In more than 90% of cases you can not download a true FLAC from any commercial site, no matter how much you pay.
All of them use technologies to fake mp3 files and represent them as FLACs. Spectral analysers are targeted by this technique, so you must have experience in interpreting them, and use some additional tools.
So just take a look at these examples:

 

A FLAC is a FLAC, whatever is in it. Hence "true" FLAC.

Again, what represents a FLAC is a FLAC.
You seem to imply that FLAC has a "representation".
If you would posit it should be "full-rate audio", that would only be your subjective expectation.

Tricky work, I'm sure!

 

Apart from purely Aristotelian analytical logic:
Technically, it makes sense to create FLACs from genuine WAVs only. And that is what people expect FLACs to be (to contain a genuine WAV). Otherwise it is a fraud, ill-willed or reckless manipulation of people's expectations. In that, psychological sense, a FLAC is 'true' or 'fake'. So, I guess everybody understood what I meant.
Now somebody might ask what a 'genuine WAV' is, what does it mean to 'contain a WAV' etc... (cf "Games People Play" by Eric Berne).
But the only significant point is that you can get a "full-rate audio" FLAC if you record the music by yourself or grab it from a CD (or other optical media), by yourself. After downloading about 100 "FLAC" files I found only two of them were 'genuine'.

 

Last edited by a moderator: May 29, 2021

Oh okay. I hear you now.
I for one would never assume as such, even within a scene that involves offering full-rate in FLAC format.
For the same reasons you have given! In that people can't be trusted!

Of course, I agree.
So I suppose the scene you are part of assumed that people would adhere to this.

So whilst technically you and I know how a FLAC can be used, I am also not wrong in saying that a FLAC is just a lossless container for compressed audio; whatever rate that may be at.

 

i thought i wanted/"needed" flacs but in reality that ended with the fact that it simply takes waaay to much more space in relation to what i hypothetically could experience sonically, its only in cases where i suspect i would need a certain file in a editing project that flac could serve a purpose.

but just for listening pleasure, even original master recordings vary so much in mixing quality that they often surpass any differences between a great 320kbps mp3 and a original full fledged file, ive experience this so many times that i find it pointless only getting flacs, that collection is going to reflect other sorts of mishaps anyways, much more noticeable than anything i would notice from not having a flac instead of a pristine 320

 

Last edited: May 30, 2021

noteburner downloading really slow this week. Does anybody have this problem?

 

FLAC is just a container. But it is useful only for saving space, not for giving any additional quality. If you 'compress' a mp3 into FLAC format, you will just get a bigger file, with the same sound quality. So it is just a waste of time and memory space. But if that FLAC is tweaked to cheat spectral analyzers it would contain additional useless noise (for the sake of faking), so the sound quality would be even degraded compared to that mp3.
The difference in sound quality of the same recording in FLAC/WAV and mp3 would always be audible.

 

Last edited by a moderator: May 30, 2021

I'm also using Deemix. Found a nice thread in another forum where users post their Deezer tokens
so others are able to download without even having an account... and the flac files are in top quality,
always checking them with Spek.

 

Allavsoft is still works to download from spotify, soundcloud, youtube etc websites.
I am a paid users and have used it for more than 6 years without any problem.

 

Hey guys do you think (or know if) the files downloaded from deemix (flac) are loudness-corrected or the LUFS standardization happens in real time in the mobile app or on the web browser ?

 

Been using Audacity for years: free, versatile, just keeps working, no hassle. Just set it to Windows WASAPI, and turn up your ASIO input to + 12dB/15dB in your ASIO driver/app. Then store it as either wav or flac, eventhough it's a mp3 recording. It will get really interesting when Spotify starts streaming lossless.

Edit: make sure Spotify Normalize and "Auto adjust quality" are turned off.

 

Comparing those services' quality to YouTube is pretty far fetched. On YouTube you get exactly what you expect.
And the original mp3 file is sonically better (and smaller in size) than that same file converted to a bloated FLAC.

 

the very real option

 

FLAC Deezer no Premium is patched out ...
No more Deemix FLAC for free

 

Last edited: Jul 28, 2021

For practical reasons, streaming is much more convenient than downloading. The question is why do I keep downloading music (keeping on complicating life) instead of streaming it?
I have asked myself this several times, but I cannot give an answer (except to think that it is a cultural heritage)

 

Sometimes, no connection
Rare music NOT on streaming (rare versions, copyright lock ...)
No latency, bugs and such
...
Even a small MP3 player will last 20+ hours and start in less than 5 seconds

Local Files are robust and easy on resources
Streaming is not

"Collecting" is another thing too
PS : i lost some of my Spotify tracks because they simply removed them (authors troubles and such ...)