"Fake" lossless file from artist's store? Options

[pinoniceusagi]

Hi. I bought an ALAC-encoded album from an artists' official homepage a few days back. The file size was a bit smaller than I expected (and the "bitrate" displayed in foobar lower than 90% of my own lossless rips).

So, I checked the filed with this application called Audiochecker 2.0.

It reports the rip as being MP3s that have been transcoded into lossless format. I tried the same application on a lot of my own lossless rips, and it reports my own rips as "true" lossless rips.

Is there a way to confirm whether the album I bought really is a lossy to lossless transcode or not? I do not own the original CD, so I can't compare that way.

[punkrockdude]

It is hard to trust stores. I once bought Propagandhies song Night Matters from their album Support Caste from iTunes and it is clearly encoded from lossy or by subpar encoding even though it is 256kbps AAC. The sound is really "wobly during a guitar riff part" which Spotify's 160 version don't even have.

[Dynamic]

It is hard to trust stores. I once bought Propagandhies song Night Matters from their album Support Caste from iTunes and it is clearly encoded from lossy or by subpar encoding even though it is 256kbps AAC. The sound is really "wobly during a guitar riff part" which Spotify's 160 version don't even have.

It's quite possible for this to have been encoded from lossless but that it's a problem sample for iTunes/Quicktime AAC encoder, and it might be worth reporting to Apple, as they seem keen to discover and correct problem samples and tune and improve their proprietary encoder and will have the lossless original to compare it against. It's probably encouraging that Ogg Vorbis (used in Spotify) copes well with it.

If someone reading has a lossless original of it, it could help to improve encoder tuning to upload a short clip (<30 sec) of part of the wobbly guitar riff part, in accordance with TOS#9, to the Uploads forum.

Even at high bitrates, well tuned encoders like Quicktime AAC and LAME VBR still have a few problem samples. This one sounds like it might be the class of sample that I suspect relates to tonal sounds simultaneous with transients (e.g. Angels Fall First sample reported in Uploads forum is one, though 'lead-voice' and 'trumpet_myPrince' are probably worse).