Think “Shrink”: Why You Need Lossless Encoding

Looking for a way to rip your CDs into the best-sounding format on the planet? We've got the goods on three different ways to rip your tunes into a lossless codec.

Most of the time when you're ripping your CDs on to your hard drive, you use a codec, such as MP3, WMA, AAC, or OGG, to encode the audio data. Although each codec operates a different way, each also has the same basic function: to reduce an audio file size (usually by 80 to 90 percent) while losing as little audio fidelity as possible. This enables thousands of songs to be stored on an iPod, while it also speeds up the transmission of music across the Internet, which helps to keep bandwidth costs down. Basically, without codecs, there would be no online music.

However, sometimes you'll run into a situation where you have more than enough disk space, and there's no need to send your music across the Internet. A perfect example is taking your old, slow computer and then popping in a 200GB hard drive and a new sound card so that you can use it as part of your entertainment center. In this scenario, you'd probably prefer higher sound qualities to smaller file sizes.

This is where lossless encoding comes in. It works in mysterious ways, but the short of it is that lossless encoding looks for strings of ones or zeros in your audio data, and then it reduces them mathematically--though without losing any of the audio information contained in the file. With lossless encoding, "11111000" becomes five 1's and three 0's. It's a slightly counterintuitive concept, but the important thing here is that it works, effectively reducing the file size of your music collection by 50 percent (compared to uncompressed WAV). And, impressively, you don't lose a single bit of audio information. Your lossless files will sound exactly as good as the CD you ripped them from.

There are many kinds of lossless encoding, and all of them sound just as good as the rest. Depending on which software you prefer, there are three main ways to go.

FLAC stands for "Free Lossless Audio Codec." Like all open-source software, it's not really owned by anyone, so corporations and individuals are free to incorporate it into whatever hardware and software they choose to, and they don't have to pay anyone for any licensing fees. There are plenty of audio apps that can play this format back, but only one MP3 player can do so right now: the Rio Karma.

If you use Windows Media Player for most of your audio playback, this is the way to go. Most MP3 players that support WMA don't support the lossless version, but since lossless encoding is mostly about playback in the home, this isn't a deal breaker.

For all the iTunes/iPod users out there, Apple's own lossless codec is clearly the way to go. Unlike Lossless WMA, Apple's version works on the most popular MP3 player in the world. A 40GB iPod has room for about one hundred albums of lossless music.

We know that lossless encoding technically sounds better, but is it right for you? Try our listening test to find out.