Octave Radio streams as MP3. That often raises eyebrows, especially from those who know how seriously we take sound quality at Octave Records. After all, we record at some of the highest resolutions available—in DSD 256 where each track of the recording is captured at 11mHz—and work hard to preserve every nuance of the original performance.
So why MP3?
Because for streaming, a well-encoded MP3 at a high bitrate does the job just fine. It lets people all over the world access our music easily and reliably. And when you're starting with an uncompressed, high-resolution master, you can get surprisingly great results—so long as you don’t mess it up with extra processing.
That said, for serious listening—when we sit down to get closer to the music—MP3 isn't even in the conversation. For high-end audio, we insist on full-resolution. And if we’re going to compress, it has to be lossless.
Formats like FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) and ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec) are called “lossless” because they reduce file size without losing any audio data. Every sample, every bit, is still there on playback—exactly as it was before compression.
So how do they pull off this magic trick?
Think of it like ZIP files for audio. They don’t guess or throw things away. Instead, they use clever pattern recognition and statistical models to represent redundant data more efficiently. For example, if a section of music has a long stretch of silence—or repeating waveform values—a lossless encoder simply says, “this part repeats” rather than storing every bit individually.
When you play the file back, your player just reverses the process. It unpacks the original waveform in full, without any degradation. That’s why we call it “bit-perfect.”
Lossless compression typically saves 30–60% in file size. Not bad for getting all your music intact, just leaner and more storage-friendly.
But it’s important to separate that from lossy formats like MP3. MP3 doesn’t just shrink—it discards. It guesses what you won’t miss. That’s a dangerous game in high-end audio.
So yes, Octave Radio is MP3—and that’s fine for casual streaming.
But when we talk about audiophile listening, only lossless will do.
Because nothing gets us closer to the music than the original, unaltered truth.
