Written by Chris Simoni Tuesday, 13 October 2009 08:59

I received my new Beatles stereo box set last Friday. Of course, what is the first thing that we all do when we get new cds? That’s right; we copy them to the computer. As I was ripping the cds to the computer, I noticed that the music was changing. When playing directly from the cd, the vocals sounded like they were coming all around me, and I was sitting in a great sounding room with the Beatles performing there in front of me. Of course, I was listening with my studio monitors, which are made to reveal any flaws in the mix, and also make you appreciate a great mix.

When listening back to the mp3 files I had copied onto my computer, the space around the instruments was gone. The sound of the acoustic guitar was dull and lifeless, and also sounded like it was coming directly from the left speaker, instead of sounding like it was in the room with me. The tight bassline and kick drum faded into the background. The sizzle of the high-hat, completely disappeared. What happened here?

I have been a victim of “lossy music compression” otherwise known as mp3, but also can be wma or aac, depending if you are a windows are mac person. What happens when we make an mp3 file? Well, the computer runs a formula that removes sound that we cannot hear, thus saving space in the file. Great, it is only removing things that I can’t hear, but why does it sound like crap? Apparently, the basis they used to decide what you can’t hear was grandpa’s hearing. You know grandpa can’t hear like he used to, he won’t notice the high-hat missing. All joking aside, mp3 is removing sound information, even at its highest setting of 320 kps. It is removing subtle information in the sound that makes it feel like we are in the same room as the band. It’s the ambience and punch of the recording.

I had always known that mp3 removed sound information, but I didn’t know what I was missing. I have been using mp3’s for years now, and always rip cds to computer soon after I purchase them, then send them to the closet with the rest of my cd collection.

Now, having realized the errors in my ways, I set out to re-rip my entire cd collection from the original cds to a lossless format called “flac”which stands for “free lossless audio codec”. Flac saves the cd to file and compresses the music, but does not lose any of the sound information. It is a completely free format and is included with the free winamp music player. Flac files even play on my sansa mp3 player, yay! Flac files are able to save cds to about half their original size, so a 700 mB cd will take up about 350 mb, which is much larger than a mp3 file. It is a small price to pay for perfect sound.