How To Rip A CD To Lossless Format And Burn To CD Without Any Loss Of Quali

[Nitro89]

I basically want to rip some of my collection to a lossless format that I am able to burn onto CD without any loss of audio quality. What is the freeware way to do this?

[Supreme2k]

straight to wave by pretty much any audio ripper (audiograbber).

[Nitro89]

what about FLAC, will I be able to put that back onto CD without any loss of quality?

[mazinz]

flac is probably as close to lossless as you can get. Keep in mind though that when you put it back as a cd it is converted (depends on program) back to a wave, unless you are making a data disc

going from cd rip to flac and back to wave you probably would not hear any difference at all

[Nitro89]

i heard the FLAC is WAV just with a different container, only compressing file size, will the audio be converted?

[mazinz]

you cannot burn an audio cd as flac, it all gets converted back to wave

here this might help you more
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flac

[Nitro89]

Isn't this the same concept as .VOB to .ISO that no change in quality?

[mazinz]

to a degree, but the point being is that after re-reading the wiki page you are not losing anything by converting to flac

if the wiki is correct then no you should not be losing anything when you burn it back to a cd from a flac format.

I usually deal with just wave or mp3

[Nitro89]

I just ripped a song using both .flac and .wav, I converted the .flac to .wav and the .wav to .flac, then I compared them with the original rip, when checking the specs, nothing had changed, only file size, when I converted them back to .wav or .flac, they returned to their original file size. So looks like nothing had changed.

[mazinz]

I just ripped a song using both .flac and .wav, I converted the .flac to .wav and the .wav to .flac, then I compared them with the original rip, when checking the specs, nothing had changed, only file size, when I converted them back to .wav or .flac, they returned to their original file size. So looks like nothing had changed.

well there you go

[Noahtuck]

FLAC - Free Lossless Audio Codec

See the LOSSLESS part.....
Nothing is lost!!

It is kind of like compressing something in a ZIP or RAR, when uncompressed & extracted it is back to it's original form, except you can actually play FLAC files without uncompressing them.

But to play them on a standard cd player they must be converted or the wav extracted from the flac file.

[yoda313]

But to play them on a standard cd player they must be converted or the wav extracted from the flac file.

Yes but there are some settop devices that can play flac. I have the wdtv media player and I am 99% certain it does flac files. So you wouldn't have to burn to cd or even have a pc - just a usb harddrive and the wdtv media player and you can play the flacs as is.

I don't think the ps3 or 360 can play flac natively. Though I don't have any flacs to test mine with (I have both systems + a wii- I'm nearly 100% ceratin the wii will NOT be able to play flac - it doesn't even read normal audio cds, it is not a media player by any stretch of the imagination - though it does have a webbrowser you can get so some media streaming is possible though not as robust as a ps3 or 360 if you're looking for non pc playback options.

[Nitro89]

my only concern was that when converting the .FLAC to .WAV so it could be burnt onto CD, will the audio quality be converted too?

[guns1inger]

Which part of LOSSLESS doesn't quite register ? The conversion to FLAC is LOSSLESS, and the conversion to WAV is LOSSLESS.

If you are truly that concerned about any quality loss at all then rip your audio CDs to WAV or even ISO and live with the size.