How do you tell if a song is Lossless?

I have been re-downloading all of my music in FLAC and converting them to AIFF using a program called XLD. I’m doing this so that I can play the songs on my ipod. Anyhow I was wonder how can I tell if these songs are truly lossless. I do have Adobe Soundbooth CS4 and can see the waveform but I don’t know what to look for exactly when determining of a song is lossless. I would appreciate the help so I can upload some of the albums I have.

‘Lossless’ just means that data isn’t sacrificed as part of the compression process compared to ‘lossy’ compression such as mp3 – although sound files you’d have to be constantly editing mp3 files or saving the mp3 at a low bit rate before you’ll start to notice a degradation in sound quality.

An easy comparison is image files – file formats like JPEG and GIF use lossy compression, where small amounts of data are deleted in order to keep the file size down. Usually this isn’t a problem, but when you edit the same file repeatedly without uncompressing the file first (such as saving to an uncompressed format), more and more data is lost. It’s the same for audio files.

Really, I don’t think there would be a problem saving into AIFF, especially if the format was lossless to begin with.

‘Lossless’ just means that data isn’t sacrificed as part of the compression process compared to ‘lossy’ compression such as mp3 – although sound files you’d have to be constantly editing mp3 files or saving the mp3 at a low bit rate before you’ll start to notice a degradation in sound quality.

An easy comparison is image files – file formats like JPEG and GIF use lossy compression, where small amounts of data are deleted in order to keep the file size down. Usually this isn’t a problem, but when you edit the same file repeatedly without uncompressing the file first (such as saving to an uncompressed format), more and more data is lost. It’s the same for audio files.

Really, I don’t think there would be a problem saving into AIFF, especially if the format was lossless to begin with.

I understand all of that but what I want to know is how can I tell if the FLAC files are truly lossless?

Technically speaking GIF isn’t lossy. It just has a limit o 256 colours. If you have an image consisting of 256 or less colours and start editing it and saving, you won’t loose any data.

How to tell if a song is lossless? Check the file extension! .FLAC, .APE and .WAV are common lossless file types.

But if your question is "how do I know if this is a fake lossless song?", then you can download a program called "Audiochecker". Feed some lossless files into it, and it will tell your how likely it is that they are true lossless.

An interesting tool that was made for the purpose you want is Neill Corlett’s Informer (http://www.neillcorlett.com/informer/). It shows the frequency content of whatever sound is playing on your computer. So you can see if a file has its full range or you can see what’s lost in compressing it. I also used it to find out how shitty my webcam’s microphone is. :laugh:

An interesting tool that was made for the purpose you want is Neill Corlett’s Informer (http://www.neillcorlett.com/informer/). It shows the frequency content of whatever sound is playing on your computer. So you can see if a file has its full range or you can see what’s lost in compressing it. I also used it to find out how shitty my webcam’s microphone is. :laugh:

I use a mac. I can’t get this or audio checker to work. Any programs I can use that are mac friendly?

An interesting tool that was made for the purpose you want is Neill Corlett’s Informer (http://www.neillcorlett.com/informer/). It shows the frequency content of whatever sound is playing on your computer. So you can see if a file has its full range or you can see what’s lost in compressing it.

Definitely checking that out when I get my other computer back. I’ve wanted a tool like this for years, never really knew where to start looking. Thanks.

Edit: I hope your user name is a Soundgarden reference.

I hope your user name is a Soundgarden reference.

No, I actually got it from a Strokes song, "Ask Me Anything". (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xms9QGn46Wo) I don’t really know any Soundgarden.

Anything for Mac users to tell if a song is truly lossless?

If you can’t find anything with Google, you should go over to Hydrogen Audio (www.hydrogenaudio.org) and ask. Sounds like something they’d be very concerned about.