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[DrKNo]

There is one caveat though - users may reasonably want to transcode any file into a plain wav format, which then would be indistinguishable from a lossless file.

[JimH]

Thats not something I would accept, and just use another tool. File size is of no real concern for me with audio, since its all relatively small in comparison to my video archives, so any bit of quality I can preserve, I will preserve.

In the process, you're creating a FLAC file that isn't lossless.  Fine if it never gets out of your sight, I guess.

[JimH]

... when you came out with your little MP3 versus flac tester, people did hear the difference.

My memory of the results was that lossless and high bit rate MP3 weren't consistently distinguishable.  It's still there if you want to prove me wrong.

Listening Test

[Gedeon]

Audio quality perception it's usually a very controversial subject. Too many factors enter in play. I don't want to derail this thread but...

I usually take in account this objective info: "The older you are, the less sensitive you are to higher frequencies". You can do a fast test. I did, and I'm unable to hear info beyond 15khz but my son and dougther, no problem in hearing up to 20khz (an easy way to test it is through some youtube videos about it or using sam sweep generator).

And there are a lot more... calibration, volume, noise... (yes, noise... it's also part of the music). In this test (http://archimago.blogspot.com/2013/02/high-bitrate-mp3-internet-blind-test_3422.html) the guys with higher quality gear did like more the mp3 than the flac. Two important things, the first one, they hear the difference, the second one, the "additional info" in the lossless track was perceived for most of them as "non-desirable sound", hence they "liked" more the mp3...

I think all opinions and user preferences should be respected, no matter if we think they could be wrong, or even if we could prove them that they are "scientifically" wrong, that wouldn't really make anyone change his mind if he/she firmly believes that he/she is right.

If someone is happy with his 192mp3 files ... why try to ruin the experience... ? If another one believes that a 100.000$ amplifier sounds waaaaaay better tthan a 10.000$ amplifier why argue ? Maybe under certain circumstances, equalization, room, volume, sources,... etc... we could share those opinions.

Cheers

[lepa]

There is zero gain to completely disable conversion from lossy to lossless. As others have already explained there are few use cases when it would be useful or justified. Warning about it is enough.

[dtc]

My memory of the results was that lossless and high bit rate MP3 weren't consistently distinguishable.  It's still there if you want to prove me wrong.

There were people in that test who could distinguish between the various options, including at least one person who identified all the flacs.   This is not about me, it is about the people who can distinguish between the mp3 and flac files. Your test brought forth people who could. Just because most people cannot tell the difference does not mean that nobody can.

[biblio]

I agree with disabling and being able to enable it in the options if desired.

It would be dumb to enable it but this would at least provide a barrier to a dumb action.

[EdBrady]

I convert lossy to lossless routinely. Why? To edit downloaded material. Rarely do I want to play something exactly the way I get it. I nearly always have to adjust the level, or remove silence, or filter hum, or... you get the idea. Frankly, I do't use MC for this anyway, but there is certainly a valid reason for doing so.

[jmone]

Again, if you have a good reason to allow lossy to lossless, please state it.

Yes.  I buy a Music DVD.  It is encoded in DD5.1.  It is Lossy.  I use MC's Convert function to create a FLAC 5.1 Audio Track version of each song for Audio Only Playback.

I'm with Hendrik on this.  MC is not the FLAC police.  I again suggest that if the aim is to prevent non lossless tracks being uploaded to the MC Cloud then by all means introduce some tech to identify and reject such tracks.  Otherwise you will have non lossless tracks that users have "sourced" form the net being accepted just because they have a FLAC file type.  Scan your library of music files with the util I linked and you may be surprised how many have not only be up-sampled but the number being reported with errors as well.  If you want to build a quality lossless library in the cloud from user submitted tracks, you will need a process to verify these tracks are "good".

If you are really worried MC Users are going to use MC to covert MP3 to FLAC so they can upload it to the MC Cloud, then write a tag to the FLAC file and make that tag in MC non-editable.  Have MC Cloud upload reject such files.  Sure they could edit the tag out in a 3rd party app, but then again they could do the conversion in a 3rd party app and you would be none the wiser.  Regardless you have the same issue.  You will end up with poor files in the MC Cloud unless you verify the files regardless of the source..... or you live with the fact than some of the stuff upload is not correct.

[Gedeon]

After thinking a bit more about this, the main issue I see is the perception/trust we blindlessly put on everything tagged as "lossless". It works like high-quality-tag, no matter how has been cooked that file before reaching that format. We just pre judge those as better than anything else. Just take a look at some vynil 96khz/24bits rips...

Maybe the best way is letting users to qualify and share those files by comparing them hearing them and giving some kind of subjective rating. And I truly believe that some kind of "auto analyzer" could really help, at least to tag files which doesn't reach some minimum numbers (dynamic, frequencies, channel separation… ) when compared with more "trusted" version of the same tracks.

Even saving a hash of files (excluding tags/headers to reduce bad practices) could be stored in the database to "detect" some "too personally cooked files".

A slippery slope, but don't block features. Not a single advanced JRiver user wants to be said what to do with his files or his hobby. Most of us like to think we have golden ears or "special sensitivity". No matter if it's true or it isn't.

In any case be totally ready for users to upload sub-optimal files on purpose. No matter what you do. Some determined users will always find a way to do it.

[RD James]

I think people have made a good case for reasonable lossy > lossless conversions, so I don't agree with Media Center blocking the conversion any more.
I'd still include a warning which makes it clear that lossy > lossless conversions will not improve audio quality.
And Media Center should block SACD to DSD conversion.

Yes.  I buy a Music DVD.  It is encoded in DD5.1.  It is Lossy.  I use MC's Convert function to create a FLAC 5.1 Audio Track version of each song for Audio Only Playback.

If you rip to MKA files, the music will be stored in the original format and be approximately 1/4 the size of converting Dolby Digital (or DTS) to FLAC.
It's less portable outside of Media Center or other computer-based playback though.

[jmone]

There is no MKA Option in the MC "Convert" function (see pic). 
I don't care if FLAC is "bigger" than MKA even if the option existed.
I agree that FLAC is more universal and would not want to use MKA as a result.
In this case, FLAC is just storing the decoded DD5.1 Audio Stream, where is the crime exactly?

...but most of all, I don't want my SW to tell me that I can or can't convert to any format I choose (regardless of my insanity to do so - ).

[JimH]

I guess you can't save people from themselves.  I should know better.

We'll wait to release until April 1, and we'll just make everything FLAC.

[jmone]

  Good to see mob rule wins over sanity!

Seriously, I do like Yaobings suggestion as a 1/2 way if coding a file checking is too time consuming.  Make a Tag called "Original Format" and use that to store what the original format was during the conversion process.  Like with the "Compression" field for video just make it not editable then test against that when you upload to the cloud for the minimum std you want.  The side benefit is you could see what tracks saved in flac that were made from various sources (DVD, BD, CD, etc even 128kbs MP3 if you were nuts)... that would be great.

Else I like you April 1 idea, but I'm surprised it will not be APE!

[RD James]

There is no MKA Option in the MC "Convert" function (see pic). 
I don't care if FLAC is "bigger" than MKA even if the option existed.
I agree that FLAC is more universal and would not want to use MKA as a result.
In this case, FLAC is just storing the decoded DD5.1 Audio Stream, where is the crime exactly?

...but most of all, I don't want my SW to tell me that I can or can't convert to any format I choose (regardless of my insanity to do so - ).

It's not a conversion that Media Center offers. I rip to MKV using MakeMKV, and convert to MKA using MKVToolNix.
 
Lossy formats like Dolby Digital are typically 32-bit floating-point. Lossless formats like FLAC are typically 16-bit or 24-bit integer.
So the AC3 bitstream is decoded to PCM and encoded to FLAC.
There was a time when most decoders would output 16-bit rather than 24-bit and the conversion may not have been dithered properly, for example.

So it inflated the file size and potentially reduced the audio quality.
It also means that you can no longer play it in 5.1 via S/PDIF unless you have a Dolby Digital encoder.
Offline conversion from AC3 to PCM/FLAC, and real-time encoding from FLAC to AC3 is going to degrade audio quality. Of course that particular scenario doesn't matter if you are using HDMI.
 
Rip to MKA, optionally splitting to individual tracks, and you still have the original AC3 bitstream in a much smaller file.

[Yaobing]

Seriously, I do like Yaobings suggestion as a 1/2 way if coding a file checking is too time consuming.  Make a Tag called "Original Format" and use that to store what the original format was during the conversion process.  Like with the "Compression" field for video just make it not editable then test against that when you upload to the cloud for the minimum std you want.  The side benefit is you could see what tracks saved in flac that were made from various sources (DVD, BD, CD, etc even 128kbs MP3 if you were nuts)... that would be great.

That was not my suggestion.  I just aired my support for it.

My take on this is that if people want to do it, they will do it with another application and import the files back into MC.  We lose control that way.  I would rather let them do it inside MC and we tag it.  We still maintain some control.

[Manfred]

We'll wait to release until April 1, and we'll just make everything FLAC.

April 1 

If I understand correct the impact for audio files is:

- mp3 input -> DSD Output will then forbidden (I have only 10 mp3 files out of ~14000 audio files in DSD, DFD, AIFF, FLAC, WAV. So it will it only have a very small/(no) impact on me?
- if you have a DSD DAC like the T+A DAC 8 DSD you can not convert all input files to DSD anymore on the fly?

For video files I have a lot of DVD ripped to mkv only with 5.1 lossy sound formats (no stereo track available). I let MC mix it down to stereo. What will be the impact on it?

[Matt]

We settled on just showing a warning if you're doing lossy to lossless conversion.  You can still continue.

Thanks for all the feedback everyone.

[RD James]

We settled on just showing a warning if you're doing lossy to lossless conversion.  You can still continue.

Thanks for all the feedback everyone.

Please actually *block* SACD to DSD conversions.
The only time anyone would ever do that is if they mistakenly think that Media Center is extracting DSD tracks from the ISO, rather than the DSD>PCM>DSD conversion it actually does.

[Awesome Donkey]

Actually, switching MC to 'extract' DFF/DSF files from a SACD ISO (extracting the raw SACD ISO track data and putting it into a DFF/DSF container method sacd_extract uses) would probably be better than just disallowing SACD to DSD conversions. In addition, allowing DFF > DSF or DSF > DFF 'conversions' by repackaging and not re-encoding (so there's no actual DSD > PCM > DSD conversion) would also be nice.

MC could do the following...

1) If a SACD ISO is imported into a library, give the user a specialized tool to extract the SACD/DSD data into a individual track (by extracting the track's raw data, then packaging it into a DFF or DSF container), giving the choice of either DFF or DSF.
2) If the convert format option is being used to convert a SACD ISO to individual DFF/DSF tracks, either simply point it to the specialized tool mentioned above or do the conversion the same as above by extracting the raw track data and packaging it without doing any kind of re-encoding (and thus avoiding the DSD > PCM > DSD conversion).
3) If MC is being used to convert DFF to DSF or DSF to DFF, instead of converting (and going through the DSD > PCM > DSD conversion), simply repackage the container from DFF to DSF or DSF to DFF without re-encoding the actual data of the original file.

That way, the DSD > PCM > DSD conversion can largely be avoided. There are apps that can do both, so it's possible (sacd_extract 'extracts' and dff2dsf 'converts DFF to DSF by repackaging but it's Mac-only).

At the very least, having MC repackage DFF or DSF files without re-encoding would likely be MUCH appreciated. Probably would be interesting to experiment with seeing if you can take a DFF file and repackage it to a DSF file (then vice versa) without doing any re-encoding to see how easy it is.

If you want I can start a new topic regarding both requests. EDIT: New topic is here.

[AndrewFG]

PS I am assuming you must still allow conversion from lossy to lossless when pushing “Always Convert” to a DLNA renderer (at least to L16 and WAV). Because otherwise you risk breaking existing stuff on some people’s renderers, for some lossy media types.

.. and BTW, if you do continue to support that type of conversion, then there’s nothing to stop people raiding their conversion cache for “illicit” up-conversions.. 

[jherbert]

1.) There are tools that accept wave or flac as input only, so I need to convert aac to one of these.
2.) Mediacenter used to be a swiss army knife for music management. It won't be after such change.
3.) I should not be up to jriver to decide what is proper and what is not.

[JimH]

We settled on just showing a warning if you're doing lossy to lossless conversion.  You can still continue.

Thanks for all the feedback everyone.