[Blotto80]

I bet people in 1998 used to think that realmedia would never go away either. Chances are MP3 will be around forever but what if it's not? I'm just saying that with HDDs being so cheap, it makes no sense not to keep lossless as your base format and convert to lossy for portable players. My 15,000 song library and my iTunes copy both fit handily on a 1TB drive. $50 for the disk, $50 for an external to back it up to. Is $100 really that mush more expensive than the $80 it would cost to do the same with 500gb or 320gb drives?

 

[Leslie Dorner]

Loss less is useful for archive purposes, but it's completely pointless for me since I can't hear a difference between flac and mp3. I know it's not my audio equipment. I know it's not my PCs. I still have a backup of my flac music library in my CrashPlan+ private cloud. I just don't see a point to restore it just to make some stranger here who has never heard my music or audio system happy. I think that's what this ultimately comes down to. I'm not here to make anyone else happy. MP3s sound nearly identical to flac or wav loss less codecs and formats. Keeping separate libraries for each format is a waste of time and money. I've got better things to do with my life.

 

[HeadFiend]

Well, do keep your online backup, just in case you change your mind some months (or years) from now.

 

[Leslie Dorner]

What I do is I buy a new or used CD or the high resolution flac version of a music album and then I rip and encode it to FLAC format if it's a CD. I upload it to CrashPlan+. Then, I transcode from flac to LAME 3.9.9 --preset-insane 320 Kbps MP3. Finally, I let CrashPlan+ backup everything. So, I maintain a flac music library in the cloud while keeping a MP3 music library locally and in the cloud as well.

 

[HeadFiend]

Sounds reasonable!

 

[Gorillaz]

I can't tell the difference between different formats too, and I don't that cables make a difference since you are planning to get one for your HD800, you can invest that cable money in other gear, just my opinion.

 

[StratocasterMan]

If somehow my redundant copies of lossless music files in multiple cyber locations are ever denied to me, then I'm just going to stream other people's mono Beatles recordings that exist in the Cloud wirelessly to my portable device from a passing drone or satellite anyway! 

 

[dsdsds]

to OP
 
Man, now you have to turn your mind into steel because in the future, the reality will hit you hard.

 

[scuttle]

Quote:

I understand.
 
I don't care about 16 bit 44.1 kHz music as nearly as much as 24 bit 192 kHz flac files from my HD Tracks account. I can download my purchases and put them into a separate folder but it'll cost me over 30 GB.
 
The thing to keep in mind is that the mp3 codec and format has been around for more than a decade. 
 

 
However, the encoders have improved a lot during that time, which is easy to forget.
 
But you're right - the new formats are even better. Besides aac, ogg and opus you could also google for "lossy flac."

 

[scuttle]

Quote:

to OP
 
Man, now you have to turn your mind into steel because in the future, the reality will hit you hard.

 
The reality is that no one can tell the difference between 320 mp3 and flac. Yes, you think you can - but in blind listening tests, people crash and burn. In fact, most people can't tell the difference between 192 mp3 and flac.

 

[scuttle]

Quote:

I bet people in 1998 used to think that realmedia would never go away either. Chances are MP3 will be around forever but what if it's not? 

Then one would use a file converter. Sorry, but as a rhetorical question that one was about was tricky as "What would you if you're standing in Starbucks with pockets stuffed with $100 bills and wanted a coffee?"

 

[HeadFiend]

The point being that he didn't completely erase his FLAC collection: he still has a copy online.

 

[cel4145]

I bet people in 1998 used to think that realmedia would never go away either. Chances are MP3 will be around forever but what if it's not? I'm just saying that with HDDs being so cheap, it makes no sense not to keep lossless as your base format and convert to lossy for portable players. My 15,000 song library and my iTunes copy both fit handily on a 1TB drive. $50 for the disk, $50 for an external to back it up to. Is $100 really that mush more expensive than the $80 it would cost to do the same with 500gb or 320gb drives?

I agree. Backup solutions are pretty cheap, unless someone is a starving college student.

However, MP3s may indeed disappear as a format. But not because they will be replaced by some other lossy compression method. Simply because storage will be so cheap that no one will care about bothering to compress their audio. I wouldn't be surprised if in ten years, we aren't backing up our music collection to 1tb flash drives or memory cards that cost $10 ea. The CD as we know it will then be gone, and all our music will be purchased in a lossless compressed digital format.

 

[dsdsds]

its always good to have the source, and not preferably online, thats  a rusian roulette game ...
 
 
anyway go download those flacs again and store them in other places! mp3 is just an utility for portable listening anyway not an archiving format, people need to think twice before doing things like this.
 
 
and to me this only seems like OP did a mistake and is just triying to convince himself into his path caused by that error.

 

[Leslie Dorner]

I don't think I made a regrettable mistake. I just uploaded more FLAC albums to my CrashPlan+ account last night. I have the LAME 3.9.9 --present-insane 320 Kbps MP3 version of the same albums on my Western Digital and LaCie HDDs. I am backing up my massive DVD-Video library now. I should be done by the end of this month. The reason why I don't regret my decision is that I still enjoy my music perhaps not at full resolution, but it's still quite enjoyable. I like the fact that I saved hundreds of gigabytes worth of disk space. This means that I can purchase and download more music in the future. I honestly think that I'm being smart about finding the right balance of a growing media library versus disk space consumption. I'm listening to Spotify now and the 320 Kbps stream is quite refreshing. It's very liquid and transparent. The clarity and resolution are still stunning. My MP3 library sounds the same since I have a lot of the same music in my private music library compared to Spotify. It sounds identical to me.
 
MP3s are very good. I'm very happy with my decision. I can always quickly download my entire FLAC music library in less than 8 hours at any time from CrashPlan+. I never ever delete anything that I backed up to my CrashPlan+ private cloud or account. CrashPlan+ allows its subscribers to upload an unlimited amount of data to their accounts. If I had petabytes of data, then I could upload it all to CrashPlan+ for less than $140 for the next 4 years. I don't have petabytes worth of data. I have less than 710 gigabytes of data which is a lot of data considering it is mainly comprised of my media library of music, movies, videos, e-books, audio books, digital magazines, and pictures. LAME 3.9.9 --preset-insane 320 Kbps MP3 is virtually indistinguishable from FLAC to my ears and using my high end audio system. I can't tell the differences at all except when it comes to folder and file sizes.
 
I am not going to transcode my music library to lower bitrate MP3s. 320 Kbps is the right balance of sound quality and file sizes. I'm very happy with my MP3 music library. I can copy my MP3s to any device and use any software to play them whereas FLAC presented some considerable problems for compatibility and capacity problems. I have 1.2 terabytes of SATA-III 6 GB/s MLC NAND flash storage capacity and that's huge and the price tag is very very expensive. My System76 Leopard Extreme cost me $6250.00 and my Lemur Ultra Thin cost me $1250 recently.
 
On another note, I am thinking about getting the Sennheiser HD-800 with the Cardas Clear 10' headphone replacement cable and the Westone 4R universal IEMs. I will be using them at home with my audio system. I was wondering what you guys might think of these new additions. I subscribed and participated in the Westone 4 thread and I'm looking for the biggest Sennheiser HD-800 thread, but I need help making my decision. What do you think?
 
Yes, I will be listening to my 320 Kbps MP3s and my 24 bit 192 kHz FLAC files from HD Tracks and Chesky.
 
I'm more interested in the Westone 4R right now, but I'm not sure if I need them.
 
I am getting the ER-4P -> 4S adapter and the Ultimate Ears UE-350vm earphones this Friday from HeadRoom.
 
I think that the ER-4P -> 4S adapter will make a significant improvement to my ER-4PT. The UE-350vm is for my father for his Samsung Galaxy Note II which is unlocked.