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Topic: When converting .APE to .FLAC using foobar, does it re-encode or transcode ? (Read 2024 times) previous topic - next topic
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When converting .APE to .FLAC using foobar, does it re-encode or transcode ?

This is probably a noob question and I'm already pretty sure that it re-encodes, but I just had to confirm it.
Re-encode or transcode ?

Re: When converting .APE to .FLAC using foobar, does it re-encode or transcode ?

Reply #1 –
What's the difference?

Re: When converting .APE to .FLAC using foobar, does it re-encode or transcode ?

Reply #2 –
since you're transcoding from lossless to lossless, theres no quality loss involved.
wether you call it reencode or transcode doesn't matter, I don't think there are different words for with and without quality loss

Re: When converting .APE to .FLAC using foobar, does it re-encode or transcode ?

Reply #3 –
Yeah, what's the difference.

The source of confusion could be that  "transcode" is often used as a bad word for re-encoding lossy -> [anything].

Lossless to lossless is lossless as long as target format actually supports the signal (which is no issue if it is CD sourced).
E.g., FLAC does not support floating-point. I have no idea whether this could possibly apply to any .ape whatsoever.

Re: When converting .APE to .FLAC using foobar, does it re-encode or transcode ?

Reply #4 –
Just to clarify, "transcode" means to convert from (trans-) one encoding format to another. Sometimes PCM is used as an interstitial format, but the end result here is the same, since both the source and target encoding formats are lossless.