I've been to every website, and I've heard again and again that FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) has the best sound quality AND it compresses the file. But I'm wondering if there is a format with better sound quality. (I don't care about anything else.) I have heard that WAV is good, but is the sound quality better than FLAC? And are there any others that are better?
答案1
First of there are two types of compression, lossless and lossy.
Lossless compression means you will get identical copy of your source when decompressed. In audio this means no quality loss during compression.
Example of lossless compression: FLAC, ALAC, Monkey Audio, Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD MA, etc.
Lossy compression on the other hand will result quality loss. It works by discarding data to achieve better compression.
Example of lossy compression: AAC, MP3, Vorbis, Dolby Digital, DTS, etc.
WAV files containing PCM audio are not compressed audio. So no quality loss there either.
Whether or not you can tell (perceive) this quality loss depends on several factors, your ear, your audio setup (speakers, headphone, etc), encoding parameter of lossy codec, etc.
答案2
"I have heard" - the gold standard for audio quality is in how it sounds. And in many cases, the hardware you use and the combination matter. If you must know foobar 2000 has a great A/B testing function you can try to decide for yourself.
Flac is lossless. Many people can't tell the difference between high bitrate mp3 and flac (I can on my home listening gear, but even then its not a massive difference). Wav is uncompressed audio. Flac is losslessly compressed audio. For most definitions of lossless, and decoders that arn't completely garbage, the output should be the same.
Practically speaking at the same given sample rate without any other bottlenecks FLAC will sound exactly the the same as the wav file. For that matter, any lossless audio file should sound exactly the same as any other lossless audio file.
Passed through a spectrum analyzer you can see what sound is - and using that
A quick visual inspection suggests the output is identical
With smaller file sizes. You can find the sample UI used here - its the 48mhz clip from Jean-Michel Jarre's Equinox analysed with spek. The nice thing with analysis like this is your audio gear dosen't make a difference . The lossless "raw" PCM file, and the flac file I converted from it are for all intents and purposes identical when played back
There's been a push towards higher sample rates but arguably, beyond a certain point the improvements are marginal. Chances are, the sort of folks who demand 96 or 192 khz audio files also have silver cables, carefully burnt in power cords made of hand selected materials and other forms of audiophoolery. Its just an excuse to try to sell you hardware that dosen't perform any better.
Even with different sample rates - 48khz is common, and while some sources promise higher sample rates - people who write audio codecs suggest it might actually sound worse. The frequencies you 'miss out' on are not audible, and your sound output is going to have issues playing them.
So, lossless, at a reasonable bitrate on decent hardware is going to sound the best.
For most people, flac's a safe bet for archival use (since its compressed and lossless so you can convert it), though high bitrate lossy music is more sensible.
答案3
The quality of an audio codec is determined by how close its output is to the original source. The quality can only ever be as good as the source.
FLAC is a lossless codec which means its output is an absolutely perfect, 100% identical copy of the original. It produces 100% perfect quality and it is impossible to get any better.
PCM WAV is also a lossless codec and therefore has identical quality to FLAC and every other lossless codec.
There is no difference in quality between any lossless codecs and none are "better" than any other quality wise. The differences lie in file size, capability, and compatibility only.
答案4
FLAC does not impact audio quality. (Hence, it is called lossless.) The most popular formats worsen the audio quality, although most of the times it is negligible. (Hence, they are called lossy.)
WAV is not an audio format at all; rather, it can contain audio formats. WAV can contain audio in any format, including MP3 and ...why, FLAC! WAV is comparable to FLAC only and only when it contains uncompressed audio, or audio compressed with a lossless codec.