lossless vs. lossy music

[Pottel]

thanks to the TTD for the info:
Why trade lossless media? Mp3 and Ogg sound good to me, what's the big deal?
Proponents of lossless and lossy audio formats seem immutably locked in a struggle for ideologic dominance. Each seems convinced of the superiority of each style and virtually unwilling to listen to the arguments presented by the opposing side. In this swarm of insults, baseless criticism, and pseudo-scientific testing methods, there is indeed an enormous difference, and understanding where each style of audio compression is appropriate is an extremely important facet of trading.

In simple terms, lossless compression schemes are capable of being decoded back to an identical .wav file as the one that created it. Lossy compression picks certain parts of the music and discards it in an attempt to shrink the filesize. The idea is to pick parts that the human ear is unable to discern and remove them, thus leaving no wasted space for storing files.

Quite simply, the latter is inappropriate for audio trading. The files which you trade will pass through hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of hands. If each trader takes the liberty of compressing to their own lossy format of choice, the result will be catastrophic for the quality of the audio after several iterations. To ensure that everyone who desires a recording gets a chance to hear it in as good a quality as it was originally recorded, it is important to maintain a lossless lineage from user to user. Once a file has been compressed to a lossy format, that missing information can NEVER be replaced, and therefore files that have been compressed to lossy, even when converted back to lossless formats, are unsuitable for trading.

The truth about lossy file types is that, under proper scientific double blind studies, a very small percentage of humans are able to hear the difference between uncompressed .wav audio and high quality (192 KBps or higher) encoded lossy formats. These formats have their place. Many people compress their audio recordings to a lossy format for playing on portable players, their computers, or standalone home units. This is an effective method as the audio difference in one generation of lossless to lossy compression is likely to not cause an audible difference. Feel free to compress lossless recordings to whatever format you choose, but never, ever pass on files compressed to lossy formats or lossless files sourced from lossy formats to other traders.

For the good of the trading pool, please respect the difference between lossless (SHN, APE, FLAC, WAV, AIFF, etc) and lossy (MP3, OGG, AAC, etc) compression types. Only trade or pass on lossless files so that the overall quality of the trading pool remains high for everyone to enjoy.

Simply put, there are NO lossy file types (OGG-Vorbis, MP3, AAC, etc, etc) permitted for trade at this site. This is NOT a negotiable issue, there will be NO subforum for mp3 traders. If you ignore this rule and post lossy sourced material, there are ways to test for this and it will be discovered, resulting in your seed being deleted. Please respect the high quality standards we have put in place, and bring your mp3s elsewhere. If you are unsure of whether or not your seed is lossless, please post in the Technobabble forum and ask for assistance...we are glad to help.

[Ian Lewis]

Thanks for sharing Pottel 

[Simon]

Makes absolute sense - great post Pottel.

On a slightly different note - can anyone enlighten me as to why we don't just post the original .wav files instead of converting them on the first place? I am sure there is a totally logical reason:-)

Many thanks.

[Pottel]

massive size difference, but same quality...therefore..

[Simon]

Interesting - so does anyone know how this 'compression' process works without losing quality as in the case of MP3's and other lossy formats?
Cheers.

[rudiger]

I'm not an absolute supporter of lossles vs lossy, though I prefer lossless (i don't know why  ). I think that these formats are sons of their own time: when the internet connections were slow and the Hard Disks (for storage) were small, the mp3 format was a good way to share music. Today is easy to share/store bigger files. I think that there are not so many differences to listen to a good mp3 or a flac file: the difference, I think, is more psychological than real. If there are audible differences, why you have to use sophisticate programs and algorithms to discern them? should be sufficient to listen to them. But it is not!
And I can't understand the TTD staff: If I send my own mp3 files to my friend X and he send these files to his friend Y, where is the problem? why they suppose that X will convert the original files to wav to compress again to mp3 to send these 2 times compressed files to Y? it is just illogical to me. If they think that mp3 is a valid format why they don't allow to share mp3 on their site? Their reasons sound ridiculous to me. 
 

[rudiger]

Interesting - so does anyone know how this 'compression' process works without losing quality as in the case of MP3's and other lossy formats?
Cheers.

I have not technical competence, but I think it works (about) like winzip: you need a compressor (the program to create lossless files) and a de-compressor (the program to read/decomprime these files). This is the reason why your cd player can't read flac files. Maybe I'm wrong 

[Pottel]

they do not say that someone would convert back to lossless on purpose (although i have seen it happen) but that at the end of the line someone with no knowledge will do it, not knowing realising it and then spread this file again, and that is where the gene pool gets dirty.
also, it is not extreme, but the difference CAN be heard especially when the audience cheers or when drums hit cymbals and stuff, but the most clear it becomes with that audience cheer.
then again, it is just a matter of knowing what files you got, and clearly separating them (as i do for personal use, i.e. Ipod)

[rudiger]

they do not say that someone would convert back to lossless on purpose (although i have seen it happen) but that at the end of the line someone with no knowledge will do it, not knowing realising it and then spread this file again, and that is where the gene pool gets dirty.
also, it is not extreme, but the difference CAN be heard especially when the audience cheers or when drums hit cymbals and stuff, but the most clear it becomes with that audience cheer.
then again, it is just a matter of knowing what files you got, and clearly separating them (as i do for personal use, i.e. Ipod)

I'm not totally agree Maarten. for me the most is philosophy. before came out those programs to discern lossy sourced cd, the only way to be quite sure about the quality of a cd was to trade with serious and well-known traders. nobody (at least not the most) was able to discern these formats with a simple listen (you could have just a suspect, but not the certainty). Anyway, being not sure about the source of all my cds (for my listen they are good, but for the others who knows?) I prefer to trade DVDs only 

[Pottel]

also dvd's can be lossy converted to DVD.....

[rudiger]

also dvd's can be lossy converted to DVD.....

maybe my sight is better than my hearing, but I'm pretty sure I can distinguish a DVD sourced from an avi/vcd file

[Simon]

also dvd's can be lossy converted to DVD.....

maybe my sight is better than my hearing, but I'm pretty sure I can distinguish a DVD sourced from an avi/vcd file

Not so sure about this - most of the sound/video quality depends on what equipment the recording was made on in the first place. If it was with a mono microphone and a casette recorder and then converted to a WAV file and then this WAV file was subsequently recorded to a lossless file and a lossy file who could tell the difference 1st Gen?

[Pottel]

absolutely simon.
that is the point with old pink floyd recordings for example...

[Hoops McCann]

I'm not an absolute supporter of lossles vs lossy, though I prefer lossless (i don't know why  ). I think that these formats are sons of their own time: when the internet connections were slow and the Hard Disks (for storage) were small, the mp3 format was a good way to share music. Today is easy to share/store bigger files. I think that there are not so many differences to listen to a good mp3 or a flac file: the difference, I think, is more psychological than real. If there are audible differences, why you have to use sophisticate programs and algorithms to discern them? should be sufficient to listen to them. But it is not!
And I can't understand the TTD staff: If I send my own mp3 files to my friend X and he send these files to his friend Y, where is the problem? why they suppose that X will convert the original files to wav to compress again to mp3 to send these 2 times compressed files to Y? it is just illogical to me. If they think that mp3 is a valid format why they don't allow to share mp3 on their site? Their reasons sound ridiculous to me. 
 

Behind every recording that is shared on "TTD", there is a person who made the original recording; a taper. Most tapers are "quality minded" people that go to great lengths to record and share shows in the best possible quality. After that, no one wants their tapes passed around as crappy mp3s that delete data from the original recording.

[allen]

Listening to lossy music too often do harm to our ears, that's the simplest reason why I choose lossless formatted music.  And for our man Mark, it deserves to keep in lossless.

Wishes
Allen