Guild Wars 2 HoT OST in lossless format

Hi. Recently, ArenaNet uploaded some new tracks to their soundcloud in lossless format (.wav).

I was wondering if it would be possible for us to download somewhere a lossless version of the complete Heart of Thorns soundtrack?

This soundtrack is my absolute favorite and I love listening to it from the beginning to the end. But right now, the only sources the soundtrack is available from is digitally from iTunes or Amazon, which both only offer lossy formats, or from the vinyl edition of the sound track, which is pretty inconvenient if you don't have the equipment to listen to it.

There are also at the moment 5 tracks of the soundtrack on the official soundcloud page in a lossless format (.wav), which is awesome, but I would like the full album to be available in a lossless format.

Would this be possible? I think it is a shame that such beautiful music is locked behind lossy formats! And that the true music will never be accessible, or ever heard by the public...

Your last paragraph is a bit of an overstatement seeing as lossy formats actually contain all the information necessary to produce sound. :0Other than that - yeah, it would be nice to see .wav soundtrack as an option.

@Airdive.2613 said:Your last paragraph is a bit of an overstatement seeing as lossy formats actually contain all the information necessary to produce sound. :0Other than that - yeah, it would be nice to see .wav soundtrack as an option.

It doesn't contain all the information, since some of it is compressed. The sound produced by the compressed file is of lower quality than the one of the uncompressed file.

@Moichumoi.7630 said:

@"Airdive.2613" said:Your last paragraph is a bit of an overstatement seeing as lossy formats actually contain

all

the information necessary to produce sound. :0Other than that - yeah, it would be nice to see .wav soundtrack as an option.

It has actually been a major misconception about lossy sound.There is a loss of information about the nature of the exact physical oscillations, yes. There is, however, no loss of sound as humans know it. The "additional" data present in lossless formats is only needed if you want to recreate the high-frequency noise (and no one seriously wants to hear that) or the dynamic range that's more than a human ear is capable of discerning.

@Airdive.2613 said:

@Moichumoi.7630 said:

@Airdive.2613 said:Your last paragraph is a bit of an overstatement seeing as lossy formats actually contain

all

the information necessary to produce sound. :0Other than that - yeah, it would be nice to see .wav soundtrack as an option.

I actually want to reproduce those high frequency sounds. I can instantly hear the difference between a lossy file and a lossless file when I turn up the volume. The lossy file's highs are gonna get really harsh and unlistenable while the lossless one's will be exact and reproduced correctly (undistorted and pleasant to the ear).

The lossy files can only be played at a much lower volume than the lossless ones without the sound quality becoming unlistenable. There is definitly loss of sound as we humans know it. Maybe you don't notice it at lower volumes, but it is really noticeable at higher volumes.

@"Moichumoi.7630" said:

I actually want to reproduce those high frequency sounds. I can instantly hear the difference between a lossy file and a lossless file when I turn up the volume. The lossy file's highs are gonna get really harsh and unlistenable while the lossless one's will be exact and reproduced correctly (undistorted and pleasant to the ear).

Eh, that's kind of tricky and has several (mutually non-exclusive) explanations:

1. Confirmation bias. That is to say, you are literally feeling better just knowing the track is lossless and are prone to think it sounds better. It is a very real thing, scientifically speaking. A/B/X testing was invented for a reason.
2. Volume. It's been noticed that everything sounds subjectively "better" once it gets 0.2 dB louder than it previously was.
3. There is a stigma of poor old MP3s that were made by people completely unrelated to sound engineering using the worst possible (but widely available) codecs resulting in amplitude clipping. The format itself, though, is quite capable of sounding "well". It just takes a skilled person and/or a good codec to make an MP3 sound exactly like FLAC (or whatever). Now, iTunes somehow manages to keep its reputation even though they use files even "lighter" than MP3s. And I believe ANet's sound engineers are skilled enough to know what they're doing.

The lossy files can only be played at a much lower volume than the lossless ones without the sound quality becoming unlistenable. There is definitly loss of sound as we humans know it. Maybe you don't notice it at lower volumes, but it is really noticeable at higher volumes.

This might be another instance of "format conversion gone wrong", if you're listening to anonymous rips online.There's also the possibility that some tracks you like were being remastered specifically for the purpose of "sounding better as lossless" so as to incentivize buying lossless. (You know, just like Blu-Ray disks tend to offer bonus content.)

Looking for lossless versions of the same music, specifically the HoT OST.  Comments on lossy versions rejected, outright.  Thanks.

There's quite a bit of Heart of Thorns music on Soundcloud.  Even HoT OST.