flac compression/file size discrepancies Options

[nelce]

So I was ripping an audio cd to FLAC using EAC and noticed that the percent compression was a lot higher than all the flac files I have downloaded in the past. As an example, a certain track that is about 4 minutes in duration, when ripped from the original cd, ended up being 12mb in size and 72% compressed. Most of the downloaded flac album tracks are usually about 20-30mb and only 25-35% compressed.

I downloaded the exact same track in flac format and it is 23mb and 46% compressed, which is quite significant. I know there are different compression settings for flac (from 0-8), but from what I read, it didn't seem like the difference could be this huge.

I took my ripped flac file, and the downloaded flac file, decoded both of them to wav, then used the same program to reencode both files back to flac. basically the same discrepancy in percent compression and file size still exists.

I also ripped another track from a different cd to flac, and downloaded the same track in flac on a reputable website (transcoding is not allowed on this website so i know that isn't an issue), and had the same problem. my file was 13.27mb (75% compressed) and their file was 25.87mb (51% compressed). It seems that my ripped files are consistently more compressed and smaller in size, which would be great if they were truly lossless. But I have hundreds of downloaded flac files and none of them are this compressed so I am a bit concerned here.

Any ideas on what may be going on here? Is it possible for two flac files of the same song, where one file is twice as big as the other (12mb vs 23mb)? I would appreciate any comments or explanations for this matter! Thanks in advance!

[Roseval]

Take CD quality (16 bits / 44.1 kHz sample rate) as an example.
If you have a WAV of 1 Mb and you convert it to FLAC size will be normally between 60-70%
If you convert to 320 kbs MP3 size will be approximately 25%

If you convert the FLAC back to WAV size will be 1 Mb
If you convert the MP3 back to WAV size will be 1 Mb
Simply because converting back to WAV is expanding the compressed format back to 16/44.1.

Obvious file size will tell you nothing.

If one compare the audio part of the original WAV with the FLAC converted back to WAV, the number of samples will be identical and the content of each sample will be identical simply because FLAC is lossless compression.

If one compare the original WAV with the MP3 converted back to WAV, the number of samples will be identical but the content of each sample will be different simply because MP3 is lossy compression. Due to the lossy compression information is discarded.