FLAC bitrate and MediaMonkey

[goberre]

Just finished after 5 months of ripping my CD collection to FLAC using dbpoweramp and now have 750Gb of files that I use MediaMonkey to play through a Benchmark DAC PRE. Well worth the effort as sound quality is as good as from my Resolution Audio Opus 21 CD player with the main benefits of having playlists and shuffle etc. I can highly reccommend this solution to any audiophiles out there.

When I rip to FLAC the file bitrate tag in Windows Explorer and in dbpoweramp Edit ID-Tag indicates 1411kbs (CD Redbook) but when I play them with MediaMonkey all files have a differing bitrate, seldom over 1000kbs and sometimes as low as 300kbs. As an audiophile I really want to maintain the highest bitrate and do not understand why MediaMonkey would lower the bitrate.

My question is which is right, MediaMonkey bitrate or file tag bitrate?

Regards Goberre.

[nohitter151]

Bitrate with FLAC files is a bit of a misnomer because all FLAC files are perfectly lossless encodings of an original file. On playback, all FLACs have playback that is lossless, ie. 1411. The problem is that with FLACs, the files are compressed to save space (like a .zip file). However, they are decompressed on playback. Anyway, the reason the bitrates are reported differently is because as you know there are different FLAC compression levels, so some programs show the overall "bitrate", which takes into account the file size and compression, while others show "bitrate" as actual playback bitrate. MM shows the first, which is probably more useful than just telling you what you already know about the file (that its lossless).