SOUND FLIPPER GUIDES
Audio conversion quality: what we preserve
Understand verified sample preservation, deliberate lossy encoding, precision refusals and Sound Flipper's tested quality boundaries.
Preserve what the source actually contains
A qualified unchanged lossless conversion preserves the admitted samples, count, rate, precision and channel order. A lossless container made from an MP3 cannot restore information discarded by MP3. Sound Flipper distinguishes lossless conversion, decoded preservation and lossy encoding in its results.
Lossy inputs are decoded to verified float WAV before another format is encoded. There is no forced 16-bit intermediate. Integer lossless paths retain their supported source precision. The app refuses incompatible combinations instead of quietly reducing precision or downmixing.
Quality settings are explicit
MP3 uses LAME algorithm quality 0 and the permitted high-quality CBR bitrate. AAC uses AAC-LC two-loop encoding. Opus uses complexity 10 and an explicit 48 kHz output policy; SoXR precision 28 performs a required rate change. Vorbis uses quality 8 at qualified rates. FLAC uses compression level 8. Exact resolved settings appear before work starts.
These are deliberate defaults, not a claim that every listener will hear every output as identical. Source quality and the destination's requirements still matter. Slower processing is acceptable; a slow device does not receive a lower-quality encoder behind the scenes.
Verification is part of conversion
The saved output is inspected and decoded before success. Preservation paths check sample content and count; codec-specific checks examine presentation boundaries and output properties. A decoder, quota or cleanup error produces a failure rather than a reassuring but unverified download.
The recorded conversion-pipeline checkpoint passed 372 native comparison chains across three desktop browser engines. Read the method and limitations for the reference builds, source-decoder tolerances and checks that have not been performed.
Make edits consciously
Trimming, fades, gain, resampling and precision reduction change the signal. Review the displayed operation and keep an untouched original. New editing and metadata controls must be judged by their own output checks; the basic conversion checkpoint does not certify every later feature. The current format boundaries and the result warnings remain authoritative for the file you selected.