[BC] Ogg FLAC lossless compression (was: Another Shoe drops)

[Kevin Tekel]

Steve Vestergaard, as quoted by Dana Puopolo:
> The files are transmitted using Og Vorbis, but at an extremely high 
> bitrate (starting at 750 and scaling up as high as needed).  The result
> is effectively lossless compression (it is lossy, but the losses are out
> of the range of hearing).

That's Ogg FLAC ( http://flac.sourceforge.net/ for more info), and I don't
know what Mr. Vestergaard is talking about because FLAC is 100% lossless,
regardless if you put it in the Ogg container format or not.  (And this
is not Ogg Vorbis -- Vorbis is the lossy form of Ogg, which doesn't get
anywhere near 750+ kbps, even at its highest quality setting.)

I just ripped a random CD track, compressed it with FLAC, decoded it back
to WAV, and then checked the results.  The FLAC file came out as 861 kbps
at the most efficient compression setting, and the resulting FLAC-decoded-
to-WAV file was bit-for-bit *identical* to the original WAV file, as
verified by the good ol' fashioned DOS "FC" file compare utility.

For comparison, I compressed the same WAV file using Ogg Vorbis at its
highest quality setting, and the resulting lossy Ogg Vorbis file came out
at 457 kbps, or roughly 3:1 compression versus direct CD-ripped WAV audio
(1411 kbps).




		
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