Ok so I've been reading a lot of posts on this forum and doing a lot of general research across the web for months (hydrogen audio, ilounge, and many others) and have come to the conclusion that keeping lossless audio on hdd is a waste of time and space. I'd like to give my reasoning so far and hear any thoughts and opinions on this analysis, I'm open to counter arguments and changing my view but here is what I've come up with so far...
Many people argue the point that lossless audio is really for archiving purposes, easy library management, and flexibility for future compression without transcoding from lossy to lossy. The point of lossless is not for audio quality playback as many people (even studio engineers) state that 256aac is ultimately transparent, with many ppl (99%) unable to abx the 128-160aac range.
So if a lossy library could me made that is transparent, why would you need to keep lossless to change bitrate in the future? Many coders, engineers etc state that the psycho acoustic model is pretty much maxed out and wont yeild any significant increases in terms of transparency at lower bitrates, and humans ears aren't going to magically evolve or improve in our lifetime.
So the next thought is why tie yourself into one format. Some people ask what if apple go under. Unlikely, considering they are one of if not the most profitable companies in the world right now. Even if this does happen, almost everything plays back m4a/aac now, it's pretty much the standard across the board. MP3 is old and outdated now and has been for a while.
256 aac and above uses no lowpass filter so keeps all the frequencies from CD as well as still being overkill or totally transparent for almost everyone. Yet they are about 1/3 the size of a flac/alac.
They are the same as itunes store files to keep consistency.
They store volume leveling data in the file which alac does not.
Its a lot faster to transfer these files to ipod rather than encoding on the fly from a lossless file.
They play back on consoles like ps3 yet flac/alac do not.
Sure you can fit less music on a portable music device, but that file will be good enough for any headphones/home stereo system you get in the future, and you have peace of mind you wont hear artifacts like on a 128 aac, even on the go in the car or at home etc. Most portable devices are large enough to store hundreds of CDs worth of music at 256aac. iCloud allows for larger libraries to be synced on the go for people with large home libraries, eliminating the need for bigger and bigger amounts of memory on portable devices. For people with more than 160gb of music at any bitrate already has the issue of being unable to store all their music on one device.
Another issue raised is the cost of hdd's being so low, that there is no reason not to store lossless. This to me isn't a good enough reason to store lossless, just because you can. With no real, relevant reason behind it, its just wasteful. This slows down antivirus scans, makes backing up longer and more costly and is simply unjustifiable in my eyes to date (but like I said I'm open to any convincing ideas that differ or counter this).
I know I sound like I'm trying to convince myself here, and I am to some extent but I think they are valid points for other people to think about. My question is, why not just have a 256aac library to balance out the space, quality and convienience? What are the reasons not to do this? What are the reasons to keep a lossless archive of the music and transcode on the fly each time?
Many people argue the point that lossless audio is really for archiving purposes, easy library management, and flexibility for future compression without transcoding from lossy to lossy. The point of lossless is not for audio quality playback as many people (even studio engineers) state that 256aac is ultimately transparent, with many ppl (99%) unable to abx the 128-160aac range.
So if a lossy library could me made that is transparent, why would you need to keep lossless to change bitrate in the future? Many coders, engineers etc state that the psycho acoustic model is pretty much maxed out and wont yeild any significant increases in terms of transparency at lower bitrates, and humans ears aren't going to magically evolve or improve in our lifetime.
So the next thought is why tie yourself into one format. Some people ask what if apple go under. Unlikely, considering they are one of if not the most profitable companies in the world right now. Even if this does happen, almost everything plays back m4a/aac now, it's pretty much the standard across the board. MP3 is old and outdated now and has been for a while.
256 aac and above uses no lowpass filter so keeps all the frequencies from CD as well as still being overkill or totally transparent for almost everyone. Yet they are about 1/3 the size of a flac/alac.
They are the same as itunes store files to keep consistency.
They store volume leveling data in the file which alac does not.
Its a lot faster to transfer these files to ipod rather than encoding on the fly from a lossless file.
They play back on consoles like ps3 yet flac/alac do not.
Sure you can fit less music on a portable music device, but that file will be good enough for any headphones/home stereo system you get in the future, and you have peace of mind you wont hear artifacts like on a 128 aac, even on the go in the car or at home etc. Most portable devices are large enough to store hundreds of CDs worth of music at 256aac. iCloud allows for larger libraries to be synced on the go for people with large home libraries, eliminating the need for bigger and bigger amounts of memory on portable devices. For people with more than 160gb of music at any bitrate already has the issue of being unable to store all their music on one device.
Another issue raised is the cost of hdd's being so low, that there is no reason not to store lossless. This to me isn't a good enough reason to store lossless, just because you can. With no real, relevant reason behind it, its just wasteful. This slows down antivirus scans, makes backing up longer and more costly and is simply unjustifiable in my eyes to date (but like I said I'm open to any convincing ideas that differ or counter this).
I know I sound like I'm trying to convince myself here, and I am to some extent but I think they are valid points for other people to think about. My question is, why not just have a 256aac library to balance out the space, quality and convienience? What are the reasons not to do this? What are the reasons to keep a lossless archive of the music and transcode on the fly each time?
via iLounge Forums http://forums.ilounge.com/itunes-related-mac-pc-applications/278440-lossless-audio-waste-time-space.html
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