Some of my music does not have any back ups, for instance a cd that i barowed frommy friend or one that i buy jointly(cd-r's don't last forever). So i was wondering if it was a good idea to create Losslessback ups. But then it occured to me that if a lossy codec incodes a lossless codec it may not incode to its full potenstial and also may have adverse effects. What do you think. I know i could always just turn it back into a wave.
Losslessly compressed data will give you exactly the same results as the original uncompressed ones.
Lossless means there is no data lost, so when it's decoded it should be exactly the same as the original data, in this case your CD. The only thing that would make it different is reading errors from the ripping process, but if you use a quality program like EAC or something then the errors are inaudible (these are not errors from scratching, they are just errors that occur due to the nature of the CD drives--all CD drives have read errors, even on flawless CD).
So in the end, you're all but encoding your lossy stuff straight from the CD. So go ahead and encode away.
I understand what Lossless is and i understand it is an exact reproduction. I want to know that if i take a wave file and turn it into digitss then then take the digits and later use a lossy on the digits not a wave file how does that effect the audio. i got to replys in 5 minutes. Wicked Cool.
AFAIK, when you encode directly from lossless to a lossy codec where the encoder will accept lossless files as input. It will first convert the lossless files back to .pcm (ie.wav) anyway before encoding. So there should be absolutely no difference in encoding from lossless to lossy or from wav to lossy.
Anyone please correct me if I'm wrong.
Uh, What? I don't think I really understood your question, but I'll throw you some answers in the hopes that one of them helps you.
A lossless backup is just that, lossless. If you take a Wav file from a CD, and use the lossless codec, then you can get that Wav back again, bit-for-bit. It's like zipping a file, only you get better compression (a 14 MB wave file will turn into a 7-8 MB lossless file, depending on the music and the actual codec).
The classic example of a lossy codec is an mp3. It doesn't take too much to listen to a 64 kbps mp3 and know that it sounds like crap. However, here at HA, we strive to find settings so that lossy codecs sound indistinguishable from lossless ones.
So if you want to be absolutely certain that you're not losing information, go with Lossless. If you're willing to accept a potentially unnoticeable loss of quality, then go with Lossy.
picmixer, answered my question. thank you and thanks to everyone who posted. Now to go a little deeper, when the decoder has to changed it back to wave from lossless will that add a significant abount of encoding time or is it negligible. Thanks
As picmixer put it, yes you will get identical lossy files if you encode from a wave or from a lossless file.
The mp3 (ogg/mpc/mp4) encoder either decodes the whole lossless file to a wave and then deletes it, or they can just do it in one step to save time - either way, you get the exact same result
edit: To answer your other question - I found it takes a bit longer having to decode it (10 seconds per file), but if the lossy encoder can support STDIN (doing it in one step) then the time difference is close to nothing.
incredible that the 7th respone came in under a minute. Any way thank you for answering my question. From my understanding Lossless creates an exact copy, if you exclude meta noise, scatches, and cd ripping. If i am to encode from lossless to lossy then the lossy encoder will first decode the lossy and then encode the resulting wave file. and it will be slightly slower than normal. If i am wrong please correct me. otherwise this thread is complete.
picmixer, answered my question. thank you and thanks to everyone who posted. Now to go a little deeper, when the decoder has to changed it back to wave from lossless will that add a significant abount of encoding time or is it negligible. Thanks
You're welcome.
Hmh, am not absulutely sure about that one. Although I would say that on a fairly new computer lossles decoding times are usually quite negligible. They usually decode with the blink of an eye on new machines, so I guess that would also apply when they get decoded by the lossy encoder.
That is indeed one hell of a lot of replies you are getting.
Hmh, just saw Mac already answered this in more detail then me
Oh found an interesting feature in Oggxp. There are decoder options that say to eigher decode to wav or use play back. so now the question is which one to use. I think i am just going to use quality 6.25 instead of lossless and then i can just peel to what ever quality leve necessary for my future portable ipod. I would like to once again thank everyone for their supporting my n00b questions. ;-)
I think i am just going to use quality 6.25 instead of lossless and then i can just peel to what ever quality leve necessary for my future portable ipod. I would like to once again thank everyone for their supporting my n00b questions. ;-)
From my understanding, the peeling implementation is so poor that you're better off re-ripping from CD. Also, I don't think that the iPod can play back Ogg files (yet). To be honest, I'm not sure if it ever will since Apple is really backing AAC, which is a direct competitor to Ogg Vorbis
When i said it was going to play back in the ipod that was actually my dry sense of humor that only i seem to get . But i just encoded it with ogg at 6.25 and i was not at all satisfied with winamp's Performance so winamp is out and thank you for telling me about he poor ripping i would be pissed in the years to come if i had to learn it then when creative labs decided to support ogg. (again my dry humor) With the test samples i have know they sound different in foobar2000 than in winamp. They sound much better in foobar2000 acutally. which to me is strange i didn't think the player had any real effect on the quality. I was ready to brand ogg is poor untill i tried foobar200.
When i said it was going to play back in the ipod that was actually my dry sense of humor that only i seem to get . But i just encoded it with ogg at 6.25 and i was not at all satisfied with winamp's Performance so winamp is out and thank you for telling me about he poor ripping i would be pissed in the years to come if i had to learn it then when creative labs decided to support ogg. (again my dry humor) With the test samples i have know they sound different in foobar2000 than in winamp. They sound much better in foobar2000 acutally. which to me is strange i didn't think the player had any real effect on the quality. I was ready to brand ogg is poor untill i tried foobar200.
You find it interesting to know that the person who wrote up Foobar USED to write the Vorbis plugin for Winamp. Since then, the Winamp people have modified it to their needs, and Peter (the foobar developer) left, annoyed at the way things were going at Nullsoft.
That's not the full exact story, but since Peter IS a regular here, he could probably tell you the full story behind it (or you could search on the foobar 2000 forum).