> I don't understand this. In my experience, converting to a lossy
format takes MORE horespower than to a lossless one.

If your goal is to keep CPU activity to a minimum, you have to choose a
path sans transcoding.  Transcoding effectively eliminates many
"supported" formats if it causes performance problems and you are left
to choose from those available in the player.  For a SB1, MP3 is the
only real choice which led to my comment.  Many of us cannot justify
moving on to SB2/SB3 simply for FLAC and WAV just takes too much space.
I think the long term goal should be to support all major formats
(where possible) in firmware.  That's just my opinion, it might not be
popular and I have respect for any others but I'm honestly not sure if
I will ever upgrade without wider native support.  Let the user choose
the best flavor for their situation without the worry about burdening
the server.

> iTunes is the only major player I'm aware of that won't play flac.
There are plugins for WMP, and Winamp/Foobar/etc all play it out of the
box.

Well, I'm not much of an iTunes fan and my lossless format of choice
right now is WMA.  I wasn't aware that Microsoft had a FLAC plugin for
WMP so I will have to look for that.  I do realize there are other
players available but I suppose I was referring to the majors as those
available for free that have the highest install base.  I assume iTunes
for Mac and WMP for Windows are the major players, but I most definately
could be wrong.  

> The problem here is proprietary formats, but what baffles me is how
people blame Slim for supporting the open ones.

You misunderstand my position.  I applaud Slim for supporting FLAC and
would like nothing more than to see MS/Apple do the same.  I don't
blame Slim for not supporting proprietary formats if doing so is
impossible.  I don't know enough about the process to know if it's a
"choice not taken" or a "choice not available."  As an "average user,"
I rarely look further than what is installed by default and for free. 
I don't think I'm unusual in that regard and the formats supported by
the major applications are the ones that naturally have the highest
usage.  For the average user who wants lossless, the choice is WMA or
M4P.  This isn't a rip on Slim or FLAC it's just a fact of life.


-- 
bishopdonmiguel
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View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=19155

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