Chris Glushko wrote:
But, what if you have a very large music collection
and use an iPod where you interchange tracks often? This would mean that for every new track you want on
your ipod, you'll have to go to your flac library,
decompress the file, import it into iTunes, tag it in
iTunes, compress it to the format of choice and then
place the file on your iPod.
Not really. There are easier ways if you are willing to jump outside of iTunes. A bit of script can drive command-line tools to convert FLAC to formats that the iPod can play. Tags need not be lost in conversion. And if you have the storage space, keep both FLAC and lossy versions. This is perhaps sub-optimal, but is not as bad as the process you've described.
Also, isn't it a bit wasteful to use Apple Lossless encoding for iPod playback? Doesn't it result in decreased music storage ability, longer transfer times onto the iPod and higher rates of battery consumption? Can you hear the difference when playing back through the chip-based amplifier in the iPod, into portable headphones, in often noisy listening environments?
Unfortunately, iPod and SB2 have different capabilities when it comes to lossless. iPod doesn't do FLAC at all, and SB2 doesn't do Apple Lossless natively. And any lossless format makes more sense for high fidelity playback and archival purposes than it does for use in portables.
I don't mean to criticize your choices, but did want to illustrate that there are trade-offs with either method that are independent of the open-source/proprietary arguments.
I'm facing the same issue myself and will probably go the double storage route until a portable player comes along the changes the equation.
--rt
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