• alvvayson@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    43
    arrow-down
    13
    ·
    1 year ago

    Yeah, but that argument was compelling in 2005.

    With storage as cheap as it is nowadays, a 15 MB FLAC audio file vs. a 3 MB MP3 really doesn’t matter anymore. Those 12 MB cost nothing to store.

    And to be honest, in cases where storage does matter, a 320 kbps MP3 is just a waste of space. A VBR MP3 with average bitrate around 200 kbps makes way more sense and nobody can tell the difference between that and 320 kbps in a double blind test.

    So just maintain FLAC or other lossless for sharing music and transcode down when needed.

    • Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      51
      arrow-down
      5
      ·
      1 year ago

      file size absolutely matters when you have thousands of songs lol, my music is a significant chunk of my phone’s SD card capacity

      • alvvayson@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        27
        arrow-down
        4
        ·
        1 year ago

        That’s why you should transcode to 200 or even 160 kbps for your phone.

        But the master archive should be in flac if possible.

        A 2 TB disk is less than $100 nowadays.

        • Perfide@reddthat.com
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          6
          ·
          1 year ago

          But like, why? I’m going to be listening to the lossy version on my phone 90% of the time anyways, and my headphones are not good enough to truly appreciate lossless either. It doesn’t matter that I have over 4tb of storage on my PC, I still don’t wanna waste an extra 50GB for no tangible benefit, when I could use the same extra 50GB to more than double my lossy music collection if I wanted.

          • alvvayson@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            4
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            If you store lossy on your PC you will lose quality if you transcode to a lower bitrate. If you don’t transcode, then you will be using more space on your phone.

            That’s why.

            If you don’t want to transcode and just want to download and play, then full lossy is easier. But you are going to be using more space on your phone.

            • Perfide@reddthat.com
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              1 year ago

              But you are going to be using more space on your phone.

              In which case we circle back around to “storage is cheap”. Music is the only substantial space hog on my phone.

      • TheDarkKnight@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        arrow-down
        5
        ·
        1 year ago

        You should upgrade from your Razor to a phone made in the last decade, they have a lot more space now.

    • thisisawayoflife@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      13
      arrow-down
      4
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      This is my take as well. Storage is cheap. I have thousands of albums and about 40,000 tracks currently and it consumes about 400GB. It’s really not that much storage, considering.

      • GeneralVincent@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        40… 40,000…? My god I thought I had a lot of music downloaded, but I haven’t even broken into the thousands yet

      • Rodeo@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        5
        arrow-down
        5
        ·
        1 year ago

        So you don’t listen to music unless you’re at home? Or do you choose a subset of your library to put on your phone? That would be terribly annoying for me.

        • apochryphal_triptych@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          9
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          In my case, a self hosted streaming server works wonders. Plex with Pleaxamp, Jellyfin, Navidrome, Airsonic, any of them will stream to your phone while out and about.

          • Rodeo@lemmy.ca
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            That will work great if you live your entire life in cities.

            I spend a lot of time in places with no cell service.

            • apochryphal_triptych@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              2
              ·
              1 year ago

              I live in the rural midwest with spotty cell service. All of those services support manual offline syncing to store music on your phone. I set Plexamp to stream lossy over cellular, and it doesn’t take long to cache an entire playlist when I do have a signal.

              • Rodeo@lemmy.ca
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                1 year ago

                So then you’re back to the problem where you require more storage than what your phone has.

                • apochryphal_triptych@lemmy.world
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  2
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  What problem? 200 tracks times 4mb/track equals 1Gb. If you can’t spare a couple gigs of storage, you need to delete some apps off your phone.

                  • Rodeo@lemmy.ca
                    link
                    fedilink
                    arrow-up
                    1
                    ·
                    1 year ago

                    The guy said he has 400gb of music, that’s what we were talking about

        • gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          5
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          Plex or other local system streaming service, you know, using the tech that’s existed for over a decade now?

          No need to store jack shit on my device unless I know I’m going to a low reception area m

        • clearleaf@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          1 year ago

          It’s easy bro just maintain a server with redundant disks and a reverse proxy so you can stream music over your unlimited cellular data connection that I’m totally sure you have access to in your region.