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<br><div><div>On May 23, 2011, at 10:26, Dennis Brunnenmeyer wrote:</div> <font face="Garamond"><blockquote type="cite"><font face="Garamond">Is FLAC a variable bit rate format when streamed? If so, how can it be truly lossless? <br> </font> </blockquote></font><div class="moz-signature">No offense intended, but your logic is backwards. You should be asking: How can a constant bit rate format be truly lossless ... unless it is not compressed at all.</div><div class="moz-signature"><br></div><div class="moz-signature">Look at it this way: You can either guarantee a low bit rate, and you'll have to lose data to fit ... or you can guarantee that no data is lost, and you'll have to adjust the bit rate up to guarantee that. You can't have both the guarantee of a (low) target constant bit rate and a guarantee that nothing will be lost when you reduce bit rate below uncompressed.</div><div class="moz-signature"><br></div><div class="moz-signature">Masklinn actually did a great job of explaining why, I just wanted to present a different way of looking at the problem.</div><div class="moz-signature"><br></div><div class="moz-signature">Brian Willoughby</div><div class="moz-signature">Sound Consulting</div><div class="moz-signature"><br></div></div></body></html>