What kind of format is lossless q node. Can you hear the difference between MP3 and FLAC? Which players support the Lossless format?

Hello everyone, in this article I will try to talk in general terms about what affects sound quality, what differences there are between digital and analog formats, and how to hear the difference between lossless and lossy audio.

What is sound

Basically, sound is mechanical vibrations transmitted in a solid, liquid or gaseous medium. Most often, when talking about sound in the context of music, they distinguish between analog and digital formats.

The analog format is used in cassette recordings and vinyl records, and the digital format is used in any modern player, smartphone and many other sources.

However, before you get a good digital recording and talk about its lossless/lossy versions, it’s worth talking about how digitization occurs.

Digitization

I thought for a long time about the simplest and most understandable example to explain this process and finally remembered an excellent illustration from childhood. Do you remember when you were a child, they sold those coloring books in which you had to connect the dots with lines to make a picture?

So, imagine that analog sound is an ordinary full-fledged picture, and digital sound is a copy made from it. And those same points are used as reference points for copying. The more often they are used and the smaller the distance between them, the more our copy will be similar to the original. However, no matter how close we place the dots, it will not be possible to achieve 100% similarity with the original. The more detailed the digitization, the more space the final file will take up.

Formats

After receiving a digital copy, it needs to be packaged in one of the popular music formats. Depending on the choice of format and compression settings, the file size and sound quality will differ. However, it is important to understand that if the digitization was done sloppily, then no lossless will save you.

Compression methods

And now we move on to the actual differences between lossless and lossy formats. In fact, both of them are powerful archivers that can significantly reduce the size of a track, however, in the case of lossless (for example, FLAC), this compression will occur without loss in quality, and with lossy (MP3) - with losses, but more In this case, the track itself will be significantly smaller in size.

It turns out you need to listen only to lossless?

Okay, let's say we have a correctly digitized track, then converted to one of the lossless formats. It turns out that we can pour it into any smartphone and hear a significant difference in sound?

Not really. Why: While playing this track, four more parameters will play a role: your smartphone's DAC (built-in or dedicated), amplifier, headphones and, oddly enough, your ears. If you have regular phone Without a dedicated DAC and supplied headphones, then most likely you will not hear any differences between MP3 and high-quality FLAC.

However, even if you have a good music smartphone and decent headphones, if you don’t have good hearing, the difference will be either less noticeable or not audible at all.

I have good hearing, I want to hear this difference

In this case, you will need one of the smartphones with a dedicated DAC (for example, Meizu PRO 5), good headphones(the same Meizu HD50) and a set of favorite tracks in FLAC. The built-in Flyme player can work with FLAC, and then it’s up to your ears. With good hearing, you will notice a noticeable difference between MP3 and FLAC versions of tracks.

Conclusion

I myself am not an audiophile, for me music is a mood, a balm for the soul, something that can lift your spirits or help pass the time when traveling on the subway or flying to another country. Of course it is an important part of my life, but I focus more on how a particular track makes me feel rather than how detailed I hear it.

If suddenly an ordinary person is “brought” to a forum where those who consider themselves experts in high-quality sound gather, he will discover that 80 percent of the audiophiles there are talking about the problem of bitrate. “Can a real music lover distinguish a recording with a good bitrate from a “lossie” file or not” - debates on this topic with arguments for and against have not subsided for quite some time. This proves that it is difficult or almost impossible to force people to abandon their beliefs, to step over their “ego,” even if the facts testify against their delusions. In our article, we will give you some information about bitrate and how it relates to practical music listening experience.

What is bitrate?

If you love listening to music, you've probably heard the term "bitrate" before, so you probably have a general idea of ​​what it means, but we'll try to refresh your memory and give you the "official" definition here. So, bitrate (from the English bit rate) is, in fact, a stream - the speed at which bits of information pass through, i.e. the amount of data processed during a certain period of time. In audio it is usually measured in kilobits per second. For example, the music you listen to on iTunes has a stream of 256 kilobits per second.

The higher the bitrate of a track, the more space it will require on your computer. Therefore, it has become common practice to compress audio CDs so that more music can be placed on your hard drive (or on a cloud drive, such as Dropbox, or any other). This is where the long-term debate about the quality of music from lossy and lossless files grows.

What's the difference betweenlossy andlossless?

When we say “lossless,” we mean that we have not changed the original file during re-recording, and it sounds like the original CD track. More often than not, however, we save music “lossy.” A typical lossy album (MP3 or AAC) is probably 100MB or so. The same album in a lossless format such as FLAC or ALAC (also known as Apple Lossless) would take up about 300MB. For this reason, lossy recording is common for faster downloads and saving more disk space.

The problem is that when you compress a file to save space, you remove blocks of data. For example, when you take a PNG picture of your computer screen and save it to JPEG format, you get a "flaw" in certain parts of the image, making it look essentially the same, but with some loss of clarity and quality. Consider the image below as an example: on the right it has been compressed into JPG format, and its quality suffered as a result (if you look closely at the color of the car, the details and the background). The same thing happens with music files that are "compressed" into MP3, if this comparison is correct. Quality losses that are noticeable to the human ear or eye are called compression artifacts.

Clearly, lossy files are a trade-off, but a very significant one when we're talking about hard drive space, which can make a big difference on a 32GB iPhone. But there are also different levels of lossless: 128 kilobits per second, for example, takes up very little space, but will be of lower quality than a 320 kilobits file, which in turn has lower quality than a 1411 kbits file (which is considered true lossless). However, there are many arguments that most people may not even hear the difference between the two bitrates.

Is bitrate really that important?

As storing files becomes easier and cheaper, high bitrate music is becoming more popular. But is it always worth your time, effort and disk space?

The answer to this question is not simple, and audiophiles are still fighting in battles, trying to solve an equation with two unknowns. The first part of the equation depends on technical implementation. If you are using expensive headphones or speakers good quality, then you can listen to music in a wide range of sound. This is where the low bitrate becomes noticeable and you can tell that low-quality MP3 files are missing a certain level of detail, subtle background tracks may not be audible, highs and lows won't be as dynamic, or you may simply hear other significant audio distortions. In these cases, the lossless format is justified.

But if you're listening to your favorite music through a pair of cheap and generally crappy headphones on your iPod, you won't notice the difference between a 128-kbit file and a 320-kbit file, let alone a comparison between a 320-kbit file and a lossless one. file 1411 kbit. Remember that picture with the car? The music coming through your headphones looks like a smaller image, and you won't hear any compression artifacts because the headphones don't have enough range.

The other part of the equation is your own ears. Most people simply don't pay enough attention or have the listening skills to tell the difference between two different bitrates. This skill can be developed to some extent over time, but sometimes not. In this case, it doesn't really matter what bitrate to use, does it? The fact of the matter is that it is very difficult to hear the difference between a lossless file and a 320-kilobit MP3 unless you are a sound engineer or musician with perfect pitch. For the vast majority of people, 320 kbps is more than enough for listening.

It would also be a big misconception to think that the higher the bitrate, the better the quality of the track, since simpler audio signals will be compressed better and have a lower bitrate, and more complex ones will be worse. That is why classical music lossless files have a lower bitrate than, for example, rock music. The ideal is to record with a variable bitrate, but with high quality. Therefore, the bitrate value is by no means the main indicator of the quality of the audio material.

Let's summarize. Lossless files are more promising in the sense that you can always "compress" the music, but you will never be able to get its quality back, so you will have to re-record it from a CD. This is the problem with online music stores and music libraries: if you've built up a huge library of iTunes music and then decide you want the same thing but at a higher bitrate, you'll have to start all over again. But MP3 has been an excellent audio standard for exactly 20 years now, and that's unlikely to change anytime soon, so unless you're planning on becoming a militant audiophile, there's no need to worry about the quality of recordings of your favorite songs.

Translated from English, the word Lossless means “without loss.” If the sound is compressed using special lossless audio codecs, then, if desired, it can always be restored with absolute accuracy. For example, if you take an ordinary AudioCD with sound in analog format, then you will record it in WAV format for uncompressed audio, then compress WAV using lossless, and then decompress the resulting audio file into WAV and, as a result, you can record the resulting result on regular blank CD. This way you will get two completely identical AudioCDs. The advantage of the lossless format for storing audio is that the quality of the recordings is much higher than that of lossy codecs. However, they take up much less space than uncompressed audio. However, lossy files are much smaller in size than other lossless music files. Most modern software players can play lossless format. Programs that cannot play this format can easily learn to do so using the lossless plugin. What are losseless audio formats?

Sound without loss of quality

It is unlikely that a true music connoisseur will be satisfied with the sound of music recorded in MP3 or OggVorbis compression formats. Of course, if you listen to audio recordings on household equipment, then the sound defects will simply be impossible to catch by ear. But if you try to play each compressed file on a high-quality hi-fi device, you will immediately notice all the audio flaws. Of course, creating a collection of quality music on vinyl records or CDs is not easy. However, there is a reasonable alternative to this for lovers of quality sound. This is music in lossless format. Such music can be stored on a personal computer in a form that allows the original parameters of the music to remain unchanged, even if compression has been used. This way also allows us to solve the problems of high quality music and its compact storage. Today, audio equipment for listening to music is quite affordable.

Uncompressed audio formats without loss of quality:

• CDDA – CD audio standard;
• WAV – Microsoft Wave;
• IFF-8SVX;
• AIFF;
• IFF-16SV;

Compressed formats:

- APE - Monkey's Audio;

- M4A - Apple Lossless - high-quality music for Apple devices;

- WV - WavPack;

— LA – Lossless Audio;

- WMA - Windows Media Audio 9;

- TTA - True Audio;

FLAC format

One of the most common formats today is the FLAC format. What distinguishes it from lossy audio codecs is that when used, no data is removed from the audio stream at all. This allows you to successfully use it to play music on Hi-End and Hi-Fi equipment, and also use it to create an archive of audio collections. The big advantage of this format is its free distribution. For musicians who record their own music, this is important. Recently, this format has gained great popularity. Therefore, its support is included in most media players.

APE format

For the APE format, unlike FLAC, there are only plugins and codecs that are designed for the Windows platform. Other platforms have their own expensive solutions from third-party manufacturers software. This algorithm can achieve lossless compression of audio information by approximately 1.5-2 times. The compression process consists of three main encoding steps. Only one of them is based on the use of properties inherent in sound for compression. All others are practically no different from conventional archivers. Despite the fact that the compression algorithm is distributed free of charge, the license restrictions are such that it is practically inaccessible to amateur musicians.

Apple Lossless Format

Lossless quality music can be easily listened to when using an audio compression codec without compromising the quality on devices Apple. This format was developed by Apple for use in its own devices. This format is compatible with iPod players that have special docking and latest firmware. This format does not use specific tools for managing DRM rights, but the container format contains such capabilities. It is also supported by the QuickTime application. In addition, this format is included in libraries that are freely available. This makes it possible to organize listening to files in applications of the Windows operating system. Apple released in 2011 source codes format. This opens up broad prospects for this codec. In the near future, it may well be able to compete with other formats. In tests, this format shows pretty good results. Compressed files have a compression of 40 to 60% of the size of the originals. The decoding speed is also impressive. This justifies the use of this format for mobile devices that are characterized by low system performance. The main disadvantage of this codec is that the extension of the audio files matches the AAC audio codec. This leads to some confusion, because in essence the AAC format is not a high-quality music format. Therefore, it was decided to store information in an MP4 container with the .m4a extension. Among other formats, it is worth mentioning Windows Media Audio 9 Lossless, which is included in Windows applications Media. It works with MacOSX and Windows. However, users do not speak very favorably of it. The fact is that quite often certain problems arise with codec compatibility, and the number of supported channels is limited to only six.

Another freely distributed audio codec is the WavPack format. It allows you to compress audio information without losing quality. WavPack integrates a special, exclusive combined mode that allows you to create two files. In this mode, one of the files is created in a relatively small size with loss of quality.wv, which you can easily play yourself. The second .wvc file can correct .wv. In combination with it, it allows you to fully restore the original. This approach may seem promising to some users, because then they do not have to choose between two types of compression. Both will always be realized. The Lagarith lossless codec video codec with high-quality audio also deserves attention. This video codec works quite efficiently and quickly.

Software for listening to lossless audio

Software players did not immediately begin to work with specific lossless codecs, which can reproduce sound without loss.

This player can handle almost all music playback formats without loss of quality. What is a good player for the lossless format can be explained using its example. This software player is quite capable of correctly processing individual tracks in lossless format. For APE or FLAC codecs this is a quite typical problem. It consists in the fact that the entire sound disc is digitized at once. It is recorded as one file without division into tracks.

The problem of dividing into tracks can be solved by an additional file that has the .cue extension. It contains a description of the access parameters for each album track. A regular player will play the entire lossless file.

Player for lossless files

The AIMP player is great for playing most audio formats and recognizes tracks in lossless format.

Players supporting lossless formats

Users respond well to the digital players Foobar 2000, jetAudio, SpiderPlayer. There are no fundamental differences between them. The choice of device will be based on the user’s subjective opinion about the convenience of the interface for playing the lossless format. You can find out what the lossless format is by testing all these players. AppleLossless format is playable when using iTunes. This codec is also supported by the popular video player VLC. Owners of Apple-compatible PCs can easily use two interesting programs - Cog and Vox. These programs support the following lossless formats: FLAC, AppleLossless, MonkeyAudio and Wavpack. There are also a lot of useful features. For example, Last.fm services are supported. Owners of computers with operating Windows system They can easily use any application that is compatible with music codecs without loss of quality: WinAmp and Foobar 2000. The Winamp application requires special plugins. Lossless music can be played beautifully using KMPlayer and iTunes players. The benefit of the iTunes app is that it supports tags.

Compatible with lossless devices

It is unlikely that the owner of a music library will want to waste time converting FLAC files to MP3 in order to be able to listen to these recordings on his gadget. A tablet or smartphone has limited capabilities that cannot be compared with a personal computer, but many mobile devices Today they allow you to play lossless formats. For example, owners of devices running the Android operating system can use the andLess player. It can play files in APE and FLAC formats, as well as uncompressed Wav and other supported formats operating system Android. The situation is somewhat worse for owners of devices based on the Blackberry platform. Only owners of the Bold 8900 and 9000 models can listen to the lossless format. Owners of Apple devices can use the ALAC codec without any problems. This format is supported by the iPod player, iPad tablet And iPhone. To play the FLAC format, you can download the FLACPlayer program from the AppStore. SamsungGALAXY devices and some SonyEricsson smartphones, as well as iriver players also support the FLAC codec. FLAC support is also supported by desktop devices from many manufacturers. Media centers and media players make it easy to do without using a PC when listening to songs in lossless format. Full support for absolutely all formats is still a long way off, but this is quite enough for the media player to accept the FLAC codec, which is the most common codec for high-quality lossless music. What is lossless playback equipment?

Equipment for listening to lossless format

To get real pleasure from high-quality sound, you need to use special equipment: amplifiers, speakers and headphones. Things are easiest, of course, with headphones. If you intend to enjoy music while sitting at your computer, then these are best for you. Users speak well of Sennheiser and Koss products. Particular attention must be paid to the size of the membrane. The larger its size, the better the sound quality. In this case, it is important not to be deceived; many manufacturers put a small membrane in large ear pads. These headphones look pretty solid, but the sound is only suitable for listening to MP3 files. It is difficult for lovers of high-quality sound to recommend something specific. The choice in this area will be limited only by tastes and budget. Owners personal computers Those who choose high-quality acoustics for themselves would be best off choosing budget computer speakers from any popular brand. Users speak well of the Microlab SOLO series acoustic systems.

I recently received the following letter:

Hello site, MP3 is the most popular audio format, but there are so many others such as AAC, FLAC, OGG and WMA that I'm not really sure which one I should use. What is the difference between them and which one should I use to store my music?

The question is quite popular, I will try to answer it simply but clearly.

We've already talked about the difference between lossless and lossy, but in short, there are two types of audio quality:

• lossless: FLAC, ALAC, WAV;
• lossy: MP3, AAC, OGG, WMA.

The lossless format preserves full audio quality, in most cases CD-level, while the lossy format compresses files to save space (of course, the audio quality is degraded).

Uncompressed data storage formats: FLAC, ALAC, WAV and others

• WAV and AIFF: Both WAV and AIFF store audio uncompressed, meaning they are exact copies of the original audio. The two formats are essentially the same quality; They just store data a little differently. AIFF is made by Apple, so you may see it more often in Apple products, while WAV is pretty much universal. However, since they are uncompressed, they take up a lot of unnecessary space. If you don't edit audio, you don't need to store audio in these formats.
• FLAC: Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC) is the most popular lossless audio storage format, making it a good choice. Unlike WAV and AIFF, it compresses the data slightly, so it takes up less space. However, it is considered a format that stores lossless audio, the quality of the music remains the same as the original source, so it is more efficient to use than WAV and AIFF. It is free and open source.
• Apple Lossless: Also known as ALAC, Apple Lossless is similar to FLAC. This is a lightly compressed format, however, the music will be preserved without loss of quality. Its compression is not as efficient as FLAC, so your files may be a little larger, but it is fully supported by iTunes and iOS (while FLAC is not). So, if you use iTunes and iOS as your main software for listening to music, you will have to use this format.
• A.P.E.: APE - has the most aggressive compression algorithm for lossless music storage, that is, you will get maximum space savings. Its sound quality is the same as FLAC, ALAC, but there are often compatibility issues. In addition, playing this format puts a much higher load on the processor to decode it, since the data is highly compressed. In general, I would not recommend using this format unless you are limited in free memory and do not have software compatibility problems.

Compressed audio storage formats: MP3, AAC, OGG and others

If you just want to listen to music here and now, chances are you'll be using a lossy format. They save a ton of memory, leaving you with more room for songs on your portable player, and if high enough, they will be indistinguishable from the original source. Here are the formats you are likely to encounter:

• MP3: MPEG Audio Layer III, or MP3, is the most common lossy audio storage format. So much so that it has become synonymous with downloadable music. MP3 is not the most efficient format of all, but it is certainly the most well supported, making it the best choice for compressed audio storage.
• A.A.C.: Advanced Audio Coding, also known as AAC, is similar to MP3, although it is slightly more efficient. This means you can have files that take up less space but have the same sound quality as MP3. The format's best evangelist today is Apple's iTunes, which made AAC so popular that it has become almost as widely known as MP3. I've only had one device in a very long time that couldn't play AAC, and that was a few years ago, so you can safely use this format to store your music.
• Ogg Vorbis: The Vorbis format, known as Ogg Vorbis due to its use of an Ogg container, is a free alternative to MP3 and AAC. Its main feature is that it is not limited by patents, but you as the end user are not affected at all. In fact, despite its openness and similar quality, it is much less popular than MP3 and AAC, which means that fewer programs support it. Thus, we do not recommend using it to avoid software compatibility issues.
• WMA: Windows Media Audio is Microsoft's own proprietary format, similar to MP3 or AAC. It doesn't offer any advantages over other formats, and it's also not very well supported outside of the Windows platform. We do not recommend that you rip CDs to this format unless you know for sure that all music will be played on the Windows platform, or on players compatible with this format.

So what should you use?

Now that you understand the difference between each format, which should you use to rip or download music? In general, we recommend using MP3 or AAC. They are compatible with almost every player, and both are indistinguishable from the original, if . Unless you have special needs that dictate otherwise, MP3 and AAC are your best bet.

However, there is something to be said for storing your music in a lossless format like FLAC. While you probably won't notice higher quality, lossless is great for storing music if you plan to convert it to other formats later, since converting a lossy format to another lossy format (such as AAC to MP3) will result in files appear to be of noticeably lower quality. Therefore, for archival purposes we recommend FLAC. However, you can use any lossless format as you can convert between lossless formats without changing the quality of the file.

Lossless formats and how to work with them

The article addresses the following issues:

1) What is lossless?
2) What is CUE?

4) Is it possible to play lossless with my Winamp (Windows Media Player, etc.)



8) What is a transcode?

Perhaps I haven't covered all the frequently asked questions. You can add your own questions that are not included in this list. If the question falls into the category of frequently asked questions, I will include it in this article. I will also listen to your comments and indications of inaccuracies (write in a personal message). The purpose of the article was to create material that would make it easier for beginners to get acquainted with lossless and simplify its use.

1) What is lossless?

Lossless- This is lossless data encoding (lossless compression). Of course, we are talking about encoding music (digital audio). Lossless compression can be well understood if we consider an example of the work of ordinary and familiar archivers (WinZIP, WinRAR, etc.). Let's say we take text file and archive it. We get a much smaller archive with the document. Having unpacked it, we will have exactly the same document. The same goes for lossless audio compression. We compress a regular WAV file with a lossless codec and get a smaller file. From it we can always get our WAV back in its original form and burn, say, a disc exactly in the form in which it was purchased in the store. There are quite a lot of similar codecs. The most popular are APE (Monkey's Audio), FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec), WavPack. All these codecs have compression around 30-50%. But I want to note that we don’t have to convert everything to WAV. We can listen to these compressed files are completely safe on our computer. We'll talk about this below...

2) What is CUE?

CUE (Cuesheet)- this is an index file in which the tracks are marked. The fact is that by distilling our WAV into one of the lossless formats, we get one solid and continuous file. To make it possible to navigate and jump from track to track, CUE files are used. These files have the extension .cue. Its structure is very simple. Let me give you a small example:

PERFORMER "Rise Against"
TITLE "Appeal To Reason"!}
FILE "RA-ATR.flac" WAVE
TRACK 01 AUDIO
PERFORMER "Rise Against"
INDEX 01 03:21:00
TRACK 02 AUDIO
TITLE "Long Forgotten Sons"!}
PERFORMER "Rise Against"
INDEX 01 04:03:00
TRACK 03 AUDIO
TITLE "Re-Education (Through Labor)"!}
PERFORMER "Rise Against"
INDEX 01 03:44:00

As you can see from the example, at the beginning there is data about the disc itself (artist, album). Next comes the FILE line, which indicates the actual file that was indexed. And then comes the track index (track number, track name and beginning of the playing time).

3) How can you play lossless formats?

Of course, there are a great many players. I would like to focus on a fairly simple and at the same time very functional player - Foobar2000. This player has many versions and assemblies. I've tried quite a few of these variations. I settled on the assembly from Dr.Death (you can download it from our server). The fact is that this assembly contains all the plugins and codecs we need. So we don’t have to search for and download anything. So to speak, the finished product. It's also a bit spruced up and doesn't have as sparse a design as the original Foobar. Well, these are all goodies and tricks and we are of little interest to them.

And so, having downloaded the archive, unpack it and run the file foobar2000.exe (no installation required). Take a look and get to know the player. Note: in the archive there is a wonderful readme.chm file with instructions for setting up the player for yourself. It discusses setting up the technical part and setting up buttons and other beauties.

To get started, first of all go to File >>> Preferences >>> File Types

Here, select the formats that will be played by Foobar. If you use it only for lossless, then check APE, FLAC, WV, and don’t forget to check CUE.

Thus, we have associated the files we need with Foobar and now, after double-clicking on the formats you noted above, they will be played in the Foobar player

4) Is it possible to play lossless with my Winamp (Windows Media Player, etc.)?

Of course, no one is forcing you to use Foobar. I considered it as a fairly simple way to play it. We can also use our usual players. For example, Winamp.

To play, you need to install the codecs themselves on the system. I will provide links to install the most popular codecs:

1) http://www.monkeysaudio.com/download.html - Monkey's Audio (APE)
The package includes a plugin for Winamp, which is installed along with the codec.

2) http://flac.sourceforge.net/download.html - Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC)
Direct installation link for Windows: http://cyberial.com/flacinstaller.asp
The kit also includes a plugin for Winamp

3) http://www.wavpack.com/downloads.html - WavPack (WV)
The codec and plugins are installed separately. Plugins available for Winamp, Apollo, XMMS, Nero Burning Rom.

4) http://homepage3.nifty.com/blacksword/ - OGG Vorbis
There are several options similar to LAME. I recommend using a build called Lancer, because... among other things, it is also optimized for different processors.

5) http://www.musepack.net/index.php?pg=win – MusePack
Everything is simple here, it is on the official website in the Windows section “Encoder”

6) http://www.nero.com/nerodigital/eng/down-ndaudio.php - MP4 (Nero): (meaning AAC format).
The archive contains the win32 folder and the file NeroAacEnc.exe.

5) What should I do with this one big file?

As a rule, lossless music is distributed as two files. The first is the music itself in one of the formats in the form of one whole continuous file. The second is a CUE file (about CUE, see point 2).

In order for us to be able to listen to the album normally, switching between tracks, the package must include a CUE file. The Foobar player allows you to play a combination of File+CUE. In this case, the playlist immediately displays a list of tracks without physically cutting the entire file.

There is also a special plugin for Winamp to teach it how to work with CUE. Let's take it.

6) I open the album through CUE and see an empty playlist. What to do?

This problem often occurs when working through CUE. This is because the CUE file is referencing the wrong original audio file. Most likely, CUE refers to a file with a WAV extension, while ours, for example, is APE. This is due to the fact that initially (when creating the image) the CUE is created specifically for the WAV file, which is then converted to lossless and many simply do not bother to forward the CUE.

Let's figure out how to fix this:

1) Open CUE in any text editor. For example, in a regular Notepad
2) We will see the CUE file code itself, which we need to tweak a little.

PERFORMER "Rise Against"
TITLE "Appeal To Reason"!}
FILE "RA-ATR.wav" WAVE
TRACK 01 AUDIO
TITLE "Collapse (Post-Amerika)"!}
PERFORMER "Rise Against"
INDEX 01 03:21:00
TRACK 02 AUDIO
TITLE " Long Forgotten Sons"!}
PERFORMER "Rise Against"
INDEX 01 04:01:00

3) Find the line starting with the word FILE. It contains a link to the source sound file.

FILE "RA-ATR.wav" WAVE

We see that the file has a wav extension, and my source file is, for example, in APE. We look at the format of our source file and change the extension to the one we need (ape, flac, wv). We get a line like:

FILE "RA-ATR.ape" WAVE

5) Save our file and run it in the player. The list should now display correctly.

7) How can I convert lossless to MP3 (for listening on the player)?

This question also comes up very often. Of course, we want to listen to music on the street, but today there are not many players that play lossless. There are options to reflash your player, but this is a separate topic.

There are many conversion methods. You can use converter programs. I prefer to use Foobar again. There are several advantages:

No additional software needed
+ We add the necessary formats ourselves (if they are not available by default)
+ At the same time we cut our large file by track

So, let's begin.

1) Upload our album to the playlist using the CUE file.
2) Select all tracks from the list.
3) Right-click on the selected tracks and select
Convert >>> Convert to...

4) Select the required format (in our case it is MP3).

Before clicking OK, we need to download the codec itself to convert to MP3. We will use Lame 3.97 (you can download it). Let's unpack it and remember where we put it.

After clicking OK, the player will ask you to specify the folder where lame.exe is located, which is what we do.

Then we indicate the location where the files will be saved and that’s it, the conversion is done.

Note: By default, only one MP3 conversion option is available in the list (avg 245 kbps with JointStereo). This is actually enough. If that’s not enough for you, then you can add your own version of bitrate and stereo. To do this, go to the conversion window in MoreSettings and select AddNew. Next in the list, select Custom and enter your values:

The screenshot shows the settings for MP3 320 kbps with “full” Stereo (--cbr -b 320 -m s - %d)

8) What is a transcode?

Transcode- sound format. There are people who rip MP3s from Audio CDs via EAC (Exact Audio Copy, more details on the official EAC website) to Lossless. The transcode can be easily recognized by the spectrum. It is a DTS lossy format, i.e. with losses. You can convert using dBpowerAMP Music Converter.
Let's grab it here: http://www.dbpoweramp.com/dmc.htm

How to work with the EAC and dBpowerAMP Music Converter programs is explained in some detail on their official websites.

Lil' gRyphY,
www.respecta.net