Using Spek to see if an audio file is really lossless after doing noise reduction.


I digitized several vinyl LP’s and couldn’t figure out why some FLAC files do not pass the Spek test for lossless. Then I saw that if I do noise reduction based on the vinyl noise between tracks, the Khz of the whole file drops and it looks like it’s not lossless anymore. Do I have to stop getting rid of vinyl noise to have a lossless file? The file sounds cleaner with the noise out but then it looks like an MP3 on Spek!

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That doesn't surprise me. I use an older version of Adobe Audition for LP transfers and other audio editing work (though I don't do much these days) and the level of complexity and number of settings in these programs can be staggering.

To answer my own question, I now see that Goldwave noise reduction has many parameters that I don’t completely understand. Each one ends up influencing the results on Spek, so I’ll have to try different settings of Scale, Overlap, FFT size, etc., to make things work.