Tag: can airplay stream lossless audio

Lossless digital audio formats

Uncompressed formats
The first digital audio formats encoded information, as they say, “as is”.

This format is, first of all, convenient for the computer itself: there is a simple correspondence between a sequence of digital signals and a sound waveform. Not surprisingly, despite the further development of compressed audio formats, uncompressed formats continue to be actively used in the field of professional (and amateur) sound work. What are these formats?

First, it is the audio CD format itself. For him everything is simple: this is the format in which most audio discs are recorded (unless, of course, several albums have been recorded on them at the same time – in this case, we are talking about a format obviously compressed). The Audio CD format uses Pulse Code Modulation (PCM) to convert “digital” to “analog.” This is the type of conversion that forms the basis of most other audio formats.

Everything is clear with CDs, but what about sound presentation formats on computers? Here, as you can imagine, the biggest computer and software manufacturers were the first to rush in, developing formats like AIFF (Apple) and WAV (Microsoft and IBM), known to computer and operating system users of these developers to this day. from today. Furthermore, Apple, being the undisputed leader in the field of computer multimedia at the time, introduced its format in 1988, ahead of the developers of the WAV format by three years. If you let the computer read the data on the audio CD and translate it into any of these formats, you will get an exact copy, which will take up the same amount of space on your computer’s hard drive as the original on the CD. The only difference will be in the format in which this data will be packed.

It is important to note that the capabilities of these formats exceed those of an audio disc. They allow much greater audio depth (up to 32 bits) and sample rates (AIFF up to 196 kHz, and in WAV, any). But even these parameters were not satisfied with the developers of ultra-high fidelity audio formats. These formats were first used on Super Audio CD (SACD) developed in 1999 by Sony and Philips, and were eventually installed on personal computers for lovers of high-quality sound.

The digital audio format used in SACD is called DSD (Direct Stream Digital). It uses a fundamentally different way of analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog conversion – the waveform is encoded with just one bit at a time. In other words, the “depth” of the sound is only one bit, but this information is updated much more frequently than in most other formats, that is, the sample rate is increased several times. This allows the algorithm to recreate the shape of the sound wave by estimating the density of these pulses in a given time interval.

This way of representing the signal made it possible to avoid non-linear quantization noise. It is true that the higher the frequency of the sound, the lower the number of pulses that encodes it, the precision of the encoding decreases, which means that the constant noise level in relation to the signal, that is, the hiss, increases . But at a high sampling frequency, the level of this hiss becomes critical already in the ultrasound region, which is imperceptible to the ear. At the same time, a much more important task has been accomplished: there is no quantization noise, a kind of “curse” of digital sound. They all “left” with the same inaudible noise. It is not surprising that this format fell in love with critics of “digital”, it seemed to bring it closer to “analog”, eliminating traces of discretion in its sound.

However, it turned out that DSD files are completely unsuitable for editing: they are edited only by converting to PCM (and vice versa when saved), and each such conversion multiplies the amount of noise that soon becomes critical for hearing. . It’s one thing when you record ready-to-use analog material in DSD, which has passed analog mastering. But what should you do when recording and editing new audio material? So, there were formats that went back to pulse code modulation with additional adjustments against quantization noise. Notable among these is DXD (Digital eXtreme Definition), which has found application not only for mastering source data for SACD, but also for listening to high-quality audio on a computer.

MAXIMUM SOUND QUALITY. LOSSLESS FORMAT: WHAT IS IT? HIGH QUALITY MUSIC IN LOSSLESS FORMAT

Today there are about three dozen common digital audio formats. Why you need to create so many types of sound files to store one type of content and how to manage all this, you will learn from this material.

Surely many users prefer to use their home computer not only as a workhorse, but also as a multimedia center, where they can watch movies or family photos, as well as listen to their favorite music. Although compact digital players or mobile phones are certainly more suitable for listening to musical compositions, but unlike them, a computer can not only play music.

No matter how big the built-in memory of your music player is, it will most likely be difficult to store your entire music library on it. Additionally, using a PC, you can create, edit, organize, and search for music. Also, don’t forget that there are around three dozen common digital audio formats today, and most players are far from omnivorous and can only play a few of them.

So why do you need to create so many music formats to store one type of content? The point is that in the vast majority of cases the sound is stored in a “compressed” form, since one minute of uncompressed composition occupies about 10 MB on the hard disk. On the one hand, this seems not to be much, but on the other, if you are a music lover and your collection consists of several hundred or even thousands of songs, then it is clear that the sound must be compressed to reduce the space it takes up electronic media.

Various special algorithms are used to compress music files, which subsequently determine the structure and presentation of the audio data, or so-called digital audio file formats. All audio formats can be divided into three groups: uncompressed audio formats, lossless compression, and lossy compression.

NO COMPRESSION

One of the most widespread formats related to this type is the well-known WAV. The sound of files with this extension is stored without compression or changes. It is true that much more space is required to store uncompressed files and therefore WAV is more widely used only in professional audio and video applications, where the sound should not have a loss of quality before processing. Storing ordinary musical compositions in this form is an unwarranted waste.

To play WAV files, you do not need any special software, as all media players understand this format, including the standard Windows Media audio player built into the Windows system.

Another format used to store uncompressed audio that is worth mentioning is Apple’s development called AIFF (Audio Interchange File Format). As you may have guessed, it is most commonly used on Macintosh computers running Mac OS X.

LOSSLESS COMPRESSION (NO LOSS)

Lossless compression algorithms for audio files work on the principle of conventional file cabinets. They do not provide the highest level of compression (40 to 60%), while they have virtually no effect on sound quality. It is also worth noting that in this case, the encrypted data can be fully restored to its original form. Therefore, the use of lossless compression is most often used in cases where it is important to preserve the identity of the compressed data with respect to the original.

The most popular audio formats in this group are FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec), APE (Monkey’s Audio), WMA (Windows Media Lossless), and ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec). Each has its own pros and cons. For example, the APE codec offers slightly better compression gains, while FLAC is more common. In general, all true music lovers store their music collections in lossless formats, since they do not remove any data from the audio stream, and files created with these codecs can be listened to even on high-quality stereos.

Lossless formats: flac, ape, wv, dts, and other digital audio formats

Recently, in the open spaces of the Russian Internet, music in Lossless formats has been found more and more often, which can not fail to delight connoisseurs of free real quality. But sadly, files with the flac, ape, wv, dts permission cause a “RAM” stupor for a common user and he walks in search of his usual mp3. Well what can I say, Epic Fail, comrades?

This guide provides a detailed description of lossless formats and describes in detail how to read and write such files …

Theory: lossless formats

Lossless data compression is an information compression method, whereby encoded information can be retrieved with bit precision. This fully recovers the original data from the compressed state. This type of compression is diametrically different from lossy data compression. As a general rule, each type of digital information has its own lossless compression algorithms.

FLAC and APE codecs are the main Lossless formats today

FLAC (English Free Lossless Audio Codec) is a popular free codec for audio compression. Unlike the lossy Ogg Vorbis, MP3 and AAC codecs, it does not remove any information from the audio stream and is suitable for both daily listening and archiving an audio collection. Today, the FLAC format is compatible with many audio applications.

Monkey’s Audio (APE) is a popular lossless digital audio encoding format. It is distributed free of charge along with open source code and a suite of encoding and playback software, as well as plugins for popular players. Monkey’s audio files use the following extensions: .ape to store audio and .apl to store metadata. Despite being open source, Monkey’s Audio is not free, as its license imposes significant restrictions on its use.

After downloading music on Lossless, you can burn it to CD in the future and listen to it with Hi-Fi (or other) class acoustics, while normal CD quality will be.

For comparison, bitrate:

-mp3 ~ 320 kb / s

-FLAC and APE ~ 1000 kb / s

Theory:

SACD, DVD-Audio, DTS-CD and others multi-channel music formats.

SACD stands for Super Audio Compact Disc, an optical disc format for storing music. It looks like a normal CD, some discs can be seen with the naked eye: their working side is yellow. The sound in SACD is recorded in a completely different format: DSD (Direct Stream Digital) and they are reproduced only in special players.

features:

– Multichannel: 6 channels of audio can be recorded

– A completely different type of recording (DSD), which provides better sound quality compared to a CD.

– Conditional compatibility with older players: there can be two layers to a disc: normal CD (stereo) and one or two SACD variants (stereo / multichannel).

That is, if the disk:

Single Layer (“Single Layer”) – Read-only on SACD players.

Double Layer or “Hybrid” (“Double Layer” or “Hybrid”): Read on both conventional CD players and SACD players.

All SACDs have CD text – text information about album, artist, and track.