WHY DO YOU HAVE MP3's on your computer?
shooterali
1,591 Posts
MisterWheeler inspired question "why do you have records"?Now why do you have mp3's on your computer? Let's talk about this now!!I hate paying for new music..there!
Comments
Not even the dollar bin got shit on that.
Just kidding, continue...
Is there an advantage to FLACs over WAVs?
Same quality, smaller files? Who will care anyhow in a few years when the tera bites have taken over. But be nice to people who decoded their whole music catalogue to 128k mp3 due to "storage reasons" a few years ago...
The terabytes are here. I picked up an external for my ish. I've decided to get serious about my mp3 game. FLAC's store better, some artists sell their releases as FLAC, and you can find alot of FLAC's on torrents, so I decided to go with them. Next is a squeezebox or some fancy thing to connect to my hi-fi. Frankly, none of the digital solutions sound as good as my vinyl rig, but all the music is free. I can't front on that. When I have FLAC's blasting out of my B&W's, we'll see how they sound for real. I'm curious to see. I got all the Axelrod albums at 320, but I'm looking to upgrade to FLAC, just to be consistant. I borrowed Skull Snaps on CD from the library. Gonna FLAC that, too.
word to that.
Help?
YIKES. Get thee to a Future Shop or closest American equivalent.
Well since they're lossless (I think thats what you guys are saying) the sound will be as good as the CDs they're ripped from. Which is either a good or bad thing.
Thanx....Il take that as a "Hurry ur ass up and cop."
Some of the FLAC's I've picked up are vinyl rips. Some Beatles collectros have ripped albums of mint records on expensive systems and made them available on line. These rips are supposed to surpass anything available commercially & I wonder what they sound like on a proper stereo. I haven't yet ripped them to a CD, so I haven't heard them on my system. I want to know what a squeezebox sounds like. Does anyone here have one?
I have my half-terra here at work with most of the stuff on it. I don't have enough time to rip my CDs, or track them all down (the jengas have got so big that the bottom ones must be crushed) but I have access to so much in a few clicks that I actually listen to more music now.
I've even had a friend who has slsk at work (in Austria!) down an album I already own on CD for me and mail me the files an hour later because I can't find the disc. It's somehow easier!
I can't bring vinyl with me to work or have it on in the car. One day it will all fit onto a postage stamp.
Seriously though, I can't see my collection of MP3s going beyond a couple of Terrabytes. I could go for "The complete works of every artist I already have" but I know I wouldn't listen to 90% of it.
I have one. its ok, but it is sitting in a drawer gathering dust since i brought my turntable upstairs.
i should reinstall that thing.
Storage is cheap indeed.
Please don't confuse this with the sound, I'm talkin' 'bout BASS!
Size when it comes to storage. A 60mb WAV file can be encoded to a FLAC file that's about 30-35mb, less if it's a true mono WAV file (i.e. if you're doing a vinyl transfer from a mono album, record it in mono, not stereo. When it's encoding, you're doing two distinct channels. By recording and saving in mono, it's only saving one, and thus a FLAC file will be less than a regular stereo file.
I know there are some CD turntables that use FLAC's. Plus, if you're archiving everything to DVD-R or directly to an external hard drive, you could ideally use those files for your own server, a portable digital player that plays FLAC's, or to get something like this:
This is the Opus N??4 made by Olive, and unlike another piece of hardware I had talked about last year (essentially a file player that went for $5000+), this one runs for $1500. Does it suck and blow, no, but it is able to encode and decode CD's to lossless files, it has a handy meny... okay I'm not at a food and product show so I'm not going to kiss ass. But it can store up to 3000 CD's, and is able to play hi-def audio. I think as more people begin to archive their vinyl (and of course be aware of how to do it properly), one is logically able to archive their records to 24-bit/96kHz, which is considered DVD-A quality. If one has to encoded it to a lower bit-rate, that's simple too. The average person probably doesn't have 3000 CD's, yet along 300 or 100, but for any of us who have healthy collections (CD or vinyl), this is a hi-pro option that is (to me at least) a lot more appealing than an iPod on a Fatman rack.
The benefit of something like this is that I don't have to use a USB for it, it can encode CD's and also transfer files from an archived disc to its hard drive. Con: what if this thing crashes? I would hope that users have back-up. However, this thing costs as much as 5 to 10 decent external hard drives, which of course is storage, but this plays, you don't have to buy blank CD-R spindles, and if anyone needs to create mixes or mash-ups, having archived FLAC's means no loss in audio quality, opposed to having a library of MP3's encoded at 320kbps (although you could easily cheat and get away with it). I recently heard a song on a CD I reviewed, and the quality of the song was rough. But it featured some CD turntable work and the file they were scratching sounded like an MP3 at 128, with all of that warble.
Short version: FLAC's are able to archive WAV files in a lossless manner, which means when you decode them, it will be the same quality as the CD. MP3's are lossy, even at 320kbps. If you're archiving vinyl, it will be equal to the bit rate it was recorded at. If you're not going for 24-bit/96kHz, you can just do a simple 20-bit/48kHz. If you want quality files, then you have the option to treat your music accordingly. Using FLAC reduces the amount of space for each song, album, box set, or recording session, and you're able to put more on a DVD-R or external hard drive.
That's the crappy part for any of us on an aluminum can budget, but with luck something like the Opus and other servers will get cheaper.
your library has a Skull Snaps CD?
..as for myself, i tend to burn cds of all my mp3s etc and then delete em off my drive. i realized that im not an ipod guy (yet anyway), and i almost never listen to music with my computer unless its a recording im working on. so i try to free up the HD space for the audio/video projects im always working on.
i figure, if i really want the file back in my computer, i can just rip the cd. so far ive needed to do that about twice in 5 years.
http://www.ultimateavmag.com/mediaservers/1105mcintosh/
The reviewer mentions a small drop in listening quality from CD to FLAC. Can anyone guess why?
h
I wrote a big anthemic answer but pressed forward, said the post was no longer valid, and my reply vanished. So here's a short version.
The McIntosh server reviewed here didn't seem to get a lot of good reviews elsewhere, but apparently this company has a lot of faithful fans who like the brand and the products they release. It seems this server was targeted to audiophiles who aren't computer savvy but only know the basics about lossless files. I would think that a good portion of audiophiles would know about lossless files and audio archiving, but there are some who are in it for the music, others who want to hear and smell the wood cabinets. If I'm to understand some of the reviews, this $5000 CD player was able to play FLAC files from CD-R's but not DVD-R's. The company discontinued this model and upgraded themselves with one that has 750gb storage capacity AND can play and transfer files from DVD-R.
In both models, it seems the bad audio quality from FLAC files comes from the machinery not being able to decode the files all that well, and not the FLAC files themselves. One can also assume that if you are someone with audiophile ears, you probably care more for how the sound is accurately reproduced over how good the music sounds or how much archived files you have.
If one wants to spend $6000 for an audio server, there is a model out there by another company (FireBall MX-752) that people say sounds a lot better. There are also lower end servers in the $1500-$2500 range, which seem to do the job just as well. From the outside, it seems some of these higher priced players are for those who aren't too tech savvy, or at least want the music there without complication. Press the on button, find the album, and boom, it's there. Those who are a bit more tech savvy can buy a bunch of external or internal hard drives, have a rack, and create their own server with a new or old computer. There's also the issue of computer hum, if your server is your computer.
On the low-end, you're better off buying a Squeezebox or Olive Opus. The Olive Opus looks like an old cable box, but can hold x-amount of albums in lossless form and it's there in your room without CD (or vinyl) clutter. There's a company called MVIX that sells multimedia players that can hold up to 1TB of data, and can play all kinds of media files, including DVD ISO's, and it has its own bittorrent client. Unfortunately, it doesn't play FLAC or any other lossless file formats, so obviously it's a plus for fans of DVD's (especially since it plays ISO's without any further conversion), and at under $300, it's a modified hard drive with all of the perks. If it can play DVD ISO's, I would assume it could also play DVD-A, DAD, and HDAD discs since they are formatted the same way as a standard DVD, so if it can play watermarked DVD-A's, that would be a major plus.
MP3's are like air that i breath in and out, it`s worthless.
i don`t understand people that collect MP3`s, the idea is ridiculous
in that case, i think you mean
Not into the whole "listening to music" thing, eh?
It's funny when people say "my collection is large" and then they say they just bought a 750gb external. Karma works when a week later they say "I dropped my external". Yeah, NOW THAT SHIT HURTS INTERNAL, MUGGERUD!!!