What is lossless audio, and do you really need it?

There is a difference, Of course, between “play some music” and “listen to music”. The former is just a nice way to disturb the silence while you’re doing some task or another, while the latter is a way to transport you into a world of emotion and expression. It follows that while the former does not require an exceptional level of quality to be effective, the latter benefits infinitely from sounding as close to the artist’s original intentions as possible. For digital music, this is lossless audio.

You may have heard more about lossless audio lately, thanks to the growing number of… Music streaming services They’re offering it as part of their subscriptions recently Spotify. But what exactly is lossless audio, how do you get it, and does it really make a difference? Let’s get into it.

What is lossless audio?

At the risk of stating the obvious, lossless audio is digital audio that has not lost any of the information originally in the recording. This does not mean that it is not compressed – both lossless and “lossy” files will go through a compression process to ensure that the digital file is of a manageable size so that it can be streamed reliably. It is the file size after this compression that determines whether it will be lost or not – and there are two numbers that are relevant here.

The first is the “sample rate,” which is the number of times per second that an analog audio signal is scanned as it is converted into digital information. The higher the sample rate, the more accurate the digital information is – a CD has a sample rate of 44.1 kHz, for example, which means the analog signal is sampled 44,100 times per second as it is converted to digital.

Next, there’s “bit depth,” which refers to how much of the analog audio wave each sample of the signal picks up. The higher the number here, the more closely the analog audio signal is scanned, and the more accurate the copying of information from analog to digital becomes. It also helps provide greater dynamic range, which is the distance between the quietest and loudest moments in a recording. CD uses 16-bit audio.

The 16-bit/44.1 kHz resolution used by CD was recognized at the time of the technology’s development as the best compromise between capturing as much data audible to the human ear as possible and maintaining digital audio files at a manageable size. And it holds up – any digital audio file with a resolution of at least 16-bit/44.1kHz can be described as lossless, as long as it is stored in a lossless format such as FLAC (Lossless Audio Codec) or, indeed, on CD. Anything less than this – often expressed differently, in kilobits per second – can safely be called “lossy”, while anything greater takes us into the realms of “high-resolution” audio (which is ultimately anything above CD quality, but generally considered anything 24-bit deep or higher).

Is lossless sound better than regular sound?

Short answer: Yes. Information is knowledge, after all, and knowledge is power — or, in this case, knowledge is having access to as much audio information as possible, making your music sound as the artist intended.

Slightly longer answer: Yes, as long as you use equipment capable of revealing all the information in a lossless audio file, it will sound better* than a lossy equivalent. This means everything from where your music comes from, how well the digital information is converted to analog, amplified, and finally the speakers or headphones serving your ears.