Im not commenting for the links but to ask whats the difference between these types of ripping. I recently started to use EAC to rip in flac but i thought that there are no sub-categories of flac files. The file size difference is huge! It is worth it? Anyway, i dont want to go off topic, so i would like to know whats the difference between these files. Please dont use advanced terms because i know nothing exept what stereo and mono is :D Thanks in advance for your time.Hi giannisphy, sorry it's taken so long to get back with you on this, my job had me out of town and away from my computer this whole last week, and by the time I got home I was recovering from a slight bout with stomach flu that I picked up along the way. All is better now, however.

You are correct that there are no sub categories of .flac format. If you have a media player capable of playing one "sub-category" of .flac, then it will play all "sub-categories" of .flac, because there is only one.

The difference is simply in how much audio information the file's creator (me, in this case) chooses to put into the .flac file. Whether or not it's "worth it" just depends on what kind of playback equipment you have. I'll try to explain:

Let me use .jpg files as an example. (I assume you're familiar with .jpg image files, such as we find throughout the internet.) If you have a .jpg image stored at 400x600 pixels, and then you have another .jpg file of exactly the same image, except this one's at 800x1200 pixels, then the larger file will obviously have the greater amount of detail in the way it displays (and will probably appear larger on your screen, depending on your monitor's resolution). Most .jpg readers (such as your browser) will have no problem reading either one, because there's only one .jpg format with no "sub-categories", but the larger file will display with more detail simply because it has more information.

It's the same with .flac files, except that, where the larger .jpg image shows up larger, with .flac files, since the playback time for the same musical selection will be the same, the difference is found in two places - the amount of sonic detail you hear, and also especially in how many channels you have.

5.1 Surround Sound uses six channels - Left Front, Center Front, Right Front, Left Rear, Right Rear, and Low Frequency/Subwoofer. Or, in some movie files, you'll occasionally find 7.1 Surround Sound with eight channels, where Left Side and Right Side are added to the 5.1 list I just gave you. (In both cases, the ".1" refers to the Subwoofer channel.)

Most .flac files that you'll encounter are simply standard stereo files, with two channels, left and right. So when you start adding additional channels, this obviously increases the amount of data stored in the file, often many times over, as you yourself noted.

In addition, the "sampling rate" and "bit rate", to put it as simply as I can, provide cleaner, more detailed sound as the numbers go up. For example, normal audio CDs are always mastered at 44.1 kHz and 16 bits. In non-technical terms, that is simply a way of measuring how detailed the sound is that's stored on the CD.

If you go to a higher resolution of audio, such as 96 kHz and 24 bits, such as I used in the Vivaldi thread, then what that means is that you have more detailed sound stored in the file. To the listener's ears, since the playback time is still the same as with the 44.1 kHz/16-bit version, the perceived difference will be in how clear the music sounds, how well-defined the bass and upper treble notes are, and how much of the overall texture's density can be heard without the audio being overwhelmed by too much sound (like when a full orchestra is playing at its maximum volume). Whether or not you can personally hear the difference on your end will depend, to some degree, on how good your playback system is. (For example, if you're using a pair of mini-bookshelf speakers with the built-in sound card your computer shipped with, then there's a good chance that you won't hear any difference at all.)

To use a musical example, on Gustav Mahler's 5th Symphony, which is a highly polyphonic piece of music with incredibly detailed and complex writing, where you have a whole lot of things going on at the same time all over the orchestra, if you have a recording that is anything less than absolutely state-of-the-art, then it will be very, very difficult to be able to really tell what is going on, because there will be too much information being crammed into the audio file for it to be reproduced clearly to the listener. It might come across as hardly anything more than a muddy mess that doesn't really make much sense. With a higher-end file, however, such as 5.1 Surround Sound at 96 kHz/24-bit, (and assuming that you're using playback equipment that can take full advantage of the higher-end file) then now we have enough channels with enough detailed information that there's plenty of headroom for all that sound to be properly recorded and then reproduced for playback in a way that mostly everything can be clearly heard - and now the piece will "make more sense".

And besides all this, when you listen in Surround Sound, you're not just getting the orchestra coming from in front of you, you're also getting the ambience of the hall around you, plus if the piece calls for any offstage performers, then with Surround Sound, they'll sound from their correct location in your living room instead of sounding, in standard stereo, as if they are simply onstage along with everybody else.

As far as EAC goes, if you are working with standard CDs, then you will get everything the CD has to offer with EAC, no problem.

Where EAC has its shortcomings is in dealing with SACDs, which have a second layer of data. (There is literally a second sheet of paper-thin metal attached to the CD underneath the regular sheet of paper-thin metal that you find on all standard CDs.) This is where the high-resolution stereo (at 96 kHz/24-bit) and Surround Sound are stored. EAC will not be able to access these parts of an SACD. In fact, unfortunately, it is (currently) completely impossible for a computer to access that part of SACDs, because there are no drives available on the market that will read it, due to proprietary licensing issues with the manufacturers. The only way to access SACDs for use on a computer is to have a certain kind of Blu-Ray drive or a Sony Playstation 3 with the firmware UNupdated, and to make a LAN connection between the computer and the other machine. (This involved hacking the other machine.) The other machine can then rip the SACD's extra layer(s) and send the data to the computer via the LAN connection, in the form of an .iso file, which is normally around 3-4 gigabytes in size (because the SACD layer has so much more audio data than the standard CD layer, which is usually around 700 megabytes).

That .iso file has to then be processed (which takes quite a bit of work, to be honest, with a large number of steps involved) to convert it into playable .flac files that can be used on standard media players, like WinAmp, Windows Media Player, or VLC Media Player. (I use WinAmp for all .flac files.)

I certainly hope that I haven't merely made everything even more confusing for you than it already was. Please free to ask anymore questions that you still have. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/42753709/Photobucket/nod.gif

<.<
>.>

Why is this a thread?

Because giannisphy asked a series of questions in my Vivaldi Four Seasons thread about flac files (as you can see above) that have nothing to do with Vivaldi, and I didn't want to take the chance of the Vivaldi thread being diverted with a lot of audio discussion, and besides that, by creating this thread, I also thought that other people who know more about the subject than I do might be able to pitch in and give better answers than me.

A note on surround sound:

The standard is Side channels in 5.1 and Rear/Back added to 7.1 mappings.

Side channels are positioned at 90� to 110�.

A lot of playback codecs use this as a reference (LAV, FFDShow, etc) for 5.1 mappings.
It's also referenced in any Dolby document, too.

There's 6.1 in rare cases where there is no side channels but a single back center channel.
For compatibility, most software/hardware can easily just duplicate the back center into existing channels for lack of a system without 6.1 capability.

wow. Thank you soooo much for your time to explain these things to me! Really, thank you :)
I wish it would be easy for everyone to understand how things like these work but i have already read many posts on other forums from people who didnt really know.
I didnt understand your whole post to be honest. Not sure it its because of my lack of knowledge or my non-expert english.
However i still have some questions to ask.

Whenever an audio cd is Surround sound and not just stero will it be written somewhere? Also, i never had any audio cd written that is Surround sound even though they are somewhat new (year 2010+). So, i guess that 1) every audio cd these days is Surround Sound (sorry for my bad english!) and they just dont write it somewhere or 2) they tend to choose specific music styles for it. I really dont know why a simple metal or rock song would need to be heared on surround sound but maybe im wrong.

Another question is, apart from the number of channels which in this case ofcourse someone can tell the difference, can someone even with a very good sound system tell the difference between 96 kHz/24-bit and 44 kHz/16-bit? I mean, there are already many people that cant tell the difference between 44 kHz/16-bit and mp3 320kbps.

Also how much money would a decent sound system cost to play 5.1 or 7.1 Surround Sound?
Another question: Can a vinyl produce surround sound? That would be weird!
Question with a no or yes answer: So you cant rip a surround sound file with a common pc, correct?
Well, thats all i can think right now. I really wonder if it worths the time and effort to rip all these huge files. You would need many hard drives and second back ups.
On the other hand i feel sad about all this old music that may never been heard to its fullest. Like a quote i remember saying "technology was late".

I can answer for some of those.
The knowledge is common and researchable. To an extent.



Also how much money would a decent sound system cost to play 5.1 or 7.1 Surround Sound?

If it plays sound, any amount. Even used, or demo models (display models are discounted).

It's not worth spending hundreds if you're not buying Dolby Atmos, DTS:X, or any of the new-age features.
Pretty much ignore the placebo gospel of Audiophile crap.
If you're going to spend thousands just to "hear" the music, might as well build a room for full advantage.

The cheapest Dolby Atmos receiver is $600. It's not nearly as fully featured as the more expensive models.
Costco has cheaper systems.
Most friends and family usually get something from Costco or Best Buy for the surround sound system.

If you got the money, buy into the audiophile crap and pick any brand that sounds German/Japanese.


Another question: Can a vinyl produce surround sound? That would be weird!

I think the most I've heard is a "quad" matrix with compatible receivers (since Dolby matrixing wasn't always a thing).
https://www.reddit.com/r/vinyl/comments/3nqztj/surround_sound_for_vinyl/

No. And vinyl isn't all that it's hyped up to be.
Unless you like the inherent flaws of design in the transfer.
The noise, the pops, the clicks are aesthetic.
But make no mistake that it's "higher" "quality" than a CD or studio master.

And don't trust any single person.
There's a lot of freaks out there who say they can sit there with their eyes closed and see the entire universe through high resolution music and have special powers.

Get very, very acquinted with the term "placebo" because that's what everyone prefers.

The human mind is weak and fragile and would rather waste time and space on something that doesn't mean anything for the average home consumer (ie, not an editor where high resolution audio *would* make a difference in the process chain of events).

i have two random questions.
1)how often should you change your hard drive even if it works well?
2) could files corrupt while they are in your hard drive? if so, is there any way to tell that it happened?

1)how often should you change your hard drive even if it works well?

Use programs that have S.M.A.R.T. features to read and gauge the health of your drive.

5-7 years is the time you want to consider backing up to a new drive.

Use "Freespace" defragmenting on your externals to keep it as healthy as possible.
The least fragments, the best your chances will be in the long run.



2) could files corrupt while they are in your hard drive? if so, is there any way to tell that it happened?

A magnet can corrupt the files if you're not careful of how you handle them.
Or if let someone near them who doesn't understand magnets (mother :eye:).

You could also drop it. That'd cause corruption. If it's on.
If it's off, it's random if you'll corrupt things or not.

Also, if you don't defrag, the more you add/remove (ie, read/write) files, the more fragmented files become.
In cases of very large files like bluray remuxes that can be up to 40GB, one small corruption and the whole file is useless.
No way to recover from that corruption.

I've had several movies that had a glitch for 1 second in the whole movie.
It froze the media player application.
SO I deleted it, defragged, and downloaded the movie again.


Have the spare time?
Use hashchecking software to do checks on the whole drive.
CRC, MD5, SHA1, etc.
Scan the whole drive, save the checksum results.
Run integrity check on the whole drive 6 months later. Or a year.

"Where Is It? (https://www.whereisit-soft.com/)" is a program that can index and save the index for later use.
I use it to scan and save indexes for my externals so I can search for content without having to plug in the externals. :smrt:
It also has an option to do checksum scans while scanning a drive. (this can take up to a couple days, depending on size/connction/processor speeds/etc)

Works best on a system that's connected via USB 3.0. :smrt:

so many things so search for! thanks anyway.

well i just learned from a youtube video what Disk Defragmentation is. However it just says that it has to do with the hard drive's speed and not with file corruption.
How do i do "Freespace" defragmenting? (im always talking about external hard drives). I can see that i can right click the drive, go to properties, tools and it says defragment now. Is it that simple?

To add just a little to what tehƧP@ƦKly†ANK™ -Ⅲ� was kind enough to explain, about Surround Sound disks, standard CDs are NEVER Surround Sound. They are only stereo. If you don't see anything on the package about the disk being anything special, then there's a 99.9% chance that it's just a standard stereo CD.

Surround Sound can only come in specialized formats, the most common of which is SACD. (Super Audio Compact Disk) There'll usually be a logo on the case and/or the disk that looks like this:

http://hometheaterreview.com/images/Super_Audio_CD_Logo.gif

Or you can also get Surround Sound from DVD Audio...



...or I've also seen Blu-Ray Audio.



In each case, the manufacturer will emphatically want you to know that the disk you're looking at is something more than just a CD, so they'll usually be very careful to put one of those logos on the case and/or the disk and will also say something about the disk being Surround Sound.

There might also be other formats that I'm not aware of, but I have never seen a standard CD that was anything more than just standard stereo.

As for whether or not it's possible to tell the difference between 44.1 kHz/16-bit and 96 kHz/24-bit (or 320 kbps), that just depends on the quality of your equipment and how good a listener you are. If you have low-end equipment (like a small pair of bookshelf speakers from Walmart with the sound card that was included on your computer when it shipped), then most likely, nobody could tell the difference in that case. But if you're using higher-quality equipment, then if your hearing is particularly acute and you are paying close attention, then yes, you might be able to tell the difference.

As for system cost, I purchased my 7.1 Surround Sound card for a little over $100 off of Amazon, and a set of Logitech Surround Sound speakers for around $80. It's certainly not the greatest audiophile system around, but as I live in a rather modest apartment with hardwood floors, I don't need something that will blow the roof off the building. The sound I get is most definitely Surround Sound (when I'm listening to a Surround Sound source, that is), and the quality is quite sufficient for my needs.

Hope this helps. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/42753709/Photobucket/nod.gif

so many things so search for! thanks anyway.

well i just learned from a youtube video what Disk Defragmentation is. However it just says that it has to do with the hard drive's speed and not with file corruption.
How do i do "Freespace" defragmenting? (im always talking about external hard drives). I can see that i can right click the drive, go to properties, tools and it says defragment now. Is it that simple?

Defragging does help with speed a lot.

But there hasn't been a lot of tests done to prove if helps prevent corruption.

One of the most common things known about corruption is it has a greater chance of happening if the external suffers a power interruption while it is operating on a file.
Say you go to defrag a file, and then the house has a power outage. There's a good chance that file may be corrupted when you get power back.

But, the way I see defragging, you always want to keep your files the least fragmented.
If you don't defrag for one whole year, the more you add/remove files, rename, etc, the more fragmented the drive will become.
And who knows, some files will get fragmented the more than others.
There's no real "live" way of monitoring integrity of files to see what's currently being fragmented.


There's other programs that can defrag and have different defrag patterns.
The most common is "freespace", where it defrags the files but focuses on creating the most free space on the drive.
Files won't be rearranged to be read in a linear fashion on the drive. Instead, they'll be split up and left where they are and only moved if it needs to be defragmented.
So reading the file, it'll jump all over the hard drive. At least it won't be fragmented.
Freespace is the default for externals on most programs.

There might also be other formats that I'm not aware of, but I have never seen a standard CD that was anything more than just standard stereo.

There is indeed such as thing as a DTS Music Disc (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/5.1_Music_Disc). However, it's far less common than the formats that you've mentioned, and has it's own little quirks that make it less ideal (i.e. it actually being 14 bits (with the remaining two being zero), it has the potential to damage your equipment without proper DTS decoding, and it has to be a specific decoder at that). Still, it's a format that exists and can be used.

I only know about it because it was a bonus in the files of the Auotbahn DVDA ISO that I have.