[Phelonious Ponk]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mr. B /img/forum/go_quote.gif I think this argument would have had a lot more merit several years ago when storage space was more expensive and portable FLAC players were nearly non-existent. Now that hard drives sell in the ballpark of 10 cents a gigabyte and used rockbox-able players can be had online for minimal cost, I don't think maintaining a FLAC collection incurs any circumstantial cost difference. Admittedly, there is only a marginal improvement with my current equipment but I'm not going to be a student much longer and I expect to have this music collection for decades to come. My backup paranoia will see to that. I would have to concede a degree of inconvenience, however, for those that use "mainstream" players like the iPod and Zune. I recently started replacing MP3s in my collection with FLAC where available but I still have to keep an MP3 copy on hand for my Zune.

Agreed. Disc space is almost free and you can't go back. I ripped all my CDs to lossless files.

P

 

[Zalithian]

Simple answer. If you have the space, you should probably have it in lossless for archiving.

As far as on portables - it really depends on a few things - the size of your library, your equipment, and your hearing. For me personally, using flac on portables is not even worth considering. I have a 30 gig ipod (few years old) 8gb sony A818, and a 16gig Cowon D2 + 16gig SD card. I have about 40 gigs of music in LOSSY formats, and that's not including any of my videos which also get space on my portables. It's a no brainer. Even if I had a 120 gig player, I'd question whether or not to put flac on there - although with that much space it would seem much more viable.

 

[Scrith]

You are making the same mistake the zealots at HydrogenAudio did...you can't hear a difference now, so you confidently pronounce that there is no difference. The reality is, you are not hearing a difference *now* with your current set of equipment. That doesn't mean that there is no difference to everyone, or that you will not hear a difference in the future.

Echoing what others have said...storage is so cheap now it is a foolish mistake not to be archiving your CDs in a lossless format. I recommend FLAC, which is smaller than WAV, maintains all the benefits and can be converted to WAV at any time without any loss in quality whatsoever, and has the advantages of tag support and checksums that will let you know whether or not your music files have become corrupted (something that occasionally happens to files stored on magnetic devices eventually, I assure you...FLACs are also smaller, which reduces the probability of errors developing). And any music player worth a damn supports FLAC, but you can always convert to MP3 (while leaving the archive files intact, of course) for portables or lesser music playback programs.

 

[Ham Sandwich]

It is important not to get so snobby about audio that you refuse to listen to mp3. In the end it is the music that matters for me (with a concern for audio quality as well).

I just spent the past 6 months re-ripping my CDs to FLAC. They were originally ripped to MP3 5+ years ago. I haven't gotten to all of my CDs yet, and likely never will. But I'm still perfectly willing to listen to the MP3s that I still have. I also have some stuff that is only in MP3 or lossy (live recordings, music never released on CD, etc.). I'm not going to give up those recordings just because they are lossy.

I also listen to MP3 on my iPod. I've never done lossless on the iPod. I'm also a guy who brought an iPod as a source to a local head-fi meet. MP3 still has a place today, but the tipping point has passed where lossless is now as practical as lossy was 5 years ago.

 

[Currawong]

Some other thoughts people may not have considered:

The OP listens to music which is likely highly compressed and not recorded with audiophile listening in mind. In such circumstances, there is probably no benefit to lossless. I listen to music that is recorded with the highest quality possible, and IMO, is affected far more by compression, so it matters to me that it's lossless.

 

[krmathis]

Yes, lossy encodec music (AAC, Ogg Vorbis, MP3, ...) may be transparent to your ears right now.
But further down the road they may come short, when you have upgraded your gear, changed taste of music, or simply fine tuned your hearing. Then you may regret not going lossless in the first place as you will need to re-rip all those CDs...

Storage space is cheap these days. I say no more!

 

[auee]

I agree that if you have the option always rip in lossless. If the music is only available to you in a compressed format, enjoy it as it is. I have recordings from Live Music Archive of bands such as Little Feat, Calexico, etc, that I love notwithstanding the compressed sound.

By the way, I waited for more that 5 years to get into computer audio. Hard drives were not large enough and were too expensive to hold enough music to make it worth it to me to invest in a separate computer and hard drives. I simply played my CDs and listened with my FM tuner. However, the wait was worth it. I went with the Mac Mini, iTunes, Apple remote or iphone as remote, external 1 TB hard drives and DACMagic. This system is fantastically convenient and offers really good sound. What a great time for computer audio.

 

[ROBSCIX]

If you have the choice why mess around with lossy formats?
HDD's are so cheap these days rip to lossless and enjoy your music.
Portables are different of course.

 

[Kwonger]

To be honest, I don't see why you one would stray from lossless, even on something like an ipod. Sure you can hold a factor X less amount of music but who will have time to listen to 10,000 songs in one outing anyways? I'm new, but I own some SE530's and I listen to everything I own un-amped on my PC or through OGGPLAY on my phone. I can say that I can tell the difference between most lossless and lossy files. But bottom line for me is, garbage in garbage out. Regardless of the detail your headphones can reproduce, it just makes more sense to have the phones as a point of failure and not the source.

 

[Iron_Dreamer]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ham Sandwich /img/forum/go_quote.gif It is important not to get so snobby about audio that you refuse to listen to mp3. In the end it is the music that matters for me (with a concern for audio quality as well).

I agree, there is nothing wrong with listening to an MP3 if it is the only available format. However, there overarching point is that there is no reason to subject yourself to MP3/lossy if you have control/choice in the matter.

 

[Telstar]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Phelonious Ponk /img/forum/go_quote.gif I'm not convinced the untrained can hear the difference between 256kbps or above and lossless if they're listening to music instead of listening for digital artifacts. Can you train yourself to hear this stuff in the normal course of listening? Probably. Why would you? 10 years of listening almost exclusively to headphones left me incapable of overlooking the incoherence and distortiona caused by passive crossovers (not to mention a high sensitivity to room anomalies). It was annoying, inconvenient, and ultimately expensive. I would never do it on purpose. P

I completely agree.
Yes, you can train and there are courses (only in USA afaik).
I'm looking forward to get this software, used by Harman:
Audio Musings by Sean Olive: Harman's "How to Listen" - A New Computer-based Listener Training Program

BTW, I also mostly listened with headphones - that must be why I hate passive filters, not only in the crossover. I immediately hear the veil and the distortions that they put onto the music.

 

[Telstar]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ham Sandwich /img/forum/go_quote.gif I just spent the past 6 months re-ripping my CDs to FLAC. They were originally ripped to MP3 5+ years ago. I haven't gotten to all of my CDs yet, and likely never will.

I did the same 10 years ago. I even did the other way around - burning cds from mp3, when i was a broke highschool student.

Just a couple days ago i have FINISHED to rip all my albums to FLAC.
I have still to fix the library (mostly covers), but i'm extremely happy. Having all your collection at your fingertips is priceless.

 

[murphyb74]

As others have mentioned above, HD space is cheaper than it has ever been - 1 TB drives for a little over $100. I have been slowly ripping CD's to my iTunes library, using a 1 TB external drive. All new music goes right to iTunes. I keep an identical drive at work - for listening and as a backup. My iPod acts as a shuttle between the two drives. If you rip to lossless, you can always make an mp3 later (for use with portable devices) - but you can't make lossless from an mp3.

 

[ear8dmg]

I see lossless as an insurance policy. Back in the day, I used to have an Audigy 2 and Speedlink Medusa 5.1 headphones. I listened back and forth and could't tell the difference between 192kbps and CD, so I encoded everything at that bitrate. Move on a few years and I've tried plenty of other headphones and soundcards. 192kbps is still OK a lot of the time, especially when it's been well encoded. There are occasions, however, where I can hear that something's not quite right.

So now I'm in the process of ripping all my CDs again as lossless. I may never be able to tell the difference between a CD and a good 320kbps or VBR rip but I know that with lossless, I will probably never have to mess about ripping all my CDs again.

 

[Ham Sandwich]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Iron_Dreamer /img/forum/go_quote.gif I agree, there is nothing wrong with listening to an MP3 if it is the only available format. However, there overarching point is that there is no reason to subject yourself to MP3/lossy if you have control/choice in the matter.

True, people now should be "strongly encouraged" to rip to lossless now rather than lossy. Disk space, media players, and the software to sync portable players have advanced to the point where lossless is now extremely practical and the drawbacks of lossy just are not worth it. Lossless gives you future proofing. If it is music that you want to keep playable and current in 10 or 20 years then lossless makes a lot of sense.

I started ripping 10ish years ago. I remember doing a rough calculation to figure out how much space my 400ish CDs would take as lossless. Hard drives were small back then. It would have taken an array of several drives at a cost of several hundred dollars to store the music, plus a second array to serve as a backup. That gets expensive. I could buy a lot of CDs for that kind of money. So I went with vbr MP3. I ended up staying with MP3 as my primary format for too long mainly out of inertia. But I have now made the switch to FLAC as my primary format. I still have MP3s and am still willing to buy MP3s from Amazon or download MP3s of live shows and other sources. And I'll still be bringing an iPod full of MP3 files to local head-fi meets to use as a source (doing ALAC on Windows just to support an iPod is a PITA, MP3 is soooo much easier).