Here’s what’s odd, a 313 kbps (10.3 MB) m4a converted to 891 kbps (28.9 MB) FLAC. Instead of MP3 CBR 320 (higher than the original) or VBR 256 (V0 highest manual rate in MM- lower bitrate than original) I went with FLAC at 0 compression. I wanted to convert them out of m4a but maintain the highest bitrate possible. They were averaging a bitrate of 313 kbps. I was wondering if the m4a files I received were lossless or not. This is also an incentive to add more information (such as the composer credits) to my song's tags. When I convert the files for use on my player, the tag information is carried over to the converted file. Now, I rip to FLAC and then tag the files once. Although I can transfer some of the information from the old songs to the new ones, it still takes time. In the past, when I re-ripped my tracks (such as when I obtained a better encoder), I ended up having to re-input and then check and correct the track information. The fact that FLAC is an open format is a strong advantage for maintaining my library in that format, and the dropping cost of large hard drives (I can purchase a 1TB external hard drive for less than $100) makes the size of FLAC files less of an issue.Īnother advantage of ripping to FLAC is that I only have to tag my files one time. Although my player doesn't support FLAC, I can easily convert the songs for it into one of the formats that is supported by my player and at the quality level I choose without having to re-rip my CDs. This is one of the main reasons that I've begun re-ripping my music collection in FLAC. The good thing about lossless though: if you ever think you made the wrong choice, you can always convert your library without any compromise in quality. Compared to those two, all other lossless codecs are far less widely supported. I keep everything in FLAC since it has always been an open format (that is also supported by my portable player), while ALAC is used practically only by Apple products. You can also check out Wikipedia's articles on the MPEG-4 Part 14 (that's M4A) container format, and the Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) or Apple Lossless (ALE/ALAC) codecs respectively.Īnamon wrote:If you want your files in lossless quality, it is up to you what you decide to do. If you want your files in lossless quality, it is up to you what you decide to do. There is no alternative codec (with sensible encoding and decoding times) that will give significantly better compression than FLAC, and it's not likely to ever happen. The compression you get with FLAC is near-optimal. What I can say with 100% certainty though is that if your files are even within the broader region of the size of an MP3 file, then they are lossy. So just going by the filename, you can't tell whether the audio has been stored lossy or losslessly. In particular, M4A is popularly used for both AAC (lossy) and Apple's ALE/ALAC (lossless) codecs. Per se, it does not say anything about what compression has been used to encode the audio stream. A container is a method of storing audio streams in a file. When talking about "audio formats" it is important to make the difference between codecs and containers.
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