[artur9]

   
I also failed to mention that I store all of my music at full PCM (Redbook for the overwhelming majority). I do not use FLAC or any other compression/decompression schemes. 

I use FLAC for the metadata (tags) support.  How do you go about keeping your PCM tagged and/or organized?

 

[madwolfa]

  I use FLAC for the metadata (tags) support.  How do you go about keeping your PCM tagged and/or organized?

 
You can use external CUE sheets with WAV files similarly to FLAC. I personally never store any metadata within the media itself.

 

[Baldr]

   
You can use external CUE sheets with WAV files similarly to FLAC. I personally never store any metadata within the media itself.

Yup -- not that much extra work.

 

[Astral Abyss]

 
Yup -- not that much extra work.

 
Samsung already has 4TB SSDs on the way.  It's only a matter of time (I give it 10...15 years max) before compression falls out of favor completely, as it will no longer be needed.  The next generation will laugh at us for compressing audio to save space.  Bunch of primitives, we are.
 
When I think that 15 years ago I was still using a dial-up 56k modem it really puts it into perspective.

 

[514077]

 

 
Yup -- not that much extra work.

 
Samsung already has 4TB SSDs on the way.  It's only a matter of time (I give it 10...15 years max) before compression falls out of favor completely, as it will no longer be needed.  The next generation will laugh at us for compressing audio to save space.  Bunch of primitives, we are.
 
When I think that 15 years ago I was still using a dial-up 56k modem it really puts it into perspective.

I'm inclined to think that no matter how much memory capacity is available, most people will always want more.  some form of compression will therefore be in demand.  IMHO

 

[rtaylor76]

   
Samsung already has 4TB SSDs on the way.  It's only a matter of time (I give it 10...15 years max) before compression falls out of favor completely, as it will no longer be needed.  The next generation will laugh at us for compressing audio to save space.  Bunch of primitives, we are.
 
When I think that 15 years ago I was still using a dial-up 56k modem it really puts it into perspective.

 
True. However, you can still retrieve the full data from FLAC or ALAC or any other non-destructive compression. If such a portable media existed without the need of such compression, I welcome it and will gladly unpack all my FLACs.

 

[Astral Abyss]

True. However, you can still retrieve the full data from FLAC or ALAC or any other non-destructive compression. If such a portable media existed without the need of such compression, I welcome it and will gladly unpack all my FLACs.

So, for instance, if I had a 512TB SSD on my PC and a 8-16TB microSD card in my mobile device, I know I wouldn't care about or bother with compression. It will happen.

 

[rmoody]

   
Samsung already has 4TB SSDs on the way.  It's only a matter of time (I give it 10...15 years max) before compression falls out of favor completely, as it will no longer be needed.  The next generation will laugh at us for compressing audio to save space.  Bunch of primitives, we are.
 
When I think that 15 years ago I was still using a dial-up 56k modem it really puts it into perspective.

It's not just compression. It's tagging the files. Formats like FLAC and ALAC allow mettadata to be embedded for identification, cover art, replay gain, etc., WAV, not so much. As long as the CPU power is there to compress the files as fast as they are ripped from a CD (which there is), and as long as the format is lossless, I will continue to use a lossless compression space not-withstanding. I save some disk space while I'm at it, all the better, even though FLAC only gives you about 8 to 10 % file size reduction for most tracks.

 

[madwolfa]

FLAC gives at least 50% reduction in my experience, which isn't too shabby.

 

[AndreYew]

FLAC (and ALAC) also gives me around 50% compression compared to the .wav file.
 
Another tip for SSD users: don't use all of the space on the drive, and the drive will be able to maintain a more consistent performance over its life. On Mac OS X, I format the drive with 1 partition taking only 75% of the total capacity. The remaining space is left unused: I don't even put a partition on it, so in disk utility, it looks like you only have 1 partition box and some empty space in the drive display. The drive should recognize this unused space and be able to use it for the extra performance. Search for "ssd overprovisioning" to see benchmarks on this: http://www.anandtech.com/show/6489/playing-with-op
 
On OS X Yosemite, I also don't use the force trim utility to turn on TRIM for my 1TB Samsung 850 Pro. After having it on for a while, and then turning it off, it seems to have helped its performance quite a bit when doing file I/O (eg. saving 80+MB TIFF files from Photoshop), and some people say there is a bug in Samsung's TRIM implementation anyway.

 

[kstuart]

   
Another tip for SSD users: don't use all of the space on the drive, and the drive will be able to maintain a more consistent performance over its life.

"more consistent performance" in what way ?

 

[kstuart]

   
Samsung already has 4TB SSDs on the way.  It's only a matter of time (I give it 10...15 years max) before compression falls out of favor completely, as it will no longer be needed.  The next generation will laugh at us for compressing audio to save space.  Bunch of primitives, we are.
 
When I think that 15 years ago I was still using a dial-up 56k modem it really puts it into perspective.

Just the opposite.
 
Currently digital video uses less than 1% of the space that would be required for analog video.  For example, if they had to use analog video, DirecTV would have a dozen channels at most on all those satellites.
 
AND - everything is going to 4K and 8K requiring more compression.
 
You are talking about "disk space".  BUT using local hard disks for audio and video is what it is dying.  Most people I know under 30 stream everything, they don't keep music or movies.  A year from now, they will have forgotten that song they are playing today, and don't see a need to "own" it.  (I will intentionally avoid the lengthy off-topic discussion about why this is occurring.)
 
Since there is currently not enough bandwidth for the existing uses, certainly there will be ever more compression to save bandwidth, not disk space.

 

[madwolfa]

  "more consistent performance" in what way ?

 
As you get the drive closer to its max capacity, the random write I/O performance degrades dramatically, so it's a good idea to either keep the drive usage below 80% or set up a 10-20% overprovisioning. Many modern drives (especially enterprise-grade) are generously overprovisioned from the factory, so there's nothing to worry about.
 
More on the topic: http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/minisite/SSD/global/html/whitepaper/whitepaper05.html

 

[7ryder]

FWIW, I use uncompressed FLAC...best of both worlds!

 

[kstuart]

 

  "more consistent performance" in what way ?

 
As you get the drive closer to its max capacity, the random write I/O performance degrades dramatically, so it's a good idea to either keep the drive usage below 80% or set up a 10-20% overprovisioning. Many modern drives (especially enterprise-grade) are generously overprovisioned from the factory, so there's nothing to worry about.
 
More on the topic: http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/minisite/SSD/global/html/whitepaper/whitepaper05.html

So you are just talking about write speed ?
 
That should not affect audio playback.