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Lossless vs lossy, what is the difference?

In a recent article on wireless audio, we addressed the topic of lossy and lossless digital audio encoding. Today we will dwell on this topic in more detail.

So, we have analog sound, which, during digital sound recording and / or for later storage in a computer and other electronic media, is digitized into an audio file, an electronic document consisting of information about the amplitude and frequency of the sound, with the help of which the digital-analog inverse conversion and reproduction of the sound contained in the file.

The sound format depends on the quantization method using an analog-to-digital converter (ADC), two types of quantization are widespread:

pulse code modulation (PCM, most MP3 to FLAC formats)

sigma-delta modulation (Delta-sigma, DSD format)

The main parameters of digital audio are the quantization bit (bit) and the sample rate (kHz / MHz), which are indicated for various recording and playback devices as the format to represent digital audio, for example, 24 bit / 192 kHz.

There are uncompressed audio formats (eg WAV, AIFF), but for more convenient storage / distribution, codecs that compress audio data are often used. Data compression (data compression) is performed in order to reduce the volume occupied by files and is based on eliminating the redundancy contained in the original data. There are two types of compressed formats:

Lossless: lossless compression (FLAC, ALAC, APE)

Lossy: Lossy compression (MP3, Ogg, AAC)

Lossless compression allows you to make a complete recovery of the original data, lossy compression allows you to recover data with certain distortions.

Lossy compression is significantly more efficient than lossless compression and is used when full compliance with original and recovered data is not required, and volume reduction is a priority.

A lossy encoded file is very different from the original on the level of byte comparison, but to an inexperienced human ear, the difference may not be as strong and sometimes even imperceptible. It does this by focusing lossy compression techniques on the physical characteristics of a person’s senses, such as a psychoacoustic model, which determines how much sound can be compressed without degrading the perceived quality of the person. Impairments caused by loss of compression that are perceptible to the human ear are considered compression artifacts.

MP3 spectrogram (left) and original file (right)

Examples of common lossy formats:
MP3: defined by the MPEG-1 specification, perhaps still the most common format

Ogg Vorbis: distinguished by the absence of patent restrictions and higher quality with the same bit rate as MP3

AAC, AAC + – Exists in various versions, defined by MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 specifications, it became widespread along with Apple technology

eAAC + is a format offered by Sony as an alternative to AAC and AAC +

WMA is a format developed by Microsoft

Dolby AC-3

DTS

Previously, lossless audio formats were most often used for archival data storage and in cases where distortion was unacceptable or undesirable, and most common listeners used music in lossy compressed formats. But the amount of memory in electronic devices is constantly growing and prices are falling, which is why more and more people are switching to listening to Lossless formats, which allow them to perceive music in its original form. In addition, the support for Lossless formats has now appeared on almost all consumer devices, even some streaming services are beginning to broadcast sound in lossless quality, for example, Deezer presented in Russia or Tidal, which is officially absent from us.

Examples of common lossless formats:
Free lossless audio codec: FLAC is the most common free format

ALAC – Apple Lossless Audio Codec – Apple variant

Lossless audio encoding, also known as MPEG-4 ALS

Direct Flow Transfer – DST

Dolby TrueHD

DTS-HD Master Audio

Meridian Lossless Packing – MLP

Monkey’s Audio – Monkey’s Audio APE

WavPack – Lossless WavPack

WMA Lossless – Windows Media Lossless

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What are lossless file formats and why shouldn’t you convert lossy files to lossless files? Part 2

 

Some of these lossless formats also provide compression. For example, a WAV file generally contains uncompressed audio and takes up a lot of space. A FLAC file can contain the same lossless audio as a WAV file, but uses compression to keep the file smaller. Formats like FLAC don’t discard any data, they store all the data and intelligently compress it, just like ZIP files. However, they are still significantly larger than MP3 files, which throw a lot of data.

The conversion can be lossy even between lossless formats. For the conversion to be truly lossless, the data in the source file must fit inside the destination file. For example, lossless FLAC files only support 24-bit audio. If you convert a WAV file that contains 32-bit PCM audio to FLAC, some data will be removed during conversion. The process of converting a WAV file containing 24-bit PCM audio to FLAC will be lossless.

In the image below, the lower version of the photo is compressed using a low-quality lossy compression algorithm. The file size will be noticeably smaller than the image above.

Image via Wikimedia Commons

Why you should never turn a loss into a lossless
When you convert a file from a lossless format to a lossy format, such as ripping an audio CD (lossless format) to MP3 files (lossy format), you are discarding some of the data. The MP3 file is much smaller because most of the original audio data has been lost.

If you convert a lossy MP3 file to a lossless FLAC file, you will not recover any data. You will end up with a much larger FLAC file that is only as good as the MP3 file you converted from. You will never be able to recover your lost data. Think of it as making the perfect photocopy copy. Even if you could create a perfect photocopy copy, you would still end up with a photocopy that is not as good as the original document.

This is why converting lossy formats to other lossy formats is a bad idea. If you take an MP3 (lossy format) file and convert it to OGG (another lossy format), most of the data will be discarded. Think of it like making a photocopy of a photocopy: every time you photocopy a photocopy, you lose data and the quality degrades.

However, converting from lossless to lossless formats works fine. For example, if you rip an audio CD (lossless) to FLAC files (lossless), you will get files as good as the original audio CD. If you then convert those FLAC files into MP3 files, say, to shrink them to fit more on your MP3 player, you’ll end up with MP3 files that rival the quality of MP3 files ripped directly from an audio CD.

What should you use?
When you should use lossless formats and when you should use lossy formats depends on what you are using them for. If you want the perfect copy of your audio CD collection, you must convert them to lossless files. If you want a playable copy on your MP3 player and file size is more important, use a lossy format.

If you want to post a photo on the Internet, you must use a lossy format to reduce the size of the photo. (but keep a lossless backup of the original file). If you are printing a photo professionally, you probably want to use a lossless format during the editing process. (Note that for screenshots, PNG is a lossless format that can produce sharp and appropriately sized screenshots of spot colors on computer screens. However, PNG becomes much larger when used for photographs. containing many more mixed colors. Real world).

We will not be able to cover all the situations for which you choose the media file format. Just be aware of the pros and cons when choosing a file format.

To learn more about what type of image file to use and when, read What’s the difference between JPG, PNG, and GIF? Or, if you are curious about all the available audio file formats, read HTG’s explanations: What’s the difference between all these audio formats?

What are lossless file formats and why shouldn’t you convert lossy files to lossless files?

Whether you’re dealing with image, music, or video files, it’s important to understand the difference between the different types of formats and when to use them.

Using the wrong format can spoil the quality of the file or make it unnecessarily large.

Some types of media file formats are lossy and some are not. We will explain what these terms mean, the benefits of each type of file format, and why you should never convert lossy formats to lossless formats.

Compression explanation
We use compression to reduce the size of files, allowing them to load faster and take up less disk space. For example, when you take a photo, your camera captures all the light it can receive and adds the image. If you save the image in RAW format, which stores all the light data captured by the camera’s sensor, the image can be up to 25MB in size. (This depends on the resolution of the image – a camera with more megapixels will produce a larger image.)

If we simply upload these files to a social network or post them to a website, we don’t want these image files to take up so much space. A photo gallery with RAW images can take up hundreds of megabytes of space. RAW formats can be used by professional photographers to maintain high image quality while editing, but they are not intended for the average person.

Instead, our camera or smartphone converts the image to a JPEG file. JPEG files are much smaller than RAW images. When you convert RAW to JPEG, some of the image data is “thrown away”, creating a much smaller file. The conversion process uses a compression algorithm that works well with photos, making them look pretty good despite being compressed. Depending on the quality setting, you may still see compression artifacts.

Note that lossy formats often have a parameter that controls their lossy quality. For example, JPEG is of variable quality. If the quality is poor, the JPEG image file becomes smaller, but the image quality is noticeably worse. Here is an enlarged example of a lossy JPEG – you can see various “compression artifacts”.

Lossless and lossy formats
We call RAW Lossless because it retains all the data from the original file, and JPEG Lossy because some data is lost when converting an image to JPEG. However, these are not the only lossy and lossless formats.

Images: RAW, BMP and PNG – all lossless image formats. JPEG and WebP are lossy image formats.
Audio: WAV is a container file often used for storing lossless audio, although it can contain lossy audio as well. FLAC is a lossless audio format and MP3 is a lossy audio format.
Video: Various lossless video formats are widely used by consumers as they can make video files take up a lot of space. All common formats, such as H.264 and H.265, are lossy. H.264 and H.265 can provide smaller files with higher quality than previous generations of video codecs because they have a “smarter” algorithm that better chooses data for deletion.

Explained bit rate

Bit rate is one of the most important metrics for measuring digital audio recordings. It is measured in kilobits per second (for short: kbps, just kilobits, kbps, kbps, kbps, etc.).

On the fingers: answer the question “how much memory occupies a second of audio”.

All kinds of transformations are already underway: there are eight bits in a byte, 1024 bits in a kilobit, 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, and we arrive at the following empirical data:

bit rate 1400 = 1 hour takes 615 megabytes on disk
320 bitrate = 1 hour takes 141 megabytes on disk
bit rate 192 = 1 hour takes 84 megabytes on disk
bitrate 24 = 1 hour takes 11 megabytes on disk
Naturally, we all want to use disk space sparingly. This is where the format war begins. 11 MB is sixty times cheaper than 615 MB. Megabytes is the cost of storing audio recordings.

The price of storage can also be expressed in bills, dividing the cost of the disk by its capacity. For an archive of audio recordings, the price of storage is far from being as critical as for an archive of video recordings.

In addition, the price of storage can be conditionally expressed in man-hours, if the playback device has a much lower capacity than your general archive of audio recordings. It takes time to regularly download new tracks to the device.

The storage price can also be expressed in terms of square meters of work area. 500 audio CDs will take up a lot of space and require furnishing solutions, but a small external hard drive will fit in your pocket.

If there is a different price, then the question of quality arises: then we assume that the lowest bitrate has the lowest quality. So we come to the main question: where is the limit of reason, where is the ideal “price / quality” ratio.

The closest division of audio formats in descending order of average bitrate:

uncompressed audio
lossless compression
lossy compression

Uncompressed audio is the pure signal without conversion, “as is”, the equivalent of WAV or audio CD. Classic parameters: 1411 kbps, 44100 kHz sample rate, 16-bit audio.

Codec is an abbreviation for the words (KO der and DEC oder). An encoder is a program that packages a pure audio signal in the desired special format. A decoder is a program that converts a special format into a pure audio signal. In modern English, the two terms somewhat transform: is code continuation and dE below code, which corresponds to directing Russian counterparts to code and coding races. And do not confuse encryption and encryption: these are two very different processes, although externally there is a lot of similarity.

For an ordinary person, only a player that can work with this format (that is, has a decoder) is required. The “encoder” itself is only required to “create” such files.

Lossless Compression – Typically used for collectible audio material. In general, it is believed that this format can be exactly converted back to Audio CD.

Better is this compression:

Save disk space by about half
The file format assumes the storage of additional information (artist, album, track number, track name, etc.)
The compression formats themselves differ:

format openness and compression algorithms
player support
encoding, decoding overhead costs
compression ratio
The overhead is negligible for the average person and the compression ratio of the codecs differs only slightly. Main actors: FLAC, APE, WAVPACK, ALAC.

Lossy Compression – Provides a much higher compression ratio by discarding unimportant audio details. The smaller the size of the file we are trying to compress, the more details we will have to discard. In addition to details disappearing, technical artifacts also appear.

Main market players: MP3, OGG, AAC, WMA. They all have quality gradations – the higher the bit rate, the closer the quality is to the original. With the same bit rate, different codecs under different conditions can give different results.

You can explain with your fingers what lossy compression is using the example of compression of graphic files in JPEG format.

sample_jpg_100sample_jpg_090sample_jpg_080sample_jpg_070sample_jpg_060sample_jpg_050sample_jpg_040sample_jpg_030sample_jpg_020sample_jpg_010

At first, it is perfect and practically indistinguishable (no magnification).

In between, the quality drop is already visible to the naked eye, but you can still bear it.

In the end, the degradation of quality already goes beyond the limits of patience.

What is a lossless format?

Whether it’s images, music, or video files, it’s important to understand the difference between the different types of formats and when they are used.

Using the wrong format can degrade the quality of the file or make it too large.

Some types of media file formats are “lossy” and others are “lossless.” We will explain what these terms mean, the benefits of each type of file format, and why you should never convert lossy formats to lossless formats.

Compression explained
We use compression to reduce the size of files, allowing them to load faster and take up less disk space. For example, when you take a photo, your camera captures all the light it can receive and collects the image. If you save an image in RAW format, which stores all the lighting data captured by the camera’s sensor, the image size can be up to 25MB. (This depends on the resolution of the image – a camera with more megapixels will create a larger image.)

If we simply upload these files to a social network or post them to a website, we don’t want these image files to take up so much space. A photo gallery with RAW images can take up hundreds of megabytes of space. RAW formats can be used by professional photographers to maintain high image quality while editing, but they are not intended for the average person.

Instead, our camera or smartphone converts the image to a JPEG file. JPEG files are much, much smaller than RAW images. When you convert RAW to JPEG, some of the image data is “thrown away”, creating a much smaller file. The conversion process uses a compression algorithm that works well for photos, making them look pretty good despite being compressed. You may still see compression artifacts, depending on the quality setting.

Note that lossy formats usually have a setting that controls their loss. For example, JPEG has a variable quality setting. Poor quality makes the JPEG image file smaller, but the image quality is noticeably worse. Here’s a great example of a lossy JPEG – you can see various “compression artifacts”.

Lossless and lossy formats
We call RAW a “lossless” format because it retains all the data in the original file, while we call JPEG a “lossy” format because some data is lost when the image is converted to JPEG. However, these are not the only lossy and lossless formats.

Images: RAW, BMP, and PNG are all lossless image formats. JPEG and WebP are lossy image formats.
Audio: WAV is a container file often used for storing lossless audio, although it can also contain lossy audio. FLAC is a lossless audio format and MP3 is a lossy audio format.
Video . Some lossless video formats are widely used by consumers as they make video files take up a large amount of space. Common formats like H.264 and H.265 are lossy. H.264 and H.265 can provide smaller files with higher quality than previous generations of video codecs because it has a “smarter” algorithm that better chooses the data to discard.

What are the benefits of the MKV format?

The Matroska format is a multimedia container envelope for video, audio, and subtitle files.

A complete CD or DVD can fit in one file. The extension of a Matroska video file is MKV; only for MKA audio, and only for subtitles, MKS. The MKV format has many advantages over competing containers such as Microsoft® Audio Video Interleave (AVI), Apple® Quicktime® MOV, Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) and others.

While each of the container formats currently in use fulfills some or even many of the functions that the container format requires, Matroska aims to be the standard that meets all of them, standing out from almost all the others. Built in EBML (Extensible Binary Meta-Language), it is very flexible to meet future needs.

The first advantage of the MKV format is that it is open source, which makes the code freely available to developers around the world and to the general public. Most other container formats contain mostly proprietary code developed exclusively by the originating company and authorized parties. Open source software has the most potential for more creative solutions and wider implementation.

The MKV format supports menus such as DVDs, chapters, and multiple audio streams to include audio tracks in different languages. As with the DVD, you can choose the language of your choice, provided the creator has included several options.

Soft subtitles are also supported in MKV format. Soft captions are a separate subtitle track in a container that can be disabled or enabled by the user. If you ever downloaded an AVI file with unnecessary subtitles and couldn’t turn them off, you will appreciate this feature.

MKV can contain variable bit rate audio and variable frame rate video, as well as B-frame compression. But unlike most other containers, it also supports almost any video format, including MPEG-1, MPEG- 2, MPEG-4, MPEG-4 Part 2 (H.263), MPEG-4 Part 10 / Enhanced Encoding video (AVC). /H.264, Windows® Media Video (WMV), RealVideo and more.

The MKV format also supports almost any audio format, including lossless audio like FLAC and audio container formats like Ogg. It is also compatible with Speex, a lossy audio compression format for speech. The Matroska development team is confident that future video and audio formats will also be supported, thanks to the core EBML MKV format.

Not all audio players support MKV files. VLC Player, an open source and open source cross-platform audio and video player, supports MKV format without using any special plugins or codecs. Mastroska’s CorePlayer Pro and Mobile are other options. DirectShow® based Microsoft® players can play MKV files with the Community Combined Codec Pack (CCCP) installed. A full list of players, codecs, and plugins that support MKV is available on the Matroska website at the download link.

MKV support also extends offline. Manufacturers such as Samsung® and LG® already have dedicated HDTVs and Bluray® players that support MKV streaming.

What lossless audio format should I use to store music?

I started a project to copy my large CD collection and store them. Since I care about sound quality, I decided to store them in a lossless format. Right now I have tried using FLAC. However, reading this article gives me some doubts.

I have considered using vApple Lossless Files (m4a). It looks like Apple will support this format for years to come. However, I have not found a way to play them on my Playstation 3. The m4a format is compatible with Mac (of course) and on Windows FLAC, on the other hand, it is compatible with all major platforms. The advantage of the m4a format is the ability to import into iTunes. Today I connect my NAS and use VLC for playback (on my Mac computer).

My family has a Synology NAS, Mac Book Pro, Sony PS3, and several Windows computers. So I want to be able to play audio on all these platforms. Synology Server can transcode some formats like FLAC.

What lossless format do you recommend I use to store my audio files on my NAS? It should be a playable format on most platforms. This should be forward looking, but I understand that it is difficult to predict what will continue for many years to come.

One solution would be to keep my FLAC files. You could use them as long as FLAC is supported. When another fantastic lossless format comes out, I’ll have to convert them. As long as it is a lossless format, the sound quality is preserved.

Lossless audio file types: how it differs from Lossless

The word Lossy is used in digital audio to describe the type of compression used to store audio data.

The algorithm used in the lossy audio format compresses the audio data in such a way that certain information is discarded. This loss of signal means that the encoded sound is not identical to the original.

Lossy audio produces lower quality audio and has a smaller file size.

Lossy compression is also called irreversible compression because data that has been deleted is impossible to recover.

What is the difference between Lossy and Lossless?
When you create MP3 files by ripping one of your music CDs, some details of the original recording are lost, making it a lossy format. This type of compression is not just limited to audio; for example, JPEG image files are also lossy compressed.

Sheets of colored paper compressed into a ball

This method is the opposite of lossless audio compression used for formats like FLAC, ALAC, and others. In this case, the audio is compressed in such a way that the data is not deleted. The sound is identical to the original source.

Lossy archives take priority when it comes to compatibility. While lossless files are only supported by some devices and apps, a lossy audio format like MP3 will work on almost any device.

Examples of lossy and lossless audio file types
With losses Without loss
AA3 ALAC
CAA FLAC
MP3 MONO
MPC SHN
OGG TTA
WMA West Virginia

How Lossy Audio Compression Works
Lossy compression makes certain assumptions about frequencies that the human ear is unlikely to detect.

When a song is converted to a lossy audio format, such as AAC, the algorithm analyzes all frequencies and then discards the frequencies that the ear should not be able to detect. These low frequencies are filtered or converted to mono signals that take up less disk space.

Another technique rules out very quiet sounds that the listener is unlikely to notice, especially in the loudest part of the song. This approach reduces the size of the audio file while maintaining the highest possible audio quality.

What happens to audio when it is compressed
Lossy compression introduces artifacts. These artifacts are unwanted sounds that are not in the original recording, but are a by-product of compression. This noise degrades sound quality and is noticeable when music files are converted with low bit rates.

Various types of artifacts affect the quality of the recording. Distortion is one of the most common artifacts. For example, the distortion makes the drums feel weak, without any real beat. Song voices can also be affected, resulting in harsh vocals and a lack of detail.

In many cases, casual listeners cannot differentiate between lossy and lossless encoding, although some audiophiles using very expensive equipment claim to hear the difference. The quality difference is only noticeable when very low data rates or aggressive compression algorithms come into play.

What is the ALAC audio format?

If you use iTunes to organize, store, and listen to your music collection, it is most likely stored in AAC format.

If you buy music from the iTunes store, it is definitely stored in AAC format, because this format is the standard for storing audio on Apple devices.

ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec) is a format that stores sound in its original form, that is, without loss of sound quality. Yes, ALAC involves some compression of the music, but not by ruling out those sounds that a person apparently cannot hear, but by using data compression algorithms, so by decoding the music during playback, you will hear the original recording.

The ALAC format is very similar to another audio format that stores lossless FLAC audio.

The most curious thing is that the extension of files that are processed by different codecs, such as ALAC or AAC, have the same extension – m4a. This can be confusing, because it is visually impossible to determine which music file is compressed with which codec.

Of course, this can be done by looking at the amount of memory the file occupies. A normal song, compressed in AAC format, will take up less than 10MB or slightly more, while a melody stored by the ALAC codec may require 60MB or more to store a song.

You can also find out about the file’s encoding type by looking at the file’s properties. For example, in iTunes, this can be done by selecting a file and then following the following path: View Options – Show Columns – Type.

Benefits of the ALAC format
One of the main advantages of using the ALAC format is the quality of the music.

There is no loss of quality when ripping music from a CD; If you want to keep the original playback quality when ripping music from a CD, ALAC is great for that.
Conversion to any other audio file format: This point is a consequence of the fact that the music is stored in its original form. Those. You can convert the ALAC format to any other, even mp3, although AAC and the output will get very high quality output, while converting from one lossy format to another will make the quality noticeably worse.
Restoring your CD collection: If you like to listen to high-quality music and have not yet lost the sense of beauty that awakens every time you hold a physical disc of music in your hands, then you have an audio library at home. The ALAC format allows you to recover damaged CDs by burning a new one to replace the lost one without losing sound quality. This may not be a very popular reason for storing music in the ALAC format these days, however you have to admit that it is very curious.

Popular digital audio file formats

The last five years gave a great boost to the development of portable and stationary audio systems, and with this support for a variety of digital audio formats.

Small pocket devices have large internal memory, and stationary audio equipment has become even smarter and more demanding. That is why, now, we cannot save space on the player and download songs that weigh between 15 and 30 MB each, but at home, listen to digital music in a quality equal to the sound of analog vinyl.

Description of popular digital audio formats
However, the most widespread audio formats still have their pros and cons, and even in an urgent matter like digital audio, a “panacea” has not yet been found. Classic digital audio formats are divided into “compressed” and “uncompressed” streams, as well as formats such as “lossless”, which exclude loss of sound.

Description of digital audio formats Description of digital audio formats

Wav audio format
The Waveform Audio File Format (WAVE, WAV) is a file format for storing a recording of an uncompressed digitized audio sequence. In general, this is the most common format for working in the studio and broadcasting, because it allows you to get the most honest sound quality. For example, the standard audio CD format is an LPCM audio stream, with parameters: 2ch (stereo), 44-100Hz, 16bit.

Mp3 audio format
MPEG-1/2 Audio Layer 3: (MP3) is the most popular digital format for storing compressed audio. The MP3 format uses a special algorithm designed to greatly reduce the size of the original file. This format allows you to preserve audio that is close to the original sound, but thanks to many settings, it is extremely small.
Compared to the standard audio CD format, a file in MP3 format and a bit rate of 128 kbps will be approximately 1/11 the size of the original file.

FLAC audio format
FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) is a popular free codec designed for lossless audio compression. What does it mean? Unlike lossy audio codecs such as MP3 or OGG, the FLAC audio codec does not remove any information from the audio stream. This format is ideal for audiophiles who create their own music collections and listen to music on high-quality equipment.

Ogg audio format
OGG is a format that has not gained great popularity, but is nonetheless used by a fairly large audience. The OGG format, similar to MP3, compresses audio with loss of quality, but is fundamentally different in practical conversion calculations. This made it possible to get better quality with a smaller file size and to display this codec as absolutely independent. In addition to similar formats that convert lossy audio, OGG has the ability to adjust container properties.

Aiff audio format
The Audio Interchange File Format (AIFF) is a fairly universal audio file format developed by Apple, which is used to store audio data. Like its counterpart, the WAV format, it is uncompressed audio and is widely used in professional recordings and music production.
The .aiff and .aif files created by Apple Loops are used by GarageBand and Logic Audio music editors.

M4a audio format
Apple Losseles (also known as Apple Lossless Encoder, ALE or Apple Lossless Audio Codec, ALAC) (m4a) is another Apple development. This audio format refers to uncompressed audio for lossless playback. This is a fairly specific format, which is mainly supported by products of the creator company, and in some cases, as in the iPhone system sounds, where it is possible to use exclusively the m4a format.