WAV vs. FLAC Bitrate?

[Avagadro1]

WAV vs. FLAC Bitrate?

Heretofore I have always ripped CDs in MediaMonkey in WAV format (want lossless). For the first time, today I tried FLAC.

Question:
MediaMonkey shows that all CDs ripped to WAV are at a 1411 bitrate (I assume that is the highest available, or that matters, when ripping from a standard-production CD).

On today’s rips to FLAC, I noted that bitrate varied around 450 to 500. Does that matter? Is it a matter of the level of compression selected? Does it affect sound quality? I selected “DEFAULT” for bitrate as all final-productions CDs are 16-bit (24-bit should only matter when recording or playing back a digital file, not a CD).

Any help?

Thanks,

Howard

[rivorson]

FLAC is lossless, which I presume you already know.

CDs are recorded at a constant 1,411 kbps. There is no variation to this as it is written into the standard.

WAV files are uncompressed, so the bitrate of the ripped file matches the bitrate of the CD.

FLAC files are compressed so that each second of audio uses less disk space, and the reported bitrate is for the compressed file, which in your case is just over a third of the original file size. Higher levels of compression will result in a smaller file size, but the output for any level of lossless compression will always match the input.

[Avagadro1]

Thank you, rivorson.

I assume, therefore, that a little more or less compression will not affect final audio quality (merely the time it takes to rip the file).

Howard

[rivorson]

Correct, the audio quality is unchanged by lossless compression. A higher compression level just means that it takes more processing power to rip and play the file, but all modern hardware should easily handle the highest level of FLAC compression without any noticeable lag.

It's only lossy compression such as mp3 files where a lower bitrate means lower quality audio.

[Lowlander]

FLAC compressions works the same as ZIP or RAR compression. No data is lost on compression thus you still have a lossless file.

[Avagadro1]

Thank you all; one final question:

If I rip a CD in FLAC format (instead of WAV), will I later be able to BURN a CD that will be playable on ANY CD player, much as I am able to do when my digital files are in WAV format?

Thanks,

Howard

[MMFrLife]

Yes, because the program will have to convert the FLAC to WAV before burning anyway to make it playable as a general
audio CD (your FLACs remain safe).

The audio recording on a CD is the result of PCM (pulse code modulation) in the form of the red book audio specifications.
CD players are made to read the red book standard discs.

WAV is just an attempt to represent that in file form in a way that both a computer and player will understand it.