original audio source. But you start to stretch the bounds of sanity when you go down this route. We need to draw some kind of line in the sand if we're to use the term "lossless". Sure, any recording is not going to be exact. But there are so many other influences in the recording pipeline that may be more important, like the placement of the microphones, the frequency response of the recording electronics, the aliasing caused by digital sampling, the frequency response and placement of the speakers or headphones that you use to listen to the resulting recording etc. etc. etc.

The warmer, more enjoyable tone that people often refer to when listening to vinyl is actually caused by distortion of the original recording, by a non-flat frequency response. The clicks and pops caused by microscopic dust particles can be either enjoyable and soothing or absolutely, intolerably annoying depending on your point of view. Whether the recording is closer to the original is such a subjective argument as to render it almost meaningless for the purposes of debate. I mean on what measure are we comparing them? Distortion of the frequencies normally audible to the human ear? CDs win. Distortion of the frequencies not theoretically recordable with a CD's sampling rate? Records win. Continuity of fidelity over time and with consecutive plays? CDs win. With a tactile, satisfying user experience? Records win. Whatever.

I love this anecdote that my dad told me once; he was a solid state physicist and electronics buff, and he couldn't abide people who talked stuff up, especially needlessly expensive stuff. He went over to an audiophile's house one time, and he was showing my dad his amazing audio set, with its state of the art amazingness etc., enthusing about how exact the sound was, how perfect the rendition of the original, how the thousands of dollars spent was totally worthwhile.

My dad politely pointed out that the road noise coming in from outside caused a bigger dip in signal to noise ratio than did the cheaper electronics in his own set at home.

For all intents and purposes FLAC is lossless. The original signal is retrievable, and is exactly identical to the uncompressed one. Its strength lies in being specifically tailored to compressing audio signals, and as such it typically compresses up to 50%, compared with general purpose compression like ZIP with typical compression of 20%. If you rip straight from CD, you can record a .cue file which allows an exact reproduction of the original CD. Try that with Vinyl.

I guess, if I actually had a point to this comment, it would be something like: sure, no recording is precisely lossless. But CD is so close to it that 99.99% of people wouldn't be able to tell the difference, especially when listened to on typical audio electronics. Have a look at Nyquist's Theorem. If you want to go buy all your music on DVD, that's fine, the recording industry will love you. I hope you can hear above 22kHz though.

The popularity of MP3 and OGG attest to the fact that they're good enough. The unwashed masses just. don't. care. They've voted with their feet. It's fun to argue about it though, isn't it? ;)