4 ms·

You won't hear a difference between FLAC and 320kbps encoded MP3 99% of the time, so why waste 10x more space for a FLAC?

mr_sturd 3y ago
Storage is cheap. Plus you might want/need to re-encode to another format down the line and any lossless format is better as the master copy.
- grumpyprole 3y ago
  Don't forget also that re-encoding often happens with wireless streaming technologies such as Bluetooth. The effects of this are much less well studied. Bluetooth has more chance of sounding fine with a lossless source like FLAC.
  - mr_sturd 3y ago
    Agreed - I have my collection encoded in Opus on my phone's SD card. Tempted to do the same for my in-home setup to lock the sample rate at 48KHz - my tired old home server struggles to down-sample the higher resolution FLACs that I have before throwing it to SnapCast.
doublepg23 3y ago
I’ve gone back and forth on the question but with storage costs as they are I always have a Source of Truth in FLAC. For listening I figure I’ve spent so much $$ on my setup I’d be dumb not to ensure the source is not perfect too - for free.
NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
While true... I figured out how little I was saving by not doing FLAC. And there wasn't a point in saving that storage. I've got plenty, and that's with 5 bays still empty in the Synology. I only wish I could do the same with video.
zh3 3y ago
One day you might want to transcode - compression artifacts may well not be audible in normal use, different compression algorithms drop different bits though and so the result of transcoding between compressed formats is quite often an audible (even to my distinctly non-golden ears) loss of quality. Thus FLAC (as a reliable lossless format) - or even WAV (I chose to take the 2:1, 3:1 compression of FLAC over WAV personally).
danbee 3y ago
10x? More like 2-3x
deleted 3y ago
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OfSanguineFire 3y ago
Besides the fact that storage is cheap, FLAC has a more ample metadata model than MP3 and I'm already used to working with the toolchain for that metadata.

mr_sturd 3y ago

Storage is cheap. Plus you might want/need to re-encode to another format down the line and any lossless format is better as the master copy.

grumpyprole 3y ago
Don't forget also that re-encoding often happens with wireless streaming technologies such as Bluetooth. The effects of this are much less well studied. Bluetooth has more chance of sounding fine with a lossless source like FLAC.
- mr_sturd 3y ago
  Agreed - I have my collection encoded in Opus on my phone's SD card. Tempted to do the same for my in-home setup to lock the sample rate at 48KHz - my tired old home server struggles to down-sample the higher resolution FLACs that I have before throwing it to SnapCast.

doublepg23 3y ago

I’ve gone back and forth on the question but with storage costs as they are I always have a Source of Truth in FLAC. For listening I figure I’ve spent so much $$ on my setup I’d be dumb not to ensure the source is not perfect too - for free.

NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago

While true... I figured out how little I was saving by not doing FLAC. And there wasn't a point in saving that storage. I've got plenty, and that's with 5 bays still empty in the Synology. I only wish I could do the same with video.

zh3 3y ago

One day you might want to transcode - compression artifacts may well not be audible in normal use, different compression algorithms drop different bits though and so the result of transcoding between compressed formats is quite often an audible (even to my distinctly non-golden ears) loss of quality. Thus FLAC (as a reliable lossless format) - or even WAV (I chose to take the 2:1, 3:1 compression of FLAC over WAV personally).

danbee 3y ago

10x? More like 2-3x

deleted 3y ago

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OfSanguineFire 3y ago

Besides the fact that storage is cheap, FLAC has a more ample metadata model than MP3 and I'm already used to working with the toolchain for that metadata.