Real's page claims that Real Lossless offers:


As we had no efficiency data in the wiki for Real Lossless, I decided to test some sample material to see whether they did indeed offer <50% compression, which would put them up with the best of the lossless formats. The first sample I examined was Tomahawk's 101 North. The source file is 52.8mb. I loaded it up in RealPlayer, and after going through all sorts of arcane procedures to actually convert a file, managed to get to the conversion screen.



Amazingly, both the bit rate and the file size indicate a near exact 50% size reduction. After conversion, I looked at my media file to discover it was indeed 705kbps.



Actually, it isn't. The file is not 26mb as originally indicated, it is 35.2mb.



The library doesn't list file sizes, but clicking the file info option reveals it's true size inside RealPlayer.



The problem is, the bit rate is still listed as 705kbps. For a file of that size the average bit rate should be around 920kbps. It seems to me Real is being deliberately deceptive concerning the efficiency of their format. I'll update this when I have determined the average efficiency of the codec, but I wanted to let people know Real doesn't seem to be being entirely honest with us.

Interesting...

After my first experience with Real i never touched it again. Apperently my insticts were right, and Real isnt the sort of program i would like on my computer. Thanks for this info.

I have analysed 20 samples and they have an average efficiency of 69.8%. The details can be found here. I'll try to do some more tomorrow, however it had trouble with some samples and continually crashed with a Visual C++ error trying to convert them so right now I've just about had it with RealPlayer.

Real is always worse than Monkey in its "normal" setting! I'd consider it very inefficient.
It would be nice to include replaygain values in the list, cause compression size is mostly strictly related to loudness. Codecs may compress with different efficiencies at different loudnesses; I noticed that LA compresses much better than Monkey at very low volumes.

I've updated the list, you might need to refresh it in your browser to see the updated version.

The average compression isnt even close to 50%. Its more like 70. Its really interesting to see a company like real make a "mistake" like this. Somehow im not supriced that Real is doing something like this. They didnt get a bad rep by doing nothing.

The problems I see with the format so far are:

a) It's not clear at the start of the conversion process that the values that are given are estimates. It says "Required: 20MB", which gives the impression the output file will be that size when in reality it is around 20% larger.

b) It's doesn't use any kind of prediction to get these values, it simply halves the bit rate and size. If they're simply going to use a constant for estimates it should be closer to the format's real efficiency which is almost 70%.

c) The bit rate is always detected as 705kbps, even after the conversion process. This is simply half the PCM bit rate. It wouldn't be hard to perform a basic calculation to get the actual average bit rate, this just seems to be an attempt to decieve the user into believing the <50% efficiency claim on their web site.

According to my calculations (somebody please shout if I'm wrong), the average compression ratio in RAL, according to Defsac's test, is 69,80%.

I gotta admit these values seem a bit odd to me. They make Real Lossless by far the worst codec out there (compared to Hans Heijden's and Speek's values), even worse than RAR.

Maybe the choice of samples is too un-representative? Or maybe I'm that hopeless with arithmetic :B

Big thanks to Defsac for his test.

I've noticed that with ALAC as well. I have a friend who rips albums to wav-> normalize -1dB in audio editor->then convert to alac, and the resulting files are often 50kbps smaller each than if just directly importing.

(He insists that normal replaygaining (or soundcheck in iTunes) only affects the playback volume and does nothing to reduce clipping).

I think you are wrong, but it depends how you calculte the average.
I just summed up everything and the input was 824,819 MB and the output 538,510MB
This means the average compressed file is 538,510 / 824,819 = 0,652882632 of the original size so 65%.

EDIT if you sum all the percenteges and divide it by 20 you do get 69.8015, so you did calculate it correctly . Its just the method used thats different.

What a mess

If I understand correctly, however right the calculation is done, it's not the right calculation to use, unless all files were of equal size. I may be misunderstanding, though.

No, you are correct. I should have calculated the other way.

Still, 65% is a painfully bad compression ratio. That sounds very weird for a modern codec.

65% is not that bad. I have seen albums that average at 69% @ APE extra high. I just did a quick test with 40 random files using FLAC and the average is 63%.

It depends on the music and its loudness, anyway.
So, the results obtained are hardly representative for the overall efficiency of RAL.

What is? Unless you're planning to test every peice of music ever released the best you can achieve is an estimation. The reason I have left the efficiency value in the wiki blank is that I don't consider 20 samples statstically significant enough to accurately calculate an average. I hope to test at least seven times this amount.

I agree. The ideal would be to test whole albums, like Speek and Heijden did.

who will bribe them to add it to their charts? ...i mean, RKAU is on both charts, and someone out there *could* actually use Real Lossless.


later

I've tried on a couple of occasions, and not just the ones reported here and here.

Heijden tried adding it once, but he ran into non-losslessness problems.

Hopefully he'll give it a try again whenever he has the time.