Lossy or not?

[slewofboots]

Please include screenshots of the frequency analyses as well. Together, these two are a good judge of lossless or not. You can use Exact Audio Copy (EAC) to do both, just click on Tools, Process Wave and you'll figure it out.

-Slew

[chilton]

Here's an EAC frequency analysis of the same track.

[slewofboots]

This second sample's freq. analysis looks lossless to me, there is no abrupt dropoff of frequencies anywhere near the high end (i.e. above 10kHz there's no dropoff noticeable).
And FYI - what I would do is use EAC for the spectral and freq. analyses, cause then you can combine both graphs in one screen shot.

[Five]

EAC is not reliable for FA/SA. It can spot some lossy sources, but not others.

CEP/Audition is best for SA, Analfreq is still best for FA fwiw. I'm always looking for something better if anybody knows.

from what I can see this one is seriously strange, can't recall ever seeing anything quite like it.

can you upload a sample of this track to rapidshare.com or similar so I can take a look and also hear it?

[chilton]

Originally Posted by Five

can you upload a sample of this track to rapidshare.com or similar so I can take a look and also hear it?

Here it is (but please don't judge me on the musical content)

http://rapidshare.com/files/12212117...ample.wav.html

While looking at the Audition meters while getting the sample ready, I saw the decibel meter going into the red zone and hitting the top repeatedly.
Could this be a case of a very poor audio recording sounding even worse after a digital transfer with the recording level set too high?

[slewofboots]

Originally Posted by Five

EAC is not reliable for FA/SA. It can spot some lossy sources, but not others.

CEP/Audition is best for SA, Analfreq is still best for FA fwiw. I'm always looking for something better if anybody knows.

from what I can see this one is seriously strange, can't recall ever seeing anything quite like it.

can you upload a sample of this track to rapidshare.com or similar so I can take a look and also hear it?

Five, explain how you can say that one spectral or frequency analysis is "better" than another? Only thing I can think of might be that you think the color scheme is easier to read on one graph compared to the next. I mean, come on we're talking about data points on a graph here. Plus, EAC doesn't "spot" a lossy source, instead it's the person reading the graph and looking for telltale signs. The x-axis and y-axis are the same for each program's graph, so what's the difference? Or are you claiming that EAC doesn't properly analyze the audio data?

[Five]

EAC shows a bunch of mirroring in the highs that isn't actually there.

check out this thread, keep reading to pg2 to see where I'm coming from
http://www.thetradersden.org/forums/...ead.php?t=1331

[Five]

ps ssamadhi97 really sums it up in the last post on pg3

[slewofboots]

thanks for the link.
After reading I still am not convinced that there is anything wrong with EAC - it would appear that one just needs to know how to use it (i.e. zoom in on 2-sec chunk, and also compare different chunks from different tracks throughout the recording).
However, the Anal Freq program appears to give a cleaner-looking graph based on the samples included in that link you posted above, but EAC gives you some extra flexibility what with the different types of FA graphs you can get.
Plus it has a nice dirty sounding name.

[Five]

Originally Posted by slewofboots

Plus it has a nice dirty sounding name.

indeed!

the main thing I don't like about EAC is the false readings in the highs. I want to know if there is any noise up there or not. CEP/Audition is my favorite, but I believe that Audacity's SA is about equal once you set it to max out at 22050Hz in preferences. But I find Audacity's colour less intuitive since I use Audition seven days a week.

edit: meant audition seven days

[slewofboots]

Five, is there any reason my version of Cool Edit Pro (old school version 1.0) would have any problem doing nice SA and FA graphs? If not would you tell me how, please?

Thanks!

[Five]

so far as I know it works just as well as the more recent versions, altho I have only used as far back as v1.2a. There is one small bug in the FA that you have to watch out for, after opening the FA window it is sometimes necessary to move the cursor to another position to get an accurate reading. I'm not sure if the FA bug has been fixed, I've seen it as happen on versions as recent as CEP2.1

AnalFreq I still like better but it takes forever to render and only one channel at a time. And it usually crashes on my machine right at the end, but not before giving a really good graph.

you're welcome, hope this helps