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Topic: made a mistake when encoding to 24bit flac from 16bit wav (Read 4193 times) previous topic - next topic
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made a mistake when encoding to 24bit flac from 16bit wav

Hi, just realised I have made a stupid error.

I had many 16bit wav files, so to save space I used foobar to convert them to flac using a preset which i have only now just realised was set to " 24bit" no dither.
I Then deleted the wav files.

So now I have the flac files, but they are 24bit.. What's the best method for me to get these back lossless to 16bit wav (or is that now impossible?)

I understand converting between 24 to 16 bit requires dithering,
But I have 24 bit flac files from a 16bit source.

Do I just covert to wav with 16bit set? Or leave the flacs as they are (Sureley this isn't going to be "lossless" if I convert back to 16bit?)

Thanks for any help

made a mistake when encoding to 24bit flac from 16bit wav

Reply #1 –
Quote from: kC_ on
Hi, just realised I have made a stupid error.

I had many 16bit wav files, so to save space I used foobar to convert them to flac using a preset which i have only now just realised was set to " 24bit" no dither.
I Then deleted the wav files.

So now I have the flac files, but they are 24bit.. What's the best method for me to get these back lossless to 16bit wav (or is that now impossible?)

I understand converting between 24 to 16 bit requires dithering,
But I have 24 bit flac files from a 16bit source.

Do I just covert to wav with 16bit set? Or leave the flacs as they are (Sureley this isn't going to be "lossless" if I convert back to 16bit?)

Thanks for any help


My recommendation would be to use a file recovery software to obtain the deleted WAV files. I recommend Recuva, as it is free to use and works great.

If that doesn't work than I don't know what to tell you. But that usually works for HDDs and can work for SSDs depending on whether or not you have written over the data.

You could also try loading to a system restore point from before you deleted the files. This might work? I'm not sure. I'd try Recuva.

made a mistake when encoding to 24bit flac from 16bit wav

Reply #2 –
No need to use file recovery. You can safely convert the files back to 16-bit and they will be bit-identical to the originals. Just make sure you do not enable dithering when performing the conversion.

made a mistake when encoding to 24bit flac from 16bit wav

Reply #3 –
Quote from: Case on
No need to use file recovery. You can safely convert the files back to 16-bit and they will be bit-identical to the originals. Just make sure you do not enable dithering when performing the conversion.


Hi many thanks for the help, i will give this a go!

made a mistake when encoding to 24bit flac from 16bit wav

Reply #4 –
Quote from: Case on
No need to use file recovery. You can safely convert the files back to 16-bit and they will be bit-identical to the originals. Just make sure you do not enable dithering when performing the conversion.



Just tested (convert 24bit flac to 16bit wav, no dither) with foobar and then ran file compare in Wavelab 8.5 and it reports the 2 files are identical.
Thanks for your help! (somehow i didn't think they would match!) phew!


Ill then convert them back to flac with a "auto bit depth" preset


Cheers

made a mistake when encoding to 24bit flac from 16bit wav

Reply #5 –
Just for future reference, the reason why it worked was because the original file did not have any information beyond the first 16 bits, and so it was "padded" with zeros to express the 24-bit file. The extra bits would never be used UNLESS you did anything to change the gain (or other dsp). Changing the gain even just a tiny bit would cause it to be a true 24-bit file because the word length would need to grow in order to express the new value with minimal loss.  So by following Case's advice, you effectively "truncated" the empty bits. (better than unneeded dithering)

made a mistake when encoding to 24bit flac from 16bit wav

Reply #6 –
Quote from: tblob on
Just for future reference, the reason why it worked was because the original file did not have any information beyond the first 16 bits, and so it was "padded" with zeros to express the 24-bit file. The extra bits would never be used UNLESS you did anything to change the gain (or other dsp). Changing the gain even just a tiny bit would cause it to be a true 24-bit file because the word length would need to grow in order to express the new value with minimal loss.  So by following Case's advice, you effectively "truncated" the empty bits. (better than unneeded dithering)



Excellent to know, thanks for your help.