Convert to uncompressed FLAC?

[Alan Silberlight]

Is it possible to convert to uncompressed FLAC? I do not see a way to do this but hopefully, I am wrong. Thank you.

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

There's no such thing. FLAC is a lossless, but nevertheless compressed audio format. It achieves its compression by removing redundant data, but in a way that can be recovered without loss. For instance, if you had a string of, say, 18 '0's in a file, you could, for instance, express that as 0>18 rather than 000000000000000000. When decoded, perfectly recoverable, but taking up far less space. But if you didn't do this, it wouldn't be FLAC...

[ryclark]

But otherwise yes. Audition can certainly save audio in the lossless Flac format with no problems.

[Alan Silberlight]

Thank you for responding. Can you write down the steps? From what I can see, Adobe Audition does not save to uncompressed FLAC. I do not see any choices in Adobe Audition. I'm just hoping that I'm wrong. Thank you.

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

Like I said in the first place, there's no such thing as uncompressed FLAC. FLAC level 0 is still compressed, and has to be unpacked, And at 1411 kbps (like all FLAC) it comes out pretty much the same size as a wav file, so there seems to be little to no point in doing it.

[Alan Silberlight]

Using dB Power Amp, I did my own test. I took a WAV file and converted it to FLAC, first compressed 41% and then uncompressed. Both showed 192 kHZ 24 bit, Bit rate was 9,216 kbps for both . Audio quality for both showed Perfect (Lossless). Yes, I have to admit that compressed and uncompressed yielded the same results in terms of audio quality. However, my thought was that if a program that was free gave you a choice then Adobe Audition, a program for which we pay monthly should also give you this choice.

[ryclark]

Was the file size also reduced by 41% in the resulting compressed FLAC compared to the uncompressed one?

[Alan Silberlight]

Yes, I would say so.

compressed file--529,990 kb

uncompressed file--884,986 kb

That's about 41 percent.

[ryclark]

Is that comparison of the uncompressed original Wav file or of the 'uncompressed' Flac version?

There is no such thing as an 'uncompressed' Flac file! The 10 different settings in a Flac encoder don't refer to uncompressed or compressed versions of the resulting file since all Flac files are compressed in size compared to an original Wav file but they are all still lossless. They refer to different levels of the amount of efficiency in how the files are encoded. Lower numbered settings mean that the Flac encoder can take longer optimising how much the file size is compressed thus leading to smaller file sizes. But a Flac file always plays back as completely lossless audio quality no matter how much the file size has been reduced.

According to Wiki

libFLAC uses a compression level parameter that varies from 0 (fastest) to 8 (slowest). The compressed files are always perfect, lossless representations of the original data. Although the compression process involves a tradeoff between speed and size, the decoding process is always quite fast and not dependent on the level of compression.^[11][12]

According to a .WAV benchmark,^[13] using higher rates above default level -5, takes considerably more time to encode without real gains in space savings.

[Alan Silberlight]

Thank you for responding. Another program, dB PowerAmp Music Converter, saves to FLAC in 10 different levels, from fastest to uncompressed. From what I can see, Adobe Audition does not save to uncompressed FLAC. I'm just hoping that I'm wrong.