[theandrewbailey]

If you're going through all your music and converting everything to Opus, don't. It's another lossy codec and you will lose more sound quality (it will sound worse). Keep what you have. If you're really concerned over sound quality: use something lossless, like FLAC. If you're concerned over space: storage is insanely cheap, and is getting cheaper.

[klodolph]

I'm sick of the "storage is insanely cheap" refrain from FLAC proponents.

CDs are 1400 Kbit/s and FLAC might be half that at 700 Kbit/s. I have 50 GB or so of music at 260 Kbit/s AAC. If I were to use FLAC instead, I would need 140 GB of storage. Practically speaking, for a MacBook this means going to the 512 GB storage model instead of the 256 GB storage model, which is an extra $300. For my desktop, this means either dropping $200 on another SSD or going with rotational storage for my music library. For my phone, this means downsizing my library by an additional 60%, and I have already had to trim a lot of music out. Or I could buy another phone and spend $200 to get a model with enough storage for me. (Streaming to the phone is not always an option. I spend time in areas without reception.)

However, since the difference between FLAC and 260 Kbit/s AAC is imperceptible to us mere mortals, I can spend my $500-700 on something more interesting than "insanely cheap storage", and I get to enjoy my music.

Yes, let's not have people transcode music needlessly. But stop saying that "storage is insanely cheap" because cheap storage isn't portable.

FLAC is great for archiving music but that's not something that I do. I don't archive music. I listen to it.

[natermer]

> I'm sick of the "storage is insanely cheap" refrain from FLAC proponents.

It is insanely cheap.

> Practically speaking, for a MacBook this means going to the 512 GB storage model instead of the 256 GB storage model, which is an extra $300.

That's really a issue related to buying and owning a Apple laptop rather then FLAC being too big. You bought something with very limited capacity that costs a huge amount of money to expand.

3TB drives are now about $100. That's _cheap_.

> Yes, let's not have people transcode music needlessly.

I transcode _all_the_time.

It's fun.

Why? Because my music I care about is in flac. So if I want mp3 I can have mp3. If I want AAC I can have AAC. If I want Opus, then everything can be had in Opus.

Some devices don't like AAC. Some don't like MP3 VBR. Many can't play Vorbis, and very few like Opus. But none of that matters to me.

I can stream to my phone over cell network without any major expense because now I can use Opus running at 60Kb/s to match what I used to get with MP3 at 128Kb/s

If I followed your thinking then I would have a great amount of my stuff in 256 Kb/s VBR MP3 LAME, because that was the best and most compatible technology for a long time.

Now where would I be?

[klodolph]

I feel like you're just trying to bait me here, so I'll bite.

Surely it must be obvious that different people have different priorities when it comes to purchasing computers? Is there something I'm missing? You want lots of storage for cheap and music encoded as FLAC. I want fast storage (PCIe flash) on a portable device with good battery life and access to my entire music library in a high-quality format.

The fact that you say transcoding is "fun"—well, I'm not sure how to respond to that, because it seems to support the point I was making—that different people have different priorities. I do not enjoy transcoding, I would rather avoid it. Perhaps because I don't enjoy it, I would make different choices. Just a thought.

The comment about converting to MP3 LAME is a bit of a bad joke. MP3 was never sonically transparent. Speaking as someone who did follow my own thinking on the matter, I only have a small handful of MP3s in my library. No other formats (including WAV, FLAC, or physical media) were available for those songs.

All the devices which I use for music playback play AAC. I consider this unlikely to change. AAC is sonically transparent, anyway, so a third generation copy of my library would be fine, if I needed to do it.

FLAC is for archiving and first-generation copies, and that's just not something I'm in the business of doing.

[haberman]

> 3TB drives are now about $100. That's _cheap_.

Cheap storage exists. Parent's point is that cheap storage isn't portable.

[themihai]

Online storage is not that expensive(i.e. $0.026 / GB / month). I'm not talking about iCloud.

[Natanael_L]

Then you're trading size and storage cost for battery life and cellular bandwidth cost.

[kbenson]

I can't help but feel the real elephant in the room here is the assumption that it's valid to expect tens to hundreds of gigabytes of compressed audio to be immediately accessible, and from a laptop no less.

[LeoPanthera]

> Practically speaking, for a MacBook this means going to the 512 GB storage model instead of the 256 GB storage model, which is an extra $300.

I store my library lossless (where available) on a NAS, and then transcode to <lossy codec of the day> for portable use.

I use Beets to manage it: http://beets.io

[sethhochberg]

Yep. FLAC is for archiving and home playback. Lossy formats are king for portable usage, and when I'm using modestly priced IEMs plugged into my phone with the background din or a train or airplane, I'm really not in a position to care about the debatably negligible differences anyways.

(I'm a classical trained musician, I've worked as a recording engineer. I've used great equipment, heard pristine live music in beautiful acoustic spaces, and am totally willing to compromise to "good enough" for portable use). I archive my music in a lossless format simply because I want options later as better lossy codecs like Opus come around.

[aorth]

Beets is awesome. For tagging I also use MusicBrainz Picard. Which music app do you stream beets to? I didn't like Tomahawk.

https://picard.musicbrainz.org/

[DanBC]

MusicBrainz Picard is brilliant, and really helped me sort out an unwieldy collection.

[eliaspro]

Why use Picard for tagging? Does it offer anything beets doesn't?

[aorth]

I dunno, I find they do it a bit differently. I usually tag in Picard first, then beets. shrug

[clevernickname]

Storage is insanely cheap. A terabyte external hard drive is about $60 on Amazon. You can fill one of those up with more FLAC music than you will ever listen to, then encode what you want for regular listening in the lossy format of your choice. The alternative is committing to a lossy format today and being essentially stuck with it forever; you claim mere mortals can't tell the difference between FLAC and high bitrate lossy (I don't disagree), but I'll bet you can tell the difference between first and second or third generation lossy. When you think about it, you're losing usable space on your devices right now, because 260kb/s AAC can be imperceptibly replaced with much lower bitrate Opus.

<mild flamebait>I wish Apple fans would step outside of their computing comfort zone every now and then so that they could realize just how much Apple is ripping them off in certain respects.</mild flamebait>

[barkingcat]

I have a 1 terabyte SSD in my Mac Book Pro (pre retina), and it cost about $250 on sale from Amazon.

You're running into Apple making a mint off of you, rather than FLAC's being too large.

For the desktop, it's even cheaper. 2TB hard drive is around $100.00 - how many latte's is that? If you can afford to go out and eat a $50 meal (including tips and drinks,etc), that's about 2 meals worth... still very cheap.

Transcoding is an option you know? Keep FLACs as source, and transcode for portable usage.

https://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Ultra-2-5-Inch-Height-SDSSDHI...

for example this is $228 for 960 gigs and they have these kinds of sales all the time ... if that's not insanely cheap I don't know what your definition is. Note that it's twice as much storage as what you're getting from apple for $300, and speedwise you won't notice a difference unless you're doing hard core file transfers 24/7.

Or this one: $219 for 960 Gigs SSD https://www.amazon.com/dp/B019H3B6SA/ref=psdc_1292116011_t3_...

Storage prices for SSD's are literally crashing all around us if you are in North America. It doesn't make any sense for people to cover their eyes and not see.

[gglitch]

I'm not disagreeing with you, but as someone else who's also feeling the sting of having a small built-in HD on my mbp, I can point out that 256G thumb drives are like $60 right now. "Insanely cheap" is of course relative, but I'm not going to call that prohibitive.

[Aldo_MX]

Friendly reminder that not everyone lives in a developed country.

$60 (+shipping+taxes+customs+middlemen) can be really prohibitive in a non-developed country.

[haimez]

I think you'd have a bigger problem with the MacBook part of your equation there.

[barkingcat]

If a person has trouble w/ 60, maybe they got the macbook as a gift. If they got it as a gift, it's not too hard to ask for a 60 dollar thumb drive as well.

[mschulze]

> FLAC is great for archiving music but that's not something that I do. I don't archive music. I listen to it.

That sounds very condescending to me. I think no one is advertising saving your music in FLAC on your laptop.

I save all my music (and yes, as FLAC if I can get it) to my Synology NAS on my home network. From there I can transcode it to all devices in what format suits them best and stream it to my computers/stereos while I'm home.

I'm not saying everyone should do this, it's obviously more work than just having AAC on your main/only computer. But it comes with a very high flexibility. The price tag for a Synlogoy with a 4TB drive was something like 300 Euro, not 500-700$.

[serge2k]

> on another SSD or going with rotational storage for my music library

oh, what a tragedy.

FLAC for archiving and as a base for new encoding seems like a reasonable middle ground.

[masklinn]

> If you're concerned over space: storage is insanely cheap, and is getting cheaper.

Depends on the storage context.

If you want to carry a significant fraction of your music collection on a phone, lossless is not an option. Lossless is what I use for my main storage (a machine with a dozen terabytes-worth of spinning rust), but the music is converted to lossy before being synced to my laptop and phone, and I'd rather have lossy files in these contexts (whose output quality isn't exactly top-of-the-line anyway) than having to juggle external drives.

In that context, converting the lossy versions of the library to OPUS (with master files remaining lossless) makes perfect sense.

[mikevm]

I just use Subsonic to transcode on-the-fly and stream my FLAC files. On iOS there's play:Sub and on Android there's DSub.

[RX14]

That is assuming that you don't want your music available offline and you have enough data allowance. Which is not true for many people.

[nwah1]

Some people keep both lossless and lossy copies around. It makes sense to have lossless backups on a cheap storage medium, and only carry around lossy versions on your phone. And switching to Opus for your lossy version would make a lot of sense if you're currently using an inferior format.

[dangravell]

Sensible advice, but "user" of OGG doesn't mean "I store my gold music library" in OGG.

My gold library is in FLAC but I transcode to MP3 using mp3fs for various uses.

[ZenoArrow]

The optimal solution is probably lossless for archival, lossy for portable playback. I ripped my whole CD collection to FLAC and gave away the CDs. Now if I want to try something like Opus I can easily re-rip from FLAC. As you hint at, you shouldn't rip from lossy, that makes no sense.

[shmerl]

>If you're going through all your music and converting everything to Opus, don't. It's another lossy codec and you will lose more sound quality (it will sound worse). Keep what you have. If you're really concerned over sound quality: use something lossless, like FLAC.

I'm buying music in FLAC, and store it as master copy. Then I convert it to Opus for actual playback. If better free codec will come out, I'll do the same thing, using FLAC as a source. So FLAC has its usage.

[rmk2]

He probably doesn't mean that he is simply reencoding his already lossy OGG files with OPUS.

[golergka]

> you will lose more sound quality (it will sound worse)

If you want good sound, treat your room. Then buy _good_ speakers or headphones. Then buy a good sound interface. And only after that should you start worrying about signal qualities above 320kbps mp3.

Given as majority of people don't actually hear the difference form the first of these steps, advice about flac is only relevant to a really small amount of people, who are not only capable of hearing the difference, but also have gone through all previous steps.