Re: [tlug] [C&C] AAC is lossy, FLAC is lossless

[Brett Robson <tlug@example.com>]

Josh Glover wrote:
> What lossless codec would people recommend for audio? Brett, you have
> some experience--IIRC--with audio engineering; do you have a favourite
> codec? 

It depends on what you have. I mentioned above I use ogg (320k), flac 
and wav. Ogg is great but not all portable players support it - I don't 
*think* ipods do. To my ears ogg sounds better than mp3 because mp3 
easily can lose dynamics, funky music doesn't pump (listen to the snare 
crack), but turning up the bit rate on any format helps. Of course flac 
(lossless compression) and wav are great but eat up disc space, and wav 
file formats can vary causing incompatibility issues. I don't use AAC 
because it's incompatible with my music production software.

People often say they can't hear the difference but that's wrong. Even 
if they are not consciously aware of it the music sounds different, it 
has lost air, shine, sparkle and pump. That sounds like weasel words but 
these have real meaning to audio engineers. But all this depends on what 
you are listening to. Modern pop music, especially Japanese, is so 
highly compressed (audio wise not data) that it doesn't matter what 
codec you use. But whatever you do don't let me get started on that one.

Brett