About FLAC and sound quality

[luclucas]

Hello community,

I have some questions about FLAC audio files and how would I get a good quality on my music files. Would you be so kind to help me understand a bit of this confusion I got?

Actually I know that FLAC is an audio file that is compressed but without loosing audio information. Also, I have a program on my PC that allows me to download music from many sources in internet as Youtube (of course I use it to download non copyrighted music from many artists I find great).

Youtube sound is in a format that if I remember well was M4A. The program allows me to get the audio in many formats as M4A, MP3 and FLAC.

My questions are: if the original audio format is M4A, how can I get a better sound quality by converting it to FLAC, I don't see how it would be possible. Also, is it possible to decompress and convert a MP3 file to FLAC? Would it improve then the sound quality?

Thank you very much and have a nice day

 

[warhead0]

FLAC audio files are losless, meaning no compression.

You won't make the sound better by converting, it can only ever be as good as the original. Coverting your mp3 to FLAC would not improve your music quality.

 

[Theresa55404]

No, converting to FLAC will not improve sound quality. You cannot add bits that aren't there.

 

[luclucas]

FLAC audio files are losless, meaning no compression.

You won't make the sound better by converting, it can only ever be as good as the original. Coverting your mp3 to FLAC would not improve your music quality.

So it is useless to download from youtube as FLAC?

 

[luclucas]

No, converting to FLAC will not improve sound quality. You cannot add bits that aren't there.

Thank you Theresa

 

[cilliers]

Hello community,

I have some questions about FLAC audio files and how would I get a good quality on my music files. Would you be so kind to help me understand a bit of this confusion I got?

Actually I know that FLAC is an audio file that is compressed but without loosing audio information. Also, I have a program on my PC that allows me to download music from many sources in internet as Youtube (of course I use it to download non copyrighted music from many artists I find great).

Youtube sound is in a format that if I remember well was M4A. The program allows me to get the audio in many formats as M4A, MP3 and FLAC.

My questions are: if the original audio format is M4A, how can I get a better sound quality by converting it to FLAC, I don't see how it would be possible. Also, is it possible to decompress and convert a MP3 file to FLAC? Would it improve then the sound quality?

Thank you very much and have a nice day

I'm pretty sure Youtube's sound quality is 192 Kbps. So, again. You can't put data into a file that isn't there to begin with. Youtube is merely giving the file a Flac extension, but I'm pretty sure that it's still lossy sound. You see, flac files are encoded in a way that losslessly compresses the file by 50%. So your 700MB CD becomes 350MB. In order to playback this file, you need software with a decoder, because you are continuously "uncompressing" the file as you are listening. If youtube truly supported lossless flac audio then the flash player must have been updated to include lossless audio codecs. And I don't recall seeing anything like this lately. Also, flac is an open source file format, so I don't think adobe's flash player will support it. They'd rather probably go for ALAC (Apple lossless...)

 

[luclucas]

Hello community,

I have some questions about FLAC audio files and how would I get a good quality on my music files. Would you be so kind to help me understand a bit of this confusion I got?

Actually I know that FLAC is an audio file that is compressed but without loosing audio information. Also, I have a program on my PC that allows me to download music from many sources in internet as Youtube (of course I use it to download non copyrighted music from many artists I find great).

Youtube sound is in a format that if I remember well was M4A. The program allows me to get the audio in many formats as M4A, MP3 and FLAC.

My questions are: if the original audio format is M4A, how can I get a better sound quality by converting it to FLAC, I don't see how it would be possible. Also, is it possible to decompress and convert a MP3 file to FLAC? Would it improve then the sound quality?

Thank you very much and have a nice day

I'm pretty sure Youtube's sound quality is 192 Kbps. So, again. You can't put data into a file that isn't there to begin with. Youtube is merely giving the file a Flac extension, but I'm pretty sure that it's still lossy sound. You see, flac files are encoded in a way that losslessly compresses the file by 50%. So your 700MB CD becomes 350MB. In order to playback this file, you need software with a decoder, because you are continuously "uncompressing" the file as you are listening. If youtube truly supported lossless flac audio then the flash player must have been updated to include lossless audio codecs. And I don't recall seeing anything like this lately. Also, flac is an open source file format, so I don't think adobe's flash player will support it. They'd rather probably go for ALAC (Apple lossless...)

Hi First, thank you for your answer. Actually I was not asking about what audio could Youtube apply, I was asking for how would be the best way to get the audio from youtube (in terms of file type) and some questions about FLAC, mp3. But thank you anyways, this helped me understand more

 

[RababNoor]

M4A is a container format for both Lossy or Lossless Audio.

Youtube M4A is the lossy one (128kbps)

Even If you convert the 128kbps mp3 to 10000kbps FLAC, the sound quality will be the Same of mp3.

If you have a better Quality Earphone/Headphone/Speaker then go for FLAC.

From FLAC, you can convert any format you like within your choice.

http/www.howtogeek.com/howto/40465/htg-explains-what-are-the-differences-between-all-those-audio-formats/