Split a FLAC file without re-encoding?

[King_Mustard]

I have a FLAC music album.

The final track has a hidden song at the end, meaning the track has a few minutes of silence in the middle.

I have selected the parts I don’t want in Audacity and deleted it from the timeline.

I’ve then gone to Edit > Preference > Quality > High-quality conversion and set Dither to None, as I’ve heard this is the best thing to do in my scenario.

I’ve gone to File > Export > Export Audio and selected FLAC as Type but there are two options:

1. Level (0 (fastest) to 8 (best))
2. Bit depth (16 bit, 24 bit)

Since I don’t want to re-encode (as, I believe, FLAC is similar to WAV in that it’s lossless?), what should I do next?

I’m happy to use alternate software.

[steve]

I believe, FLAC is similar to WAV in that it’s lossless?

That’s correct, so as long as you only cut that bit out and then save as FLAC, and “dither” is off, then the exported FLAC file will be bit-perfect (no losses due to re-encoding). Unlike MP3 encoding (which does lose a bit of sound quality), FLAC encoding does not reduce the sound quality.

Level (0 (fastest) to 8 (best))

This only affects the size of the FLAC file, not the sound. When set to 8, the file is likely to be a bit smaller, but encoding takes a bit longer. In virtually all cases you can just leave this at the default value 5.

what should I do next?

Export as FLAC, then set “dither” back to the default “shaped” setting.

[King_Mustard]

I believe, FLAC is similar to WAV in that it’s lossless?

That’s correct, so as long as you only cut that bit out and then save as FLAC, and “dither” is off, then the exported FLAC file will be bit-perfect (no losses due to re-encoding). Unlike MP3 encoding (which does lose a bit of sound quality), FLAC encoding does not reduce the sound quality.

Level (0 (fastest) to 8 (best))

This only affects the size of the FLAC file, not the sound. When set to 8, the file is likely to be a bit smaller, but encoding takes a bit longer. In virtually all cases you can just leave this at the default value 5.

what should I do next?

Export as FLAC, then set “dither” back to the default “shaped” setting.

Many thanks