Flac - Mono Vs. Stereo Options

[Azevedo]

Hey everyone,

I have this audio source in stereo FLAC+CUE and used CUETools (libflake max compression) to split the CUE/FLAC into single tracks
Then, AS THE ORIGINAL CD IS MONO I converted the STEREO FLAC to MONO FLAC using sox:

sox.exe stereo.flac -C 8 mono.flac channels 1

The results:

Stereo:

CODE

Format                                   : FLAC
Format/Info                              : Free Lossless Audio Codec
Duration                                 : 3mn 22s
Bit rate mode                            : Variable
Bit rate                                 : 507 Kbps
Channel(s)                               : 2 channels
Sampling rate                            : 44.1 KHz
Bit depth                                : 16 bits
Stream size                              : 12.2 MiB (99%)
Writing library                          : Flake#0.1

Mono:

CODE

Format                                   : FLAC
Format/Info                              : Free Lossless Audio Codec
Duration                                 : 3mn 22s
Bit rate mode                            : Variable
Bit rate                                 : 353 Kbps
Channel(s)                               : 1 channel
Sampling rate                            : 44.1 KHz
Bit depth                                : 16 bits
Stream size                              : 8.51 MiB (100%)
Writing library                          : libFLAC 1.2.1 (UTC 2007-09-17)

Now I have these questions for you folks:

1. After these operations, the mono Flac audio still losslessly 'original'?
2. Why didn't I get 50% space saving when using -C 8 compression level?
3. Is it recommend to scan replay gain and store int on the flac's tag?
4. Is it recommended to encode flac audio in mono out of DUAL MONO?
I mean, dual mono isn't it such a waste?



Thanks

This post has been edited by Azevedo: Oct 20 2012, 14:48

[pdq]

The "AAD" means that the source material was analog (obviously), and it is distributed in digital (obviously), but the mastering was performed in analog, so noise was introduced into the two channels, making them slightly different. By encoding losslessly you are capturing every detail of this added noise, which takes up bits.