Hi, As an analogy - How can a zip file recreate the original files with 'less' information :)
When considering audio there are ways to compress the file without losing info. Here's a for instance, lets say on your CD there are 5 second gaps between tracks which are represented as the same sound level (ie a flat signal). In this case you get about 1Mb of repeated data along the lines of: 128 0 128 0 128 0 128 0 128 0 128 0 . . . . (this is a for instance the technicalities may be different) So here you could save 1Mb in your FLAC file by having a short header that says 'After 3min 20 sec play 128 0 128 0 continuously for 5 secs' (it's not done this way but you get the idea) So you've compressed the file by 1Mb and have the same information. You can prove this by taking a WAV file, compressing to FLAC, decompressing to WAV again and comparing the files byte by byte - they will be identical. However this is not true for all audio formats. MP3 works differently, it does remove information in your sense so if you do WAV -> MP3 -> WAV the WAV files before and after will be different. I hope the explanation helps . . . Malcolm _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
