flac to flac + replaygain

[johan d]

Hello,

I have my original flacs, but without replaygain values, so I read I could add them with dbpoweramp music converter.
I did install DSP reaply gain, and converted the flacs to flac + replaygain.

All went fine, but my files seems 60% of the previous size. I choose Level 5 for lossless encoding. Should I have chosen uncompressed here? i wasn't aware that my files could reduce in quality.

Thx

[Dat Ei]

Hey Johan,

the compression level has no influence on the sound quality of flac files! The flac compression works like a zip compression. A higher compression rate results in more load for the CPU during compression, but the data itself is lossless. So don't worry!

Dat Ei

[johan d]

Hey Johan,

the compression level has no influence on the sound quality of flac files! The flac compression works like a zip compression. A higher compression rate results in more load for the CPU during compression, but the data itself is lossless. So don't worry!

Dat Ei

OK, but how come the file size reduces enourmously?
It gets compressed and uncompressed while rendered/streamed?

[Dat Ei]

Hey Johan,

you can check the compression rate in the ID3tags of the flac files. Compression rate 0 means, that there is no compression at all, compression rate 9 is the highest compression rate with the smallest resulting file sizes. If you play back a compressed flac file the data is decompressed on the fly.

As a test you can convert a flac file back and forth with different compression rates. You should gain more or less constant file sizes for concrete compression rates, no matter how often you convert back and forth.

lossy codecs like mp3 work different. mp3 reduces the file sizes by reducing the audio information. Each convertion will result in a loss of audio quality.


Dat Ei

[simbun]

I have my original flacs, but without replaygain values, so I read I could add them with dbpoweramp music converter.
I did install DSP reaply gain, and converted the flacs to flac + replaygain.

Can I just double check that you applied the DSP 'ReplayGain' and not 'ReplayGain (Apply)'? I only ask because of your typo 'reaply' but you wouldn't be the first person to make that mistake.

You may have intentionally created another copy for safety reasons, but you could have used the encoding profile '[ReplayGain]' and made the changes to the existing files without rewriting the audio.
I believe it's still a separate component that can be downloaded from https://www.dbpoweramp.com/codec-central-utility.htm

[garym]

Too late but keep in mind you can simply add replatgain tags by “converting to” the ReplayGain DSP. No need to reconvert to FLAC. But as noted, FLAC is lossless. There is no connection between file size and bit perfect sound quality. The converter works a bit harder when ENCODING more compressed FLAC files, but the compression level has essentially no impact on DECODING the FLAC for playback.