"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.

[pdq]

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).

In general I would expect the opposite. Lossy conversion adds noise, and noise is difficult to compress losslessly.

If this track is available on CD then you could bit compare against that.

[_m²_]

In general I would expect the opposite. Lossy conversion adds noise, and noise is difficult to compress losslessly.

If this track is available on CD then you could bit compare against that.

Lossy often cuts off high frequencies that are hard to compress.

And, BTW, I've seen ex-MP3s placed on original CDs more than once already. With digital downloads I would be even more suspicious.

This post has been edited by _m²_: Sep 27 2012, 21:32