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Re: Wow. Filesizes

Posted: Sun May 22, 2016 12:22 pm
by English Guy
I would have thought it would have to reduce quality. The 'magic' is in reducing it by removing those parts the human ear does not need or notice.

Re: Wow. Filesizes

Posted: Sun May 22, 2016 1:06 pm
by j_e_f_f_g
Ogg (like mp3) uses a compression format that is not lossless. It attempts to remove information that won't result in most listeners noticing the difference.

Flac uses a lossless compression, and is what you want if you wish to retain all original audio information.

Many wave editors default to storing wave files in full 32-bit format. But if you're producing a final mix, you can reduce it to a 16-bit wave file, and thereby cut the size just about in half.

Re: Wow. Filesizes

Posted: Sun May 22, 2016 5:30 pm
by sysrqer
beck wrote: That's the reason to why i export without dithering, because that reduces quality too.
Dithering itself doesn't reduce quality, it's the changing format that does and dithering makes it less noticeable so you could say that dithering increases the perceived quality in that situation.

Talking about quality in terms of going from 32 bit to 16 bit is speaking more of theory than practice, you're not going to hear much difference if any at all. That's not the same as recording at 16 bit compared to recording to 24 or 32 bit.

Re: Wow. Filesizes

Posted: Sun May 22, 2016 8:56 pm
by kbongosmusic
Here's a fun one - A sound test if you can tell the difference between a MP3/OGG and 16-bit CD quality output. Here's one way to do it - take a cd quality recording of some good music, crunch one down to mp3/ogg, then convert it back to 16-bit. Burn a CD back with the two. Arrange a random choice playback(test yourself), or just play them for friends and ask them which one 'sounds better'. My experience was that it's not easy to tell which one is live and which one is memorex(that's a reference to an old tape commercial, for you youngsters). I definitely recall my tapes hissing and albums degrading with time(there was nothing finer than new vinyl). I believe the higher quality containers are most valuable for edit alterations, so you have the least amount of degradation(all changes(mixing, level adjustments, etc) being a lossy operation).

Re: Wow. Filesizes

Posted: Mon Aug 22, 2016 6:36 am
by sadko4u
For importing and exporting for interchange just use 'FLOAT' sample format. That prevents audio processing modules from permanent conversion of samples from floating point values to fixed-point values and back.

Re: Wow. Filesizes

Posted: Mon Aug 22, 2016 12:47 pm
by Lyberta
High bit depths are very important for processing, while sample rates are not. If you know how computers store numbers and how interpolation works, those rules are obvious.

Re: Wow. Filesizes

Posted: Mon Aug 22, 2016 4:33 pm
by folderol
Sample rates do matter if they are not exact multiples. 44100 to 48000 requires some interesting math.

Re: Wow. Filesizes

Posted: Tue Aug 23, 2016 2:40 pm
by Lyberta
folderol wrote:Sample rates do matter if they are not exact multiples. 44100 to 48000 requires some interesting math.
I've said that high sample rates are not important. Personally I would use the sample rate of the final mix during all the processing.

Re: Wow. Filesizes

Posted: Tue Aug 23, 2016 4:31 pm
by ssj71
some great reading about sample rates and bit depth etc. and why CD quality is basically as good as you'll ever need.
http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html

or a couple videos:
https://xiph.org/video/

enjoy.

Re: Wow. Filesizes

Posted: Tue Aug 23, 2016 7:09 pm
by Lyberta
ssj71 wrote:some great reading about sample rates and bit depth etc. and why CD quality is basically as good as you'll ever need.
http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html

or a couple videos:
https://xiph.org/video/

enjoy.
Yes, that's a great article. Remember that every change of sample rate that is not multiple is lossy. So high bit depths are important during processing - that's why JACK uses 32 bit float - but for the final mix 16 bit is enough.

Re: Wow. Filesizes

Posted: Tue Aug 23, 2016 10:49 pm
by ssj71
yes, it makes sense to mix in 24 or 32 bit because you lose dynamic range through processing, but for export and playback, 16 bit is plenty.

Re: Wow. Filesizes

Posted: Tue Aug 30, 2016 12:59 pm
by sadko4u
FaTony wrote:Yes, that's a great article. Remember that every change of sample rate that is not multiple is lossy.
Even if it is multiple it's lossy. Because for downsampling you have to apply low-pass filter first before doing resampling.

Re: Wow. Filesizes

Posted: Tue Aug 30, 2016 4:05 pm
by ssj71
sadko4u wrote: Even if it is multiple it's lossy. Because for downsampling you have to apply low-pass filter first before doing resampling.
These are tiny details, but theoretically its only lossy if there is content above the nyquist frequency of the new rate and only that higher content gets lost (which is inaudible if downsampling from 96k). In practice though it also depends on the quality of your low pass filter a perfect "brickwall" filter takes an infinite amount of time to apply, so you tradeoff computation speed with quality.
I think I'm preaching to the choir though. :)

Re: Wow. Filesizes

Posted: Wed Aug 31, 2016 1:43 pm
by chaocrator
why bother about audio files size in the 21st century, when the storage is REALLY cheap?

Re: Wow. Filesizes

Posted: Wed Aug 31, 2016 2:44 pm
by sysrqer
chaocrator wrote:why bother about audio files size in the 21st century, when the storage is REALLY cheap?
Not every one has spare cash or live in a country where it is cheap.