5 ms·

Unless I had a very large library or very limited storage space and no way to expand, I'm having a hard time understanding why this would objectively really mat

Unless I had a very large library or very limited storage space and no way to expand, I'm having a hard time understanding why this would objectively really matter at the scale of a personal MP3 library. We're talking about a tiny bit under 1GB of additional data per million individual tracks. Must have been pretty fun tracking this down, but I'm curious as to why you'd go through all this trouble. Storage is cheap, my time is not haha.

tommi 5y ago
It's all about how you value your time. These kind of quests are usually very valuable learning tool and fun. I have learned a lot with hobby projects which didn't create any value as end products but were valuable to me.
- exfascist 5y ago
  The underappreciated joy of yack shaving.
  - RosanaAnaDana 5y ago
    >Wait, it's yack shaving all the way down? Always has been..
- tomxor 5y ago
  There is also a cumulative value in your knowledge and understanding when hacking on things for such specific personal niggles - which over time makes future efforts more likely to reap some combination of higher rewards, faster execution and less effort... and more often than not what we learn can be applied to our day jobs in unforeseen ways. Having a problem organically emerge in front of us that affects us personally is just a really easy thread to pull on for learning things.
zxcvgm 5y ago
I think I was trying to get my entire music collection to fit onto my iPod, which at that time only had 10GB of space. And also, I love to optimize things, so it made no sense to me why squeezing 1-2 more words in the track title would inflate the file size by 4KB. As a teenager, I probably had more time on my hands back then.
- kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
  It would be better to just reencode tracks with VBR capped to 224 or 160 max bitrate.
  - cylon13 5y ago
    It would certainly not be better to crunch the quality than to remove useless zero bytes.
  - megablast 5y ago
    Rencoding is an awful idea.
    - mayli 5y ago
      Not really, if you take A/B/X test and realize modern codec can be transparent at low bitrate (e.g. opus@128kpbs)
      - xxpor 5y ago
        opus didn't exist when people were worried about 10 gb iPods
        RealStickman_ 5y ago
        And also can't be played on said ipods.
        fomine3 5y ago
        But AAC than MP3?
        folkrav 5y ago
        In all fairness, it wasn't that long ago Apple were still selling iPod Touch with 8GB base storage, having tons of storage is a relatively new thing for most people. But with that specific 10GB metric, I'd assume we're speaking about those earlier scrollwheel iPods.
OJFord 5y ago
> Must have been pretty fun tracking this down, but I'm curious as to why you'd go through all this trouble. ParseError? You recognise fun but not that it might be a reason to do something?
- folkrav 5y ago
  With the limited personal time I get these days, I tend to choose activities that are both fun and useful to me. But maybe that's just me, admittedly. OP answered, and he was a teen back then, which may have played in the "too much time on my hands" part.

tommi 5y ago

It's all about how you value your time. These kind of quests are usually very valuable learning tool and fun. I have learned a lot with hobby projects which didn't create any value as end products but were valuable to me.

exfascist 5y ago
The underappreciated joy of yack shaving.
- RosanaAnaDana 5y ago
  >Wait, it's yack shaving all the way down? Always has been..
tomxor 5y ago
There is also a cumulative value in your knowledge and understanding when hacking on things for such specific personal niggles - which over time makes future efforts more likely to reap some combination of higher rewards, faster execution and less effort... and more often than not what we learn can be applied to our day jobs in unforeseen ways. Having a problem organically emerge in front of us that affects us personally is just a really easy thread to pull on for learning things.

zxcvgm 5y ago

I think I was trying to get my entire music collection to fit onto my iPod, which at that time only had 10GB of space. And also, I love to optimize things, so it made no sense to me why squeezing 1-2 more words in the track title would inflate the file size by 4KB. As a teenager, I probably had more time on my hands back then.

kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
It would be better to just reencode tracks with VBR capped to 224 or 160 max bitrate.
- cylon13 5y ago
  It would certainly not be better to crunch the quality than to remove useless zero bytes.
- megablast 5y ago
  Rencoding is an awful idea.
  - mayli 5y ago
    Not really, if you take A/B/X test and realize modern codec can be transparent at low bitrate (e.g. opus@128kpbs)
    - xxpor 5y ago
      opus didn't exist when people were worried about 10 gb iPods
      - RealStickman_ 5y ago
        And also can't be played on said ipods.
      - fomine3 5y ago
        But AAC than MP3?
      - folkrav 5y ago
        In all fairness, it wasn't that long ago Apple were still selling iPod Touch with 8GB base storage, having tons of storage is a relatively new thing for most people. But with that specific 10GB metric, I'd assume we're speaking about those earlier scrollwheel iPods.

OJFord 5y ago

> Must have been pretty fun tracking this down, but I'm curious as to why you'd go through all this trouble. ParseError? You recognise fun but not that it might be a reason to do something?

folkrav 5y ago
With the limited personal time I get these days, I tend to choose activities that are both fun and useful to me. But maybe that's just me, admittedly. OP answered, and he was a teen back then, which may have played in the "too much time on my hands" part.