Converting FLAC & ALAC (Amazon HD & iTunes) to FLAC.

[Chiipuchippu]

Hello everyone, my brain is just gonna explode thinking about this. I'm diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder hence whenever i purchase songs from iTunes or get songs from Amazon HD in lossless i convert them to flac (compression level 5) using dbPoweramp. Basically lossless to lossless. I already converted thousands of my songs and deleted the original file. Someone on my community group said converting Flac or Alac from Amazon/iTunes to flac using dbPoweramp will Definitely lose some quality. Is this true? I'm shivering thinking about this as there is no way to get all the original files/songs back. Please anyone?

[Spoon]

You can go Apple Lossless >> FLAC >> Apple Lossless >> FLAC

any number of times and have identical audio.

As a test do the above, and create new files each time, so have 4 files, in 2 different types. Then select all 4 >> right click >> convert to >> [Calculate Audio CRC], if the numbers are the same for all files then the audio is identical, any changes, such as quality loss would change the audio and give a different CRC.

[Chiipuchippu]

You can go Apple Lossless >> FLAC >> Apple Lossless >> FLAC

any number of times and have identical audio.

As a test do the above, and create new files each time, so have 4 files, in 2 different types. Then select all 4 >> right click >> convert to >> [Calculate Audio CRC], if the numbers are the same for all files then the audio is identical, any changes, such as quality loss would change the audio and give a different CRC.

Thank you so much. <3
will test it out.

[Chiipuchippu]

You can go Apple Lossless >> FLAC >> Apple Lossless >> FLAC

any number of times and have identical audio.

As a test do the above, and create new files each time, so have 4 files, in 2 different types. Then select all 4 >> right click >> convert to >> [Calculate Audio CRC], if the numbers are the same for all files then the audio is identical, any changes, such as quality loss would change the audio and give a different CRC.

It works. Finally tested them and so far everything seems to be identical. Still lots more files to go but so far so good. Thank you so much. You're a legend!

[Chiipuchippu]

Okay tried testing raw files + freshly converted vs same files that were converted months ago

Rawfiles + freshly converted
rawfiles plus freshly converted.txt
converted months ago.txt

Notice CRC32 and MD5 numbers are all different.

Does this mean the "converted months ago" files are badly converted?

[Spoon]

Yes the audio has changed, did you include any DSP effects? such as trim silence, or volume normalize?

[Chiipuchippu]

Nope, i will never do that.

I figured the files that were "converted months ago" came from a different source than the freshly converted ones.
2 users ripped the same songs/releases from CD.

But is that really the reason why both have different numbers?

[Spoon]

Yes, they would have a different ripping offset on the store bought ones

[Chiipuchippu]

Yes, they would have a different ripping offset on the store bought ones

Got it. Thank you so much.