1. Different interpretations

Master tape: The original and edited tape (CD) that the singer formally recorded in the recording studio after composing, selecting songs and practicing. It is used for copying and producing audio and video products, commonly known as master tape (master disc).

Lossless: FLAC Chinese can be interpreted as lossless audio compression coding. FLAC is a well-known set of free audio compression codes, which is characterized by lossless compression.

2. Different reproduction forms

The master tape is used to make discs in the later stage. Lossless is used to reduce the audio sampling frequency and bit rate. The lossless compression formats include APE, FLAC, WavPack, LPAC,WMALossless,AppleLossless,TTA,Tak,TAC,La,OptimFROG,Shorten.

Lossless occupies a large space because the encoded audio (PCM) data is compressed losslessly without any information loss. Every byte of the decoded output audio is the same as the input of the encoder. That's why lossless compression is more common for music in online music players.

Extended information:

In the field of audio compression, there are two compression methods, namely lossy compression and lossless compression! The MP3, WMA, and OGG we often see are called lossy compression. As the name suggests, lossy compression will damage and distort the original audio information during the compression process. The meaning is that the output audio file can be much smaller than the original file.

Another type of audio compression is called lossless compression. Lossless compression can compress the size of the audio file into a smaller size while preserving 100% of the audio data of the original file. After the file is restored, the PCM data that is exactly the same as the source file can be obtained.

The current lossless compression formats include APE, FLAC, WavPack, TAK, TTA, WMALossless, AppleLossless, LA, OptimFROG, Shorten, etc. The most popular lossless compression formats in China are APE and FLAC. Let’s compare these two lossless compression formats.

APE, Monkey'sAudio, is a common lossless audio compression encoding format with the extension .ape. Unlike lossy audio compression (such as MP3, OggVorbis or AAC, etc.), Monkey'sAudio does not lose data when compressing.

An audio file compressed to Monkey'sAudio sounds exactly like the original file. The playlist of Monkey'sAudio files uses .apl (cues are also supported). At the same time, the open source development kit it provides makes it easier for player developers to make player products support the APE format.

Among the many existing lossless compression schemes, APE has a low compression ratio and slow decoding speed. Because it was launched earlier than FLAC, the APE format occupies the hearts of most PC-HIFI friends. It quickly became popular in China and is widely used. It has become the preferred format for many domestic lossless music lovers.

FLAC is the abbreviation of FreeLosslessAudioCodec. It is a very mature lossless compression format and is not as famous as APE. The format's source code is completely open and supports all operating system platforms. Its encoding algorithm is quite mature and has passed rigorous testing. It can still play normally when FLAC files are damaged.

In addition, this format is the first lossless format to be widely supported by hardware.

Reference material: Baidu Encyclopedia—Lossless Audio Compression

Baidu Encyclopedia—Mastering