[loudtieblahblah]

>512GB of internal storage

That you have to share with photos/videos, apps, downloads, and everything else.

>syncing your music to convert higher-bitrate music to 128kbps (or 192 or 256kbps, your preference) AAC files.

Yeah, see - this isn't really your music collection then but reliance on Apple's Library and them "matching it" with what they have. I could never sync from their library b/c their library wouldn't have huge chunks of my actual digital collection.

I have hip hop mixtapes, Grateful Dead livesets, local artists who never had a major record deals (Fighting Gravity and a variety of punk bands), EDM live sets, and tons of stuff not in the Apple/iTunes Library they could never do anything with.

Secondly, like 30% of my collection is in FLAC, which Apple doesn't even support.

>I have no idea where you get the idea that you can't fit a decent-sized music library on an iPhone.

Because my music library is:

Server: $ du -sh Music/

905G Music/

Phone: 305GB ( i recently purged a ton to make space for videos/pictures )

Even if i was dealing with 60GB and even if i could rely on what was in their library - pulling down 60GB to a phone is painful. It takes me literal SECONDS to swap and SDcard from one phone to another as opposed to hours over WiFi.

Nevermind on android i can move files via ftp, smb, or any number of protocols. Even over the wire - it's plug and play. Copy and paste through any Windows, Mac or Linux file manager.

Thus, I don't have to rely on apple's crappy proprietary music apps to move files over a network or even a USB/lightning cable.

>Maybe you're one of those who believes that only lossless audio is worth listening to, and didn't consider that that's a niche opinion...?

No. I have a lot that's 320K mp3s. In fact, the grand majority of it is. Maybe 5-10% of my collection is worse quality than that. Virtually nothing is at 128k or worse. I typically stay away from Apple specific formats, lossless or not, regardless of their benefits.

[TillE]

> Yeah, see - this isn't really your music collection then but reliance on Apple's Library and them "matching it" with what they have.

What? You just transfer your files directly, exactly as you could with an ancient iPod or whatever.

[loudtieblahblah]

if i bought files from 7Digital or HDTracks - then how do i sync FLAC files to devices?

If there's no "file matching" service - how does the OP i'm responding to "upgrade" the sound quality of the files on the device?

[danaris]

> Yeah, see - this isn't really your music collection then but reliance on Apple's Library and them "matching it" with what they have. I could never sync from their library b/c their library wouldn't have huge chunks of my actual digital collection.

Nope. This is 100% false. You may be mixing up "sync your library from your computer to your iPhone" with "sync your library from your computer to iCloud," which are completely separate things.

I have a local music library the core of which goes back to about 1997. I have never subscribed to Apple Music, iTunes Match, or any of the other music subscription services. I synced portions of it to various iPods and early iPhones, and several years ago when iPhones with large enough internal storage to affordably sync the whole thing, I've kept it all on my iPhone as well.

> I typically stay away from Apple specific formats, lossless or not, regardless of their benefits.

AAC is not an Apple-specific format. It's an industry standard (MP4 audio); it just never gained quite as wide acceptance as MP3.