Is Lossless FLAC Really Lossless?

[mcp6453[_2_]]

Here is a post that I found in a forum. Is lossless FLAC really, well, lossless?
The idea of being able to add tags sounds great, but like one of the posters, I
plan to archive all of my CDs. My first thoughts were to archive them as 44K 16
bit wave files, but if FLAC is really lossless, why not?

"I'm not sure why you would rip to wave. You can rip to some other lossless
format without ANY loss in quality and use about 60% of the space. My personal
bias is towards FLAC. I ripped my 800+ CD collection to FLAC and it takes up
about 275 GB. Remember, there is absolutely no loss in quality by using FLAC or
other lossless formats. Plus, I don't think WAV has as many standard tag fields."

[Andre Majorel]

On 2009-10-12, mcp6453 > wrote:

> Is lossless FLAC really, well, lossless?

When I started using it some years ago, I got into the habit of
using flac to decode the .flac back to standard output and
compare that with the original uncompressed PCM. They were
always bit-for-bit identical.

--
André Majorel <URL:http://www.teaser.fr/~amajorel/>
"Marque nouvelle. Dans le stock. Les navires de FL, les
Etats-Unis. Service de client exceptionnel garanti."

[Nil]

On 12 Oct 2009, mcp6453 > wrote in rec.audio.pro:

> Here is a post that I found in a forum. Is lossless FLAC really,
> well, lossless?

Yes. If you doubt it, compress a file to FLAC format, uncompress it,
and use a file compare utility to compare it to the original file.
You'll see.

Here's a description of FLAC's features:

<http://flac.sourceforge.net/features.html>

[Richard Crowley]

"mcp6453" wrote...
> Here is a post that I found in a forum. Is lossless FLAC really, well,
> lossless? The idea of being able to add tags sounds great, but like one of
> the posters, I plan to archive all of my CDs. My first thoughts were to
> archive them as 44K 16 bit wave files, but if FLAC is really lossless, why
> not?

FLAC is truly lossless. You can prove it for/to yourself.

> "I'm not sure why you would rip to wave. You can rip to some other
> lossless format without ANY loss in quality and use about 60% of the
> space. My personal bias is towards FLAC. I ripped my 800+ CD collection to
> FLAC and it takes up about 275 GB. Remember, there is absolutely no loss
> in quality by using FLAC or other lossless formats. Plus, I don't think
> WAV has as many standard tag fields."

Incorrect. WAV accomodates as many tag fields as any other
RIFF(*)-based file format (which is to say any and all tag fields.)
There is no limit in the file format to the tag fields. Whatever limits
you may see are in the applications you are using to manipulate
the WAV files.

(*)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_Interchange_File_Format

[Richard Crowley]

"Richard Crowley" wrote ...
> And these lists are not exhaustive, they are merely a convienence that
> Syntrilliyum/Adobe included in the application code. Perhaps I should
> write an application that allows one to examine, create and delete all
> the tags in a RIFF file. Althought I'd bet that this already exists.

After a few quality milliseconds with Google, I downloaded RIFFVIEW.
I created a little WAV file and filled in the tags, and RIFFVIEW shows:

RIFF 'WAVE' (wave file)
<fmt > (format description)
PCM format
2 channel
44100 frames per sec
176400 bytes per sec
4 bytes per frame
16 bits per sample
<data> (waveform data - 1764000 bytes)
LIST 'INFO' (information)
<IART> (artist name)
"This is the Original Artist Tag"
<INAM> (title)
"This is the Name tag"
<ICOP> (copyright)
"This is the copyright tag"
<ICRD> (creation date)
"This is the Creation Date tag"
<IENG> (engineer)
"This is the Engineers Tag"
<IGNR> (genre)
"This is the Genre tag"
<IKEY> (keywords)
"This is the Key Words tag"
<IMED> (source medium)
"This is the Original Medium tag"
<ISFT> (software used)
"This is the Software Package tag"
<ISRC> (supplied by)
"This is the Source Supplier tag"
<ITCH> (recording technician)
"This is the Digitizer tag"
<ISRF> (source format)
"This is the Digitization Source tag"
<DISP> (displayable object)
TEXT: "This is the Display Title Tag"
<SyLp> (176 bytes)
{ long string of binary data }

[Ian Bell[_2_]]

mcp6453 wrote:
> Here is a post that I found in a forum. Is lossless FLAC really, well,
> lossless?

\Yes

Ian

[Steven Sullivan]

mcp6453 > wrote:
> Here is a post that I found in a forum. Is lossless FLAC really, well, lossless?

Yes.


--
-S
We have it in our power to begin the world over again - Thomas Paine