Weren't you arguing the merits of disk space and future support of the
format? It doesn't matter to me that you get off on particular rituals
and I think it's great that you realize that the point is to enjoy the
music, but what does that have to do with choosing between MP3 and
FLAC? The act of playing an MP3 track is much the same as the act of
playing a FLAC track. You sit down, press a few buttons on your
Squeezebox remote, and the music starts.
Why use FLAC?
- FLAC exactly preserves the original digital recording.
- FLAC is available as source code. If there is never a new version
of FLAC released, you will still be able to use the current one. If
you buy a new computer with different architecture, you can
re-compile FLAC and it will continue to work. The only case in which
that would not be true is if the C programming language were not
available for your chosen hardware.
- Once you've ripped to FLAC, you never have to re-rip your
collection again to change formats. With MP3 you will either have to
re-rip or accept the loss of quality. Converting from MP3 to another
lossy format compounds the loss of quality -- different formats throw
out different information. If you decide to switch from MP3 to AAC to
Vorbis, you'll have to re-rip every time or suffer generational
losses. If you decide to switch from FLAC to Apple Lossless to
Monkey Audio to some future lossless format, direct conversion from
one format to the next involves no generational loss and can be
automated.
So what's the downside of FLAC?
- Disk space. But disks are cheap. Cheap cheap cheap. If you don't
want noisy disks near where you relax or work, don't put them there.
Put them somewhere else.
- Not as compatible with portable players, in terms of format and in
terms of space. However, it's not hard to automate the process of
duplicating your entire collection into some other format from the
FLAC originals and store it in a separate directory, ready to use
with your portable devices. So that's really back to the disk space
issue. Did I mention that disks are cheap?
--
John Stimson
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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