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It's not about audio quality alone, it's about collecting a flawless source. If you want or need your library in another format at some point you really should
by thirdsun 9y ago
It's not about audio quality alone, it's about collecting a flawless source.
If you want or need your library in another format at some point you really should not transcode from a lossy source. You may say that won't ever happen, but storage is cheap it's very short sighted to risk being locked into one format. It's not something you could easily fix later.
- adrianN 9y agoIt might be short-sighted if the format doesn't have excellent open source decoders. MP3 won't die ever, because of LAME.
- thirdsun 9y agoIt likely won't, that's true. My point remains though: With storage that cheap and lossless audio sources widely available, why would you not use the lossless option?
- tfinniga 9y agoWhy not both? MP3 is more widely supported than any lossless audio codec. Lossless compression enables the collector to keep an original. Not everyone is a collector though - for them, MP3 is probably fine, and if they need a different format later they'll probably just stream, re-encode, or re-purchase, in order of likelihood.
- eikenberry 9y agoBut you can covert to whatever lossless format you need without worry. Lossless to lossless conversion is possible an infinite number of times (theoretically), vs lossy to lossy you get maybe a couple for free.
- icebraining 9y agoAs long as you keep the MP3s around, converting to any format for the 100th time is no lossier than the first time. What you need to avoid are chains of lossy formats.
- TillE 9y agoOnce upon a time I converted 320kbps MP3s of Dark Side of the Moon to 320kbps OGGs. It ruined a certain cymbal sound. Never convert between lossy formats, not even once.
- gpvos 9y agoMaybe LAME can be renamed to LIME now?
- joeberon 9y ago>It's not about audio quality alone, it's about collecting a flawless source. Most people don't care about that
- evilDagmar 9y agoEverything's going to have a format, including your "flawless source". ...and you're not locked into anything with MP3.
- thirdsun 9y agoYou are unless you're fine with decreasing the quality of your files. While you can convert lossless to lossless as often as you want without any degradation, each time you convert a lossy source to another lossy format it'll decrease audio quality, similar to repeated JPEG conversion.
- usrusr 9y agoI see it as one reason why lossy won't go away: reencoding losses are the tape-to-tape copy of the digital age, the very big M, very small V MVP of DRM: if you can't keep consumers from copying, the least you can do is keeping the master copy to yourself.
- thirdsun 9y ago> ...the least you can do is keeping the master copy to yourself. Except that lossless audio is far from hidden and widely available as soon as you look past the iTunes store. I buy my music in a lossless digital format exclusively and frequently - from multiple stores, without any DRM and with no problems at all finding it. If the music industry tried to lock the lossless source away, I'd say it does a very bad job.
- TheArcane 9y ago>- from multiple stores Could you give an example of some?
- thirdsun 9y ago- Bandcamp - Boomkat - Qobuz - Bleep - Artist and label stores --- There are others like HDTracks, but they always seem to be selling snake oil to audiophiles. Just my impression. I don't see any point in paying extra for more than CD-quality. I draw the line at 16 Bit / 44.1 KHz.
- ReidZB 9y agoHDTracks is an example site that often has lossless for sale. Most importantly, audio CDs still use uncompressed WAV. Buying and ripping the audio CD for a popular album is a pretty surefire method for getting a lossless copy, even if it's not always the easiest.