Lossless to Lossless question (noob)

[foxtrot]

I'm trying to buy myself more hard drive space (aren't we all?) and am hoping to convert most of my SHN shows to FLAC. Prior to doing this, I am running some tests to make sure that I'm not "messing up" the tracks in ANY way.

I did a simple SHN=>FLAC=>SHN test, and the resulting SHNs are consistently bigger than the original ones.

I did a SHN=>WAV=>FLAC=>WAV=>SHN, same thing.

Any ideas? Is it just metadata or what?

[LtData]

Re: Lossless to Lossless question (noob)

Seeing how neither SHN or WAV support tags, that might explain it a little.
However, as all of these formats are lossless, you are not losing any quality. Why the file size is different is beyond me.

[xoas]

Re: Lossless to Lossless question (noob)

The difference should be in metadata only.
You might find the discussion in this thread useful:

http://forum.dbpoweramp.com/showthread.php?t=5748

Is the difference in bytes, kbs, or Mbs?

Best wishes,
Bill

[foxtrot]

Re: Lossless to Lossless question (noob)

The difference should be in metadata only.
You might find the discussion in this thread useful:

http://forum.dbpoweramp.com/showthread.php?t=5748

Is the difference in bytes, kbs, or Mbs?

Best wishes,
Bill

Well, as an example (SHN>FLAC>SHN):

Orig SHN : 24,976,109
New SHN : 25,004,297

In addition, the WAV files generated from each of the two SHNs do not match exactly either (2 bytes diff size, a handful of byte differences internally)

[foxtrot]

Re: Lossless to Lossless question (noob)

Seeing how neither SHN or WAV support tags, that might explain it a little.
However, as all of these formats are lossless, you are not losing any quality. Why the file size is different is beyond me.

Thanks for the tag info, but it implies that even though SHN doesn't support tags, the codec is putting them in somehow. Otherwise, why would the regenerated SHN be bigger?

As for the question, my answer is twofold:

1) If the process isn't reversible, I have to take it on faith that the audio is unchanged, right? As a techie, I was expecting to successfully test it.
2) If my intent is to save storage, but the originally weeded/torrented format is different (i.e. SHN) I wanted to be able to assure whoever got my files that they could return them to the "officially weeded" form

[Spoon]

Re: Lossless to Lossless question (noob)

Convert shn to wav, convert shn to flac then flac to different wav. Compare the wav files (with a CRC program), if they match there is no problem.

[foxtrot]

Re: Lossless to Lossless question (noob)

Convert shn to wav, convert shn to flac then flac to different wav. Compare the wav files (with a CRC program), if they match there is no problem.

been there. done that. they don't match.

[gameplaya15143]

Re: Lossless to Lossless question (noob)

rip a track to wav
then...
wav -> shn -> wav .. the wave filesizes should match
wav -> flac -> wav .. the wave filesizes should match

if one of the wav sets don't match, then that codec is causing the problem..
if both sets dont match, then i guess both codecs are causing problems :rolleyes:

... makes me wonder if shn or flac isnt gapless..

[Spoon]

Re: Lossless to Lossless question (noob)

All lossless codecs are gapless, or they are not lossless.

[gameplaya15143]

Re: Lossless to Lossless question (noob)

i just did a shn > flac > shn test... both shn files were exactly the same size