ALAC vs FLAC?

[Nitro89]

hello, I know both these formats are lossless, however, I ripped a song from my CD in ALAC and FLAC, when analyzing the file using Mediainfo, the ALAC file had 1075kbps where as the FLAC file had 1066kbps. Whats the deal here, I thought lossless meant no loss of quality seeing as a WAV file has 1411.2kbps.

[Gavino]

All this means is that FLAC has slightly more efficient compression than ALAC, squeezing the same information into a smaller space. In both cases, the compression is lossless, meaning that the original WAV data can be recovered exactly, so no loss of quality.

[Nitro89]

but I don't get it, if the file is converted and you get a new bitrate, doesn't that mean the file has lost some quality?

[Alex_ander]

but I don't get it, if the file is converted and you get a new bitrate, doesn't that mean the file has lost some quality?

No, it doesn't. Same as with zip and rar archives.

[Nitro89]

then why does the bitrate come out different then?

[lordsmurf]

kb alone does not determine quality.

[Alex_ander]

then why does the bitrate come out different then?

The file gets smaller size. Bitrate here is file size divided by playback time. Playback time remains the same, so...

[Nitro89]

so as result of conversion, bitrate is sacrificed for file size?

[jagabo]

Here is some uncompressed data, 100 zeros:

00000000000000000000 
00000000000000000000 
00000000000000000000 
00000000000000000000 
00000000000000000000

Here's the data compressed with my simple plain english lossless encoder:

repeat 0 100 times

My lossless compression scheme reduced 100 bytes down to 18 bytes. So the compressed bitrate is about 1/5 of the source. Now follow the instructions in the compressed version:

00000000000000000000 
00000000000000000000 
00000000000000000000 
00000000000000000000 
00000000000000000000

The final result is exactly the same as the original data. MediaInfo is reporting the bitrate of the compressed version of the audio. But after decompression the data is exactly the same as the source. Now do you understand?

[Nitro89]

yes thank you, I just thought that the rule above only applies to the file size, not the bit rate.

Also, when the file is read, does it get uncompressed to read the WAV underneath?

[jagabo]

Also, when the file is read, does it get uncompressed to read the WAV underneath?

Yes. The codec decompresses the audio and gives that decompressed data to the sound card to play. So the sound card gets exactly the same data it would have gotten if the file had not been compressed.

Lossy codecs (like MP3) throw away some of the original data in order to get higher compression ratios (lower bitrates in the compressed file). When the data is decompressed it's not exactly the same as the original data.