KVR Audio

kitkonis · Post by **kitkonis** » Sat Feb 28, 2015 3:13 pm

Hello,

WAW files are a lot smalles if i comperss them with RAR (stem files). I think it is because the silence in them..
So is it safe to compress stems with rar to make the pack smaller? I have a slow upload rate so this would help a lot. Thanks

crisis-at-music · Post by **crisis-at-music** » Sat Feb 28, 2015 3:18 pm

Compressing with WINRAR is always lossless. No data will be lost in the files.

thecontrolcentre · Post by **thecontrolcentre** » Sat Feb 28, 2015 3:19 pm

You mean WAV files I presume. They are smaller when you RAR them because that's what WinRar does ... it compresses the information. It's perfectly safe to do this with stems. No data is lost.

whyterabbyt · Post by **whyterabbyt** » Sat Feb 28, 2015 3:22 pm

If the .rar format (or .zip or .tar etc) changed one single bit of anything it would be fundamentally useless for its purpose. The fact that for decades these formats have been used for compressing software, files which would need to be reconstituted absolutely perfectly to work, should hopefully be reassuring evidence that they don't affect any files whatsoever.

PALU · Post by **PALU** » Sat Feb 28, 2015 3:43 pm

According to the Internet - "The definition of WAW is "What A Wanker" or "What A Waste"". Or "The sound one makes when having an orgasm. A word to describe something that is orgasmic".

Or... http://www.abbreviations.com/WAW

thecontrolcentre · Post by **thecontrolcentre** » Sat Feb 28, 2015 3:52 pm

kitkonis wrote:WAW files are a lot smalles if i comperss them with RAR (stem files). I think it is because the silence in them..

No. The silent parts are taking up the same amount of space as the non-silent parts. The files are smaller because Winrar has compressed them.

Touch The Universe · Post by **Touch The Universe** » Sat Feb 28, 2015 3:56 pm

whyterabbyt wrote:If the .rar format (or .zip or .tar etc) changed one single bit of anything it would be fundamentally useless for its purpose. The fact that for decades these formats have been used for compressing software, files which would need to be reconstituted absolutely perfectly to work, should hopefully be reassuring evidence that they don't affect any files whatsoever.

Numanoid · Post by **Numanoid** » Wed Mar 04, 2015 7:23 pm

kitkonis wrote:WAW files are a lot smalles if i comperss them with RAR (stem files). I think it is because the silence in them..
So is it safe to compress stems with rar to make the pack smaller? I have a slow upload rate so this would help a lot. Thanks

You are better off compressing WAV files as FLAC, files will be smaller than Rar, and you will be able to play them directly with most computer audio players.

It's annoying that more sample manufactures like for example IK Multimedia, Wusik and Camel Audio (while they were alive) has not adopted such a lossless audio standard, as it would save a heck of a lot of HDD space.

thecontrolcentre · Post by **thecontrolcentre** » Wed Mar 04, 2015 7:28 pm

Numanoid wrote:
kitkonis wrote:WAW files are a lot smalles if i comperss them with RAR (stem files). I think it is because the silence in them..
So is it safe to compress stems with rar to make the pack smaller? I have a slow upload rate so this would help a lot. Thanks
You are better off compressing WAV files as FLAC, files will be smaller than Rar, and you will be able to play them directly with most computer audio players.

The OP isn't looking for a different compression method. He wants to share stems over the internet. Converting to FLAC is not the way to share WAV stems.

Numanoid · Post by **Numanoid** » Wed Mar 04, 2015 7:31 pm

thecontrolcentre wrote:The OP isn't looking for a different compression method. He wants to share stems over the internet. Converting to FLAC is not the way to share WAV stems.

A slight digresion into FLAC land, but the OP shouldn't worry, zipping the Wav files won't harm them in any way

Touch The Universe · Post by **Touch The Universe** » Wed Mar 04, 2015 7:32 pm

thecontrolcentre wrote:
Numanoid wrote:
kitkonis wrote:WAW files are a lot smalles if i comperss them with RAR (stem files). I think it is because the silence in them..
So is it safe to compress stems with rar to make the pack smaller? I have a slow upload rate so this would help a lot. Thanks
You are better off compressing WAV files as FLAC, files will be smaller than Rar, and you will be able to play them directly with most computer audio players.

The OP isn't looking for a different compression method. He wants to share stems over the internet. Converting to FLAC is not the way to share WAV stems.

Flac can also be converted back to wave and by converting them to this format his file would probably be much less than what it would be for winrar. Thing is another app would be required for that I think which is just another tedious step his recipient might not want to take.

thecontrolcentre · Post by **thecontrolcentre** » Wed Mar 04, 2015 7:34 pm

Numanoid wrote:... the OP shouldn't worry, zipping the Wav files won't harm them in any way

Yes, that has already been pointed out more than once.

Numanoid · Post by **Numanoid** » Wed Mar 04, 2015 7:36 pm

Excatly, but I wanted to disgress, and champion my cause for HDD space saving

thecontrolcentre wrote:No. The silent parts are taking up the same amount of space as the non-silent parts. The files are smaller because Winrar has compressed them.

Some background info about the process found here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_archiver
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lossless_compression

thecontrolcentre · Post by **thecontrolcentre** » Wed Mar 04, 2015 7:37 pm

Tjgoa wrote:Flac can also be converted back to wave and by converting them to this format his file would probably be much less than what it would be for winrar. Thing is another app would be required for that I think which is just another tedious step his recipient might not want to take.

Do you think converting stems from WAV to FLAC and back to WAV again won't affect the audio?

Numanoid · Post by **Numanoid** » Wed Mar 04, 2015 7:40 pm

Is this a definition of Stems that you agree on?: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stem_%28audio%29

"In audio production, a stem is a group of audio sources mixed together, to be dealt with downstream as one unit"

So if you got one Wav unit, converting that to FLAC and back to wav, shouldn't affect the original wav unit

Any data/quality loss at compressing waw fiels with winrar?