On 12/18/05, samlw <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
A WAY TO HAVE A SINGLE CENTRALIZED LIBRARY OF MY DIGITAL MUSIC IN A
SINGLE HIGH-QUALITY COMPRESSED (BOTH ON DISK AND OVER-THE-WIRE) FORMAT
(PREFERABLY LOSSSLESS, DEFINITELY NOT MP3), THAT LIVES ON A LOW-POWER
LINUX BOX, AND THAT CAN BE ACCESSED AND PLAYED BY BOTH ITUNES CLIENTS
AND SQUEEZEBOX CLIENTS WITHOUT NEED FOR INTERMEDIATE SERVER-SIDE
TRANSCODING.
I really don't see what is so incredibly controversial or
"wrong-headed" about this request.
The only part I find strange is that you are willing to accept a lossy format (such as AAC, the one you are currently using) but unwilling to accept MP3 (the de facto standard).
I've read where you say that you prefer AAC over MP3 and that it is your belief that for a given bitrate, AAC offers beter audio quality than MP3. I've never done any side-by-side comparisons, so I don't know if this is true or not. But even if we grant that it is, then just encode your mp3s at a higher bit rate than you'd ordinarily use with your AAC files. Wouldn't that solve your problem? The extra disk space would not be significant.
I agree with Sean -- most people who are going to be keeping their music libraries in AAC will probably be using a Mac server, in which case this is not an issue. Your case is not that common, using a non-Mac server to serve AAC -- and moreover using a server with such low horsepower that you don't consider transcoding an option.
It's my opinion that there are higher priority improvements that Slim Devices could implement. This particular improvement would not be trivial to implement, according to SD, and it would benefit a very small minority of users. Surely you can acknowledge the wisdom in focusing on improvements that will benefit the most users?
All of this having been said, I think some people were unduly harsh in their replies to you. Your request isn't unreasonable, there are just many higher priority items ahead of it.
Mitch
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