How to tell lossless from lossy.(Music talk)

[twncam]

My main journey as a pirate is to get music.

Mp3 is good and sounds great but how do you tell the difference as compared to lossless.

Unless I rip and upload an album, I cant assure you of the quality but I have a couple little apps that may help.

I DL most of my music as lossless but is it really lossless or a cheap upcode?

These are 3 app I use to check audio files.

auCDtectTaskManager_1.6.0_RC1
Lossless-Audio-Checker-Windows-64bit
spek-0.8.2

Are the perfect?
Not really as nothing is perfect but they help you to learn how to be an audiofile.

Dont forget there are thoses that will upcode a MP3 to flac and you are wasting you bandwidth on this.

These are not perfect but give you a general account of the quality.

Lossless is over 20kHz.

If you have better apps for this please post.

Please comment and help everyone to know........

 

[twncam]

OK, lets talk music.

 

[Katzenfreund]

A related question is whether one can tell the difference between lossless and high quality MP3, e.g. 256 kbps.

I consider myself sincere enough to admit that I can't, but this may be due to my preference for oldies, which have loser quality, which I listen to thru the speakers of my PC.

A further question is whether a barely audible sub-subtle difference is worth the bother. In my case it's not, or as Mr Spock put it:
"A difference that makes no difference is not a difference."

Note: As people's demands and equipment differ wildly, my above comment is in no way intended to undervalue OP's contribution.

 

[Tania Tee]

Another application you can use is Fakin' The Funk. Not only does it automatically check if the audio file is upscaled or not but it will also tell you what the actually quality of the audio file is i.e. Says 320kpbs but actually is 128kbps. The only catch the first 100 fakes detected are free after that you have to pay a small fee to continue using it. The work around I noticed is you can still use it without paying you just need to do one or two tracks at a time as it will still give you a notification its fake just not the real bitrate but who cares all you want to know if its fake or not right?

Spek is a free alternative however based on the spectrogram graph you have to work it out yourself manually whether its upscaled or not. Some files are quite obvious whilst might not be. Trail and error I guess.

In my view 99% of the time quality is guided by your ear. Some tracks clearly sound good or bad and some you can notice the difference between two files. Nonetheless, most people prefer lossless (WAV or FLAC) 20-22kHz for more superior quality by default however it takes a lot of hard drive space especially WAV files just like movies and TV shows I guess eg. HD, 4K, UHD & MKV, MP4. On the other hand 320kps 18kHz (I think) is the next best substitute with some quality loss but a much more smaller file size.

From my own experience, generally lossless (WAV/FLAC ) tracks do sounds better than lossy 320kbps but most the time it's sounds almost the same i.e. can't really hear a significant or any difference. Ironically on the flip side lossy (mp3) tracks at 128kbps can sometimes sound better than 320kbps. Not idea why though, again your ear if your best friend and the source of where the file came from but of course you don't want a collection of upscaled fakes either.

Hope this helps.

 

[whitefish]

twncam, end this fear of lossless, get a Mac ...

the fish

 

[twncam]

I have used "Fakin' The Funk" also Tania.

Dont save many movies/tv shows and have always loved collecting music since I started my pirating dayz.
I remember the old dial up and taking what seemed like forever to get one song and then the connection would drop out
For me mp3 is good enough as my hearing is not what it used to be and as stated most people can't tell the difference.
But I do want my archives to be lossless as I can always downgrade to mp3 to share.

Just wanted to start a conversation and maybe learn of some new apps,tricks and tips to make me "More Smart"

 

[twncam]

Just an FYI if you see a file titled HTOA in your lossless music, this is a good sign that this is a legitimate rip as this is usually first few moments of silence on a CD.

The beginning of the first track doesn't always start at 00:00:00. Cuetools will preserve any data from 00:00:00 up to the beginning of the first track even if it is just silence. Sometimes you might find actual content there which is why it is called Hidden Track One Audio (HTOA).

 

[NavyRet]

It also helps if you have good speakers. I have Bose on my computer and Sansui on my living room player. I prefer the Bose over the Sansui, but it's close.

 

[Tania Tee]

I have used "Fakin' The Funk" also Tania.
I remember the old dial up and taking what seemed like forever to get one song and then the connection would drop out
For me mp3 is good enough as my hearing is not what it used to be and as stated most people can't tell the difference.
But I do want my archives to be lossless as I can always downgrade to mp3 to share.

Just wanted to start a conversation and maybe learn of some new apps,tricks and tips to make me "More Smart"

Cool twncam, for me Fakin The Funk does the job but no doubt there are better and more importantly free tools out there I gather
Likewise, I remember dial up and when he damn connection drop out at 98% after waiting 2 hours for a 4 minute track to download and you had to do it all again from the start lol
I think that as well, majority of the time mp3 is good enough although lately i've been moving towards lossless (WAV) its just the files take up so much damn space. Might bite the bullet and go back to mp3 but see the benefit of lossless that you an always convert down but never can covert up regardless of the audio file type without it being an upscaled fake.
No doubt you're a smart cookie already but agree new tricks and tips always come handy

 

[Katzenfreund]

For those content with MP3 but who still want the best quality for the file size, the encoder used plays a role as well, while VBR (variable bit rate) will yield a smaller file for the quality, or better quality for the file size. And I'd be greatly surprised if any modern MP3 player doesn't support it. Even my old SONY the size of a flash stick does.

As for the encoder to choose, the free, opens source LAME is considered the best MP3 encoder at mid-high bitrates and at VBR.

 

[EMS]

Urm....wasn't the question, what's the difference between lossy and lossless? Just saying

I can't be bothered to explain it so I hope this helps....

https://techterms.com/definition/lossless

https://techterms.com/definition/lossy

 

[twncam]

Thanks EMS for the links but I dont need this as I know the difference.

This is just a general conversation about music as far as tips,tricks and good apps to have.

I used to use SMLoadr to get muisc from Deezer, you could get flac or mp3 @ 320/128 but they closed the backdoor so to speak,
You can still use it but only get 128kbps quality.

But I found another one that works and does allow you to DL lossless from deezer.
It is called Deemix.
Open source and works good so far..
You have to have an account on deezer and get your cookie(arl) to put into deemix to allow it to download.

Download links here

https://download.deemix.app/pyweb/
OR
https://download.deemix.app/gui/

So far so good.

(Just a note as this app reaches out to download, it may set off your AV on set up.
I use the pyweb and it is portable)