Playback Bitrate or Recorded Bitrate preferred?

[Bob54K]

After the recent update on bit rates I started thinking. I think I prefer to know the playback bit rate over the bit rate the song is recorded at. An example would be the ALAC lossless format. Songs digitized in ALAC are lower bit rates shown than when they are played back due the the lossless conversion process. As an example, I have albums that might show 600 kbps on a song but the playback is at CD quality level (1411 kbps). I'm curious what others prefer be shown? The recorded bit rate, or the playback bit rate?

 

[merifon]

Since the final playing bitrate, will be always the same for any given sample rate and bit depth (bit x samples x 2), the original bit rate of the file, makes more sense, it will permit reasonably to know if there is lossy compression

 

[harkpabst]

As an example, I have albums that might show 600 kbps on a song but the playback is at CD quality level (1411 kbps).

600 kbps is actually not really the recorded bitrate. It's rather the bitrate used when storing and actually reading the file. If this file stems from a CD quality master, this last step.of "recording" has been performed using 44.1 kHz at 16 bit.

Since sample rate and bit depth are shown anyway, the "original" bitrate can be easily calculated any time. Or to put it the other way around, these two values provide even more information than the bitrate does, so doing the math will not even provide more information.

What's missing (pretty much in all players I think) is an indicator if the currently played file has been compressed in a lossless or in a lossy manner. This would provide some additional information, indeed.

But only limited to the last processing step. If somebody hand a bunch of FLAC files over to you that he ripped with lossless compression from a CD that.was.originally made from a lowly MP3 download, then you'll never know ...

 

[Brantome]

What's missing (pretty much in all players I think) is an indicator if the currently played file has been compressed in a lossless or in a lossy manner. This would provide some additional information, indeed.

I generally assume that if the bitrate is less than 320Kbps them it’s a lossy track, and if higher it’s a compressed lossless track. If for example the bitrate is less than 2*16*44.1 (1411 kbps) then it’s probably a losslessly compressed CD quality track. You could do the maths all the way up to 2*24*192 to get ranges of bitrates for other losslessly compressed tracks.

Whether than information is really of any great benefit when listening to the track is another matter…

 

[harkpabst]

I generally assume that if the bitrate is less than 320Kbps them it’s a lossy track, and if higher it’s a compressed lossless track. If for example the bitrate is less than 2*16*44.1 (1411 kbps) then it’s probably a losslessly compressed CD quality track. You could do the maths all the way up to 2*24*192 to get ranges of bitrates for other losslessly compressed tracks.

Whether than information is really of any great benefit when listening to the track is another matter…

Exactly my approach. According to Wikipedia, the Opus codec supports bitrates up to 510 kbit/s, so this could potentially lead to ambiguities ... but as we all know, WiiM doesn't support Opus anyway.

No real practical meaning, I agree, but obviously it can be confusing, hence this request.