1. What's the point of lossless recordings? They take up insane amounts of space, and are "odd" (uncommon) files. What usage does anyone ever have of these? Are they burned to a CD or what?
  2. They're better quality than lossy ones (uncompressed is better, they're original files who get recorded, if you make a 3 MB file out of a 60 MB you can easily say you loss some kind of quality). You can do with it whatever you want (convert to whatever you want), you can share them

    Get yourself a good sound playing device/stereo, and play lossless vs lossy, there you go with the point of lossless recordings.

    From our lossless FAQ:
    I don't know what suits me better, lossy (MP3's) or lossless material?
    It really depends on your storage space and how you listen to your music. If you do most of your listening through an MP3 player or some standard PC speakers you would probably benefit most from using Lossy files. MP3 is the most popular format and can be played back on virtually every media player that exists. Lossy files will also allow you to pack more songs on to your portable player.

    If however you like to burn your files to CD to listen to on your HI-FI or maybe in your car you would most likely benefit from using Lossless files. You won't help but notice the drastic improvements in audio quality. Lossless might also be worthwhile if you are using decent speakers on your PC and if you have the hard-drive space.

    In short, go lossless if you want the best sound quality or go Lossy if you don't have the space. The choice is yours.


    Lossless FAQ: http://www.u2start.com/help/lossless/
  3. Originally posted by carlibengarli:What's the point of lossless recordings? They take up insane amounts of space, and are "odd" (uncommon) files. What usage does anyone ever have of these? Are they burned to a CD or what?


    Download a lossless gig and listen. They are better. If mp3 is good enough for you then stick to it.
  4. Yeah I know they are better quality of course, but how do they actually function with the size they are? What is required to play them (on the computer and on a stereo), and do you burn them to discs etc (see original post)?

    Edit:

    Also, how much better are they exactly?
  5. Originally posted by carlibengarli:Yeah I know they are better quality of course, but how do they actually function with the size they are? What is required to play them (on the computer and on a stereo), and do you burn them to discs etc (see original post)?

    Edit:

    Also, how much better are they exactly?


    I guess that depends on which recording you're talking about

    But I once DL-ed the lossy and lossless of one show and it made quite a difference. But I can't say it with words, you should listen yourself to decide if it makes many difference or not

    And as Remy said: you can convert them to all formats, so you can see yourself how you want to play them

    And you can burn them on discs (I think, not know), if they are in the good format and your disc is big enough
  6. Originally posted by carlibengarli:Yeah I know they are better quality of course, but how do they actually function with the size they are? What is required to play them (on the computer and on a stereo), and do you burn them to discs etc (see original post)?

    Edit:

    Also, how much better are they exactly?


    How much better is a question that can only be answered by yourself. For me the difference is 'considerable' and enough to justify the increased disc space.

    For playing back on your computer VLC can handle FLAC no problem. I don't know of a straight to disc FLAC burner but you can convert the files to WAV and burn them easily to CD using itunes.

    Burning to CD is probably gonna offer best results as the difference would be much more noticeable on hi-fi speakers rather than your standard PC speakers.
  7. Originally posted by carlibengarli:Yeah I know they are better quality of course, but how do they actually function with the size they are? What is required to play them (on the computer and on a stereo), and do you burn them to discs etc (see original post)?

    Edit:

    Also, how much better are they exactly?
    It all depends on how good your sound-equipment is (and of course your own ears). If you listen to your music through a Ultra-Vox-Mega-Super-Duper Hi-Fi system, lossless will surely improve your listening experience; if you listen to your music through earphenes while travelling on bus, you'd better stick to lossy formats.
  8. Originally posted by carlibengarli:Yeah I know they are better quality of course, but how do they actually function with the size they are? What is required to play them (on the computer and on a stereo), and do you burn them to discs etc (see original post)?


    All answered in our FAQ, we don't have a FAQ for nothing. Please read the FAQ's before you post
  9. Originally posted by germcevoy:[..]

    How much better is a question that can only be answered by yourself. For me the difference is 'considerable' and enough to justify the increased disc space.

    For playing back on your computer VLC can handle FLAC no problem. I don't know of a straight to disc FLAC burner but you can convert the files to WAV and burn them easily to CD using itunes.

    Burning to CD is probably gonna offer best results as the difference would be much more noticeable on hi-fi speakers rather than your standard PC speakers.


    You're right. I was just referring to what you thought yourselves. They take a LONG time downloading though, and they're in an awful amount of files.

    So they could also be converted into mp3-formats, for instance? Or only non-compressed formats? Is it possible to play them on an MP3-player? Do you think "most people" use them by burning them to a CD?



  10. Alright alright... sorry!
  11. Originally posted by carlibengarli:[..]

    You're right. I was just referring to what you thought yourselves. They take a LONG time downloading though, and they're in an awful amount of files.

    So they could also be converted into mp3-formats, for instance? Or only non-compressed formats? Is it possible to play them on an MP3-player? Do you think "most people" use them by burning them to a CD?




    No point in converting them to mp3 because everything we offer on here is already mp3 player compatible.

    I imagine most people burn their lossless shows to disc in order to play them on their hi-fi systems tor in the car to take full advantage of the sound quality improvement.

    If you have an ipod you can convert the files to WAV and that will allow you to have lossless playback on the go.

    My best advice is to try downloading a select few of your favourite shows in lossless to see if you hear the difference. If you don't, then stick to whats on here. If you do notice the improvement then go get a big hard-drive and start replacing all your mp3's with lossless.
  12. It's not only about the listening pleasure. There is also a good reason to share & exchange lossless recordings when it comes to bootlegs.

    Lossy recordings are a pleasure to have because you can listen to them on your iPod and especially people with lack of HD capacity will love them because the files are small.

    But there's a downside. Every once in a while, someone burns an audio CD from his lossy files, for example, to give the show to a friend. Think of this friend ripping this CD again to listen to the show on his iPod. He'll have a lossy show, that was burnt to CD and then encoded again. This will result in serious loss of quality, I mean really noticable now even for an average listener. So in processes like these you'll end up with a chain of decreasing quality.

    For officially released studio albums this doesn't matter much. You can always buy the CD in a store or download it somewhere to achieve the original quality again.

    For bootlegs, this is more complicated because there are no stores to buy a fresh pressing of the master tape. So, many consider it the best way to always share lossless clones, then individuals can choose to encode the cloned files into mp3.

    About the player: yes, VLC will play virtually any format. A much nicer (free) player is foobar2000. It plays all common lossy and lossless files. Some formats (.flac) it plays automatically, for other (.shn) you'll need an easy to find plug-in.

    Hope this helps.

    noiseless