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lossless sound quality

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lossless sound quality

The principle of these audio compression methods is to keep as much as possible the parts that are easy to hear for the human ear.

In the main constant bit rate (CBR) mode, audible data in the audio is removed and it is easier for the human ear to hear. The more information that is retained for the part, the less information that is retained for the less audible part. As sound complexity increases, the degree of sound quality degradation becomes more apparent. For example, when listening to pure human music voice performances and performances combined with background music, pure The degree of degradation of the compressed music of the human voice is less obvious than that of the original file.

As for the lossless sound quality provided by today’s streaming platform, there are many formats, but strictly speaking, these formats, including flac and ALAC, belong to lossless compression (non-destructive data compression) rather than quality. lossless sound in a narrow sense, but due to its performance it is almost the same as WAVE, but the file is small, the decoding speed is fast, and it can be used in streaming services, so it is also a representative format of lossless sound quality that has entered the era without CD support, and it is also the current music streaming service.

Also, MQA like Tidal is a more controversial format, because although MQA is lossless audio compression in a broad sense, it focuses on driving high-quality music files that are above CD quality at a size similar to those of CD quality flac files. , but it can also be restored to the original high-quality audio format, but the controversial point is whether the higher compression ratio can maintain the same real auditory sense as the original high-quality audio has always been controversial. At the same time, MQA requires a specific device to perform hardware decoding. Yes, many devices can only decode MQA through software.

▲Currently called Hi-Res Audio generally refers to sound quality higher than that of a CD, but to be certified, the device must support the processing capability of the 24-bit 96kHz format.

However, since MP3 and AAC are previously planned destructive music compression formats, their purpose is to compress CD-level sound quality into smaller files, so most encoding specifications are presented in one presentation. CD-level 16-bit 44.1 kHz or 16-bit 48 kHz; but MQA is a format with a small file size that locks in high sound quality requirements. Basically, the MQA format will be music equivalent to 24-bit PCM or higher.

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lossless sound quality

Although lossless sound quality and high-quality streaming services have appeared on the market for a while

Like Apple isn’t the first to make true wireless earbuds, but it has ridden the wave of the market, with Apple’s launch of so-called hi-fi. compressed sound quality in Apple Music. In fact, after the lossless compression commonly known in the audio industry, lossless sound quality and high sound quality have instantly become a hot topic for many people to discuss, but whether the benefits of quality Lossless sound systems are really Obviously, the author will devote some space from theoretical concepts to practical levels. The difference is a simple overview, but the following arguments focus on easy understanding, so some of the descriptions are not entirely accurate.

What is lossless sound quality? What is the sound quality of the music we usually listen to?
The photo mentions * Introduction to KKBOX sound quality (including format), release year, sound quality, including numbers, KKBox, streaming media, Hi-Res Audio and Hi-Fi

▲ Both AAC and MP3 are destructive compression, while FLAC and ALAC are lossless compression

Before we get into the details, let’s talk about what is called lossless sound quality; From the author’s concept and cognition, the so-called lossless sound quality is a relative word rather than an absolute word. The main source is the relative word born due to the appearance of the MP3 music compression format; after the music industry went digital, digital music files were generally recorded via PCM encoding, and WAVE files were generally used on CDs. The time and space situation that MP3 was born into was because hard drive capacity was generally small at the time. To store a large amount of music data in storage space, you probably need to compress the files.

The reason why MP3 cannot be called a lossless format is because it essentially compresses the original WAVE in a way that limits the bitrate by combining concepts like the psychology of sound. The bitrate compression mode, compared to the bitrate of the original WAVE file, compresses at least in a range of 1:4 to 12:1. The higher the bitrate, the greater the amount of retained information. For example, AAC format also adopts similar audio psychology for compression, but the efficiency is better than MP3. Therefore, most of the lossless sound quality of most streaming platforms currently uses AAC as the mainstream.

Which format has the best sound quality for music?

PCM, the highest level in audio files, is the ancestor of all digital audio (not including analog), with the highest fidelity and high volume.

Common formats include pcm and cda, which are primarily used to burn records as CD files. CD is not a format, it is a standard, please refer to the official red book published by SONY (Sony) for details. It could be on a common CD-ROM, which was later modified) and cannot be saved as format.
Therefore, it must be said that PCM format has the best sound quality, but its volume is extremely large, so it generally uses WAV as the original file to save audio files, the quality is also quite high, the loss is almost quite small, but the volume is relatively large. This is a format developed and illustrated by Microsoft, which is suitable for Windows operating systems and can also be used on the latest MAC systems. Extension: .wav
is the original audio format dedicated to the MAC system, it is AIFF, the extension is Aiff, which was independently developed by Apple and is very common on Mac. That said, this is the best format (except PCM) on a Mac.
On Unix and Java platforms (which mostly refer to SUN platforms), the corresponding format is AU and the extension is au. It is currently the standard audio format under Unix and Java.
The above formats are all original file formats, which are usually huge in size. In order to facilitate transmission on computers, people have developed compression formats. Compression is divided into lossy compression and lossless compression. Obviously, lossy compression has a higher compression rate, but it requires The problem to be solved is how to solve the sound quality problem. The usual practice is to sacrifice the part that the human ear cannot hear, but the human ear is very different, so it is difficult to care for all people. Among the song formats, the best ones are flac (lossless, flac extension), Monkey’s Audio (lossless, ape extension), DTS (multichannel, mainly used with DVD, dtc/wav extension), AC3 (released by Dolby, multichannel surround , realistic sense of presence, extension ac3), AAC (loaded, good sound quality, extension Aac or mp4), WMV (this is also a video format, an improved version of wma and asf, quality is comparable High, extension wmv), as well as MusePack (mpc extension, completely free) and MP3Pro (mp3 extension) are also quite good, these formats are quite high in sound quality, even for users who require not bad sound. Also, the most popular formats are mp3 and ogg, as well as SONY’s special ATRAC/ATRAC3 format, which is dedicated to MD. These effects are also good and are more common on the Internet, but the effect is obviously not as good as the formats mentioned above.
As for rm and wma, because the compression is too high, the sound quality is really unflattering, especially those that circulate on the Internet, which are lost and cannot be lost anymore, so it is highly discouraged.

What music format has the best sound quality?

When I want to download songs, I always feel that the sound quality is not so pure, it seems a bit muddy, what format is good to listen to?

There are three lossless music quality formats: ape, wav and flac.

APE is one of the popular lossless compression formats for digital music. Due to its early appearance, it has a wide user base all over the world, especially in mainland China. Lossless compression formats such as APE use a more refined recording method to reduce volume, and the restored data is the same as the original file, ensuring file integrity.

WAV is a sound file format developed by Microsoft. It complies with the RIF file specification and is used to store audio information resources on the Windows platform. It is widely compatible with the Windows platform and its applications. This format supports a variety of compression types. algorithms and supports multiple WAV file with standard format is the same as CD format, with 44.1K sampling frequency and 16-bit quantization number, so the sound file quality is almost the Same as CD.

Chinese translation FLAC is a lossless audio compression coding. FLAC is a well-known free audio compression codec, which is characterized by lossless compression. Unlike other lossy compression codes such as MP3 and AAC, it does not destroy any original audio data, so it can restore the sound quality of music discs. It has been compatible with many software and hardware audio products (such as CDs, etc.) since 2012.