Why go up to 1411kbps when codecs can achieve losslessness at almost always lower bitrates? To waste space? What's the point?

[nigel tufnel]
...but these waves go up to 1411.2 kbps!
[/nigel tufnel]

You haven't seen how some VBR encoders react to extreme sharp attacks. Sometimes bitrates can jump higher than 600kbps.

Unrestricted VBR already exists.

Each extra kb/s makes me feel that little bit more hardcore.

Let me rephrase: a lossy, psychoacoustic audio codec that would never have perceptible differences. Does theory show if it's possible or not?



I said to an extent only because the quality level will dictate how extreme the bitrate maximums will go, but for all intents and purposes it is unrestricted, since it can go as high as it feels it needs to for that quality level.

Every lossless codec must be unrestricted. It will go much higher then just 1411 kbps if you use 24bit/96kHz. Imagine if you recorded a white noise. This can't be compressed at all. A lossless sompressed file will have the same bitrate as original WAV.

On the other hand if you record 5 minutes of absolute silence, a losslessly compressed file will have just a few bits (much lower then 32 kbps).

Everything you're talking about already exists and is implemented in ALL lossless codecs. Just use your logics and you should be able do deduct it yourself.

You guys have way too much free time...

This is my concept about 'Virtual Lossless'. Loss some data but not loss in qualtiy is lossless, no data lost but quality was degraded is lossy.

Well, in that case, you're wrong. Mathematically altering audio data while, to the listener, retaining perceptible identicality to the source is transparency. And WaxCyl, I sincerely hope that your post was a (bad) joke.

To make it clear and simple:

If after decompressing a compressed file the result is the same as original file, the compression is lossless. This is an objective truth.

If after decompressing a compressed file the result is different then original file, but there is no audible difference, the compression is transparent (and lossy). This is very subjective.

I cut the silence in the start and the end of the song (someone called it 'no gap' or gapless), so does the edit file make sense about 'virtual' lossless?

I don't think so. You lose some high quality silence, so it's lossy .

Are you sure I didn't hear anything in that "silence"?

-brendan

Ahhh, the old jitter jibe eh...

Jitter is a known aspect of any clock based signal, and has been around well before the CD player was even created. What happened 'a few years ago' was audiophiles discovered it and decided that it was another point on which to place their 'expertise', 'golden ears' and truck loads of cash.

Feel free to point to some valid data showing that jitter from any non-faulty hardware has any human-noticeable effect on sound ;-)

musepack --quality 10 is what you seek

I've tried WMAL (Microsoft), ALAC (Apple), APE, Shorten, WavePack, FLAC, even RAL (RealAudio), and could not choose among them on the basis of sound quality alone, nor could I tell any of them from the original WAVs from which I encoded. Some are more efficient in their compression, some are faster than others in either encoding or decoding, some have such features as streaming and multi-channel support, some have error-correcting features, some have better hardware, software or OS support than others, yada, yada...

I chose FLAC because of its robustness, relatively high speed, tagging and streaming support, and best of all, it is open-source - not tagged to any evil empire like Microsoft or Apple. And since I run both WinTel and Linux boxes, OS support is important to me and FLAC can be used almost anywhere. If you have the balls to write over the firmware of your iPod, you can even use it there, too, with the help of Rockbox.

Since you are a classical music lover, as am I, consider getting the something like the Olive Symphony music server. This is a high-end CD player/burner/ripper with a hard drive-based server with software designed for classical music listeners. It rips CDs to FLAC or MP3 directly and stores them on the hard drive for direct playback. The company also offers units that have streaming servers as well. These units are not cheap, but their quality is absolutely first-rate, and of all the lossless formats out there, they support FLAC.

Check them out at http://www.olive.us/p_bin/?cid=01_01_explore.

Lastly, this is purely anecdotal and unscientific, but audiophiles in the self-styled "golden-ear" club - I'm talking about analog-forever diehards who only recently bought CD players because they've finally gotten "good enough" to be called hi-fi; guys who own no furniture but drop SIX GRAND on a TURNTABLE - generally do accept FLAC as "CD quality", if not quite as good as the best vinyl.

Take that for whatever it may be worth to you.

Lossless means that no audio information is lost?!?!? But, there MUST BE SOME QUALITY LOSS!

(Bad joke, of course.)

This discussion is hilarious.

"Virtual lossless"; "high-quality silence"... This topic has made my day. Thank you all!

Luckily most people don't realize that the audio data on SACD is losslessly compressed. Will it still sound as good when you know ?

Of course it was a joke.... but what do you mean by BAD joke?
(Well I thought it was funny anyway)

I have tried about 10 WAV(CD or microphone recording by my mouth)
the MD5 sum(even SHA256, if I got a hash collision, i would win 100 lotteries) of orginal WAVE and compressed->decompressed wav

They are all identical!

surprise surprise