What is lossless audio?

[42041]

a CD is lossless (well, uncompressed)
an MP3 is lossy
perceptual codecs throw out audio information you ear is unlikely to hear, but it's not a perfect copy.

[Big Daddy]

Originally Posted by 42041

a CD is lossless (well, uncompressed)
an MP3 is lossy
perceptual codecs throw out audio information you ear is unlikely to hear, but it's not a perfect copy.

Be careful about using the word "uncompressed". Compression is not the same thing as lossy and lossless. We can have lossy compression and lossless compression. Dolby Digital and DTS surround are examples of lossy compression and Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD MA are examples of lossless compression. PCM (or LPCM) is lossless and uncompressed.

[Atreyu]

Thanks this info sure clears up alot for me I really appreciate it.

[Damage Inc.]

I think you could also roughly compare homevideo-audio to separate music-audio.
As in, DVD-quality would be like MP3-quality and BD-quality would be like CD-quality.
Except you of course have the different codecs, but quality-wise it's pretty similar.

[Hammie]

Originally Posted by Damage Inc.

I think you could also roughly compare homevideo-audio to separate music-audio.
As in, DVD-quality would be like MP3-quality and BD-quality would be like CD-quality.
Except you of course have the different codecs, but quality-wise it's pretty similar.

Actually, I would say DVD and CD are similar and BD and SACD or BD-A are similar.

And then there is DVD-A. Does that go with DVD or BD?

I'm not even sure if that is 100% accurate.

[Damage Inc.]

Originally Posted by Hammie

Actually, I would say DVD and CD are similar and BD and SACD or BD-A are similar.

And then there is DVD-A. Does that go with DVD or BD?

I'm not even sure if that is 100% accurate.

Hm, I think you're confusing that because DVD-Audio is considered better quality than CD.
Obviously because there is more space, there's better audio for the music.
But the audio for film on DVD isn't nearly as good I believe, unless it's DTS maybe...
Cause I've seen bitrates of steady 192kb/s, which is just like MP3 only a different amount of channels.
That's why I figured, DVD-audio for films might be equivalent to MP3-quality?

Hm, I agree that CD-audio is probably not nearly as good as BD-audio for films.
But I meant as in, stepping up from DVD-audio to BD-audio,
is probably much like going from MP3-quality to CD-quality.
While only roughly being similar quality in a way, not exactly technically and all that.

[Jwilly019]

Originally Posted by Hammie

Actually, I would say DVD and CD are similar and BD and SACD or BD-A are similar.

And then there is DVD-A. Does that go with DVD or BD?

I'm not even sure if that is 100% accurate.

DVD-A is similar to SA-CD and BD.

Justin

[Big Daddy]

DVD-A uses LPCM or Meridian Lossless Packing (MLP) up to 6 channels of lossless audio. MLP is licensed by Dolby. Dolby TrueHD is based on MLP and offers up to 8 channels of lossless audio.

SACD uses a different codec called DSD.