rr12267
100+ Head-Fier
Does the average user find 20k songs restrictive? I have a huge vinyl collection, plus an ever increasing digital collection. I worked out a few years ago (given how much time I have left on this rock to actually sit and listen) that I won't get to listen to everything I own before I cork it. Not unless I can make it to 150 or something...
Even using a very conservative 3 minute average song time 20k is still 140 days of listening (7 hours per day) to hear it all. That's assuming you only listen to each track once, which isn't normally the case with favourites, new stuff, etc.. Maybe I'm thinking about it in the wrong way but 20k seems more than enough to me...
Not saying it’s restrictive but let’s throw a little math at this.
Below are a couple examples showing approximate limits if a user placed all flac or all lossy files on each card. I understand that most users are going to have a combination of all files types. I just want to illustrate that a 20k limit with the newer cards can limit the intended devices usability.
With 400GB cards there is approximately 366GB of usable storage and let’s say the average file size of a flac file is 30MB. This give you approximately 12,500 flac files per card. Since QP1R has 2 slots double this to approximately 25,000 flac files. If users put lossy files you are talking approximately 1/10 the file size so 125,000 lossy files per card or 250,000 total.
Now with 512GB cards soon to be released let’s say 460GB is usable space. With the same size files as above we are talking approximately 16,000 flac files or 160,000 lossy files per card. Again double if you have 2 card slots.
Personally I’d rather see the internal storage of the device be made to handle these size databases than left as space for users to place music on. Databases are designed and optimized for this. And truth be told these are considered small to medium sized. If implemented correctly access is extremely fast.
I don’t look at the 20k limit as 140 days of listening. I look at it as being able to access my music and to listen to it what ever manner I would like. Whether by artist, genre, etc. I would like to have access to all files that were placed on the cards.
Just my $0.02
. We are probably heading off topic a little but I think the way we consumer music has changed sooo much with downloads. Here's another way to look at it. Assume the average CD album had/has 10 tracks, even taking your lowest Flac count per card of 12,500 that's 1250 CDs = a fair sized collection. Scale that up to you maximum lossy file count and we are talking about a collection of 16,000 CDs!! No one used to own that amount of music. Let's also assume we all pay for everything we own (lol). In the UK on itunes that's 69p per song = £11,000 for a 16,000 files (£110,000 for 160,000) but of course most flac/hi-res files are more. That would buy some very nice headfi indeed. 
