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Topic: Trying to understand why people go lossy. (Read 12672 times) previous topic - next topic
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Trying to understand why people go lossy.

It seems like everytime I turn around I see someone converting their lossless collection to <insert lossy format here>. Why? I hear arguements like: i have an ipod, or I can't hear the difference. Maybe it's just me, but that seems kinda lame to me. Why not keep the quality on the idea that if you ever get better speakers, you won't need to rerip your entire collection? and as to the ipod crisis: I have an ipod. I just wrote added a batch to the shell extension that decompresses re-encodes lossyless and transfers. one click. and it doesn't even take that long.

Someone open my eyes.

Trying to understand why people go lossy.

Reply #1 –
If you encode at high quality, aps for instance, you don't really have to re-encode your CD's no matter how good your speakers are. Since you get room for about 8 times more albums when you encode into a lossy format, I don't really think lossless is much more than a waste of space for a lot of people.

Trying to understand why people go lossy.

Reply #2 –
I seriously doubt many people convert to lossy and ditch their lossless files. When you read about people converting their lossless to lossy chances are it's for space or portable reasons. That does not mean they do not keep the lossless files. And even in the other case, just because it seems 'lame' to you, that does not nullify their reason for doing so. To each, his own.
--
Eric

Trying to understand why people go lossy.

Reply #3 –
Lossy files make sense for space saving on a portable, since modern hard-drive based players still have only 60 GB or so. However, if someone was transcoding to lossy and throwing away the lossless, that would not make sense. I just lost about a dozen CDs in a car accident and am very glad I have lossless backups.
"Facts do not cease to exist just because they are ignored."
—Aldous Huxley

Trying to understand why people go lossy.

Reply #4 –
Because MP3 plays everywhere - lossless-formats do not. Thats quite important for road-warrior-lifestyles. Sure, i could create a special-CD with decoders for a lossless-format, take a DAP with me which supports a lossless format in case the DAPs of others don't support it.... or i could just take it all in MP3-format with me and don't care about all those special-cases.

- Lyx
I am arrogant and I can afford it because I deliver.

Trying to understand why people go lossy.

Reply #5 –
I agree with tev777 (and Mono).

I think what you have seen, in the majority, is people who keep lossless on their PC, and transcode to lossy for portables.  This doesn't mean they delete the lossless.

I archive from CD to lossless, but then transcode to MP3 to play in my car.  I backup the lossless files to DVD.

Maybe there's a very few, but most people who've bothered to rip to lossless aren't going to just decide one day that APS is, in actual fact, just fine.
I'm on a horse.

Trying to understand why people go lossy.

Reply #6 –
Actually it makes perfect sense to me.

Currently in my PC I have over 400GB of hard drive space.  More than enough to comfortably store my music losslessly.  So I have my music ripped with EAC into WavPack.  However, on my iRiver iHP-120 I have 20GB of space.  That's quite a bit smaller.  Not to mention that the largest hit on battery life is hard drive access: something files as large as lossless files would cause to happen a lot.  So I use -q 5 Vorbis for my portable purposes.  I can do the conversion with foobar2000 and keep all my tags.  It's simply win-win for me.  Best possible compressed quality (more than I really need) on my PC and better than I can ABX on non-problem sample quality on my portable.

Hope this helps you understand my logic.

EDIT: Until I got enough hard drive space I had no choice but to go lossy only and my choice then was Vorbis -q 6.  Lossy has its place, but if you have the space lossless is the wiser decision IMO.  Simply because if something happens to the discs you have perfect copies still there.
Nero AAC 1.5.1.0: -q0.45

Trying to understand why people go lossy.

Reply #7 –
Quote
I hear arguements like... I can't hear the difference. Maybe it's just me, but that seems kinda lame to me.

Yes, with LAME you won't hear a difference.

Trying to understand why people go lossy.

Reply #9 –
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Why not keep the quality on the idea that if you ever get better speakers, you won't need to rerip your entire collection?[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=282177"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Because better speakers don't drastically improve your hearing, nor your familiarity with artifacts..?

LAME 3.9x's joint stereo was tuned with inexpensive headphones, IIRC.

Trying to understand why people go lossy.

Reply #10 –
Lossless has a psychological benefit, and if you have enough space, I agree with that choice. But for as long as I constantly run out of disk space, I have to keep my HD as empty as possible.(I never seem to be able to get an HD large enough...) So I encode with Nero AAC 'extreme' and regularly store to DVD+R. I could never hear the difference to lossless, if I grew another set of ears, and save about 2/3 space.

To think of it, if I would ever want to store video in a lossless format...[shudder]

Trying to understand why people go lossy.

Reply #11 –
Currently I rip to WavPack . . . BUT I am out of space alread on my HD and, as I don't have a DVD burner, I am strongly considering transcoding my lossless to Musepack --quality 5.  If a decent HD portable with Musepack ever comes along I will convert all my lossless to Musepack whether I have the space or not.
gentoo ~amd64 + layman | ncmpcpp/mpd | wavpack + vorbis + lame

Trying to understand why people go lossy.

Reply #12 –
Uhm...when your music collection starts heading towards 60 GB in MPC --extreme, and you have a limited income, lossless doesn't sound so appealing. I just don't have enough money to buy a disc array, thankyouverymuch. It also makes streaming a heck of a lot easier. Most of the time, I end up listening to my audio with my DAP anyway, and even transcoding MPC to OGG is fine when you're not listening too closely (and are in noisy environments and are using open-aire headphones/earphones).

In other words, you really have to consider the situations of different people. Some of us have to be budget audio enthusiasts, you know.

Trying to understand why people go lossy.

Reply #13 –
same problem here ... my 80GB hd is already full of LAME MP3s ... maybe Qest wants to donate me 300 bucks so i can buy a bigger disk 

Trying to understand why people go lossy.

Reply #14 –
Quote
It seems like everytime I turn around I see someone converting their lossless collection to <insert lossy format here>. Why? I hear arguements like: i have an ipod, or I can't hear the difference. Maybe it's just me, but that seems kinda lame to me. Why not keep the quality on the idea that if you ever get better speakers, you won't need to rerip your entire collection? and as to the ipod crisis: I have an ipod. I just wrote added a batch to the shell extension that decompresses re-encodes lossyless and transfers. one click. and it doesn't even take that long.

Someone open my eyes.
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=282177"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

lossy is simply a question of space, hardware and software support
 

Trying to understand why people go lossy.

Reply #15 –
Quote
Since you get room for about 8 times more albums when you encode into a lossy format, ...[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=282182"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
You're exaggerating. Make that 3 to 5 times more albums. If, at least, you were talking about lossy encodings of transparent quality (say 150 to 200 kbps), compared to the average 800 kbps lossless file (which can even go as low as 350 kbps with classical music).

Trying to understand why people go lossy.

Reply #16 –
Particularly I find the lossy encoders and the computers very useful for music. My stereo home system is only 3 components: One old Dell computer (266 Mhz) with 60 Gb of capacity; one stereo amplifier of 100 watts RMS, and; the speakers. No more tuners, cd players, turntables... The music center is only the computer  , this is very useful. I encoded all my CDs with Lame 3.96.1 -aps and Vorbis 1.1RC1 -q7 and I listen these files in my old Dell with my stereo system.

I find that Lame -aps and Vorbis -q7 are total transparent for me.

In my particular case; I don't find any necessity to use lossless, because I store the original CDs; I don't use my CDs at all, only for rip to mp3 or vorbis for my DAP and Stereo system. For my personal use outside of my house I use only the lossy files, never the original CDs.

Why people use lossy? because you can obtain total transparent sound with only aprox. (1/6) of the size of the original files.

Trying to understand why people go lossy.

Reply #17 –
MP3 players are a fantastic reason to transcode from lossless.  I'd rather have thousands of imperceptibly flawed (ie, totally transparency) songs available in my car than a few dozen lossless files.  The originals are nicely safe at home, but my portable won't play FLAC.

Trying to understand why people go lossy.

Reply #18 –
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but my portable won't play FLAC.
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=282629"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]


And even if they do, what's the point?

I have a Rio Karma. And I could not think of one situation where I would actually hear a difference between lossless and lossy (my transperency threshold is very low)

I do like others do here: I encode to lossless, transcode to lossy for computer AND portable use and burn the lossless files to DVD, then store them in a different location than my CDs (in case od disaster)

BTW, Nero hates long names and has changed the file extension of at least two of my flacs to .flc. Is there a way to revert this change? Although foobar reads these files flawslessly (that Peter just thought of everything) I'd hate to be unable to play those files in the future.
I'm the one in the picture, sitting on a giant cabbage in Mexico, circa 1978.
Reseñas de Rock en Español: www.estadogeneral.com

Trying to understand why people go lossy.

Reply #19 –
I'll tell you why: a collection of over 8000 albums.

You know what lossless means, don't you? 5x the storage space (real world and electronic), 5x the time to back up, 5x the cost to store and back up. With large enough numbers, lossless simply cannot be justified. Unless you have money to burn!

So there are a lot of situations where lossy works and lossless doesn't - like storing large music collections conveniently. Eventually, this situation will end.

However, the other issue: that common lossy (e.g. mp3) plays where lossless does not (because lossless will always be less common, because most people simply don't care) - this issue will probably get worse, rather than better!

Even now, is there any lossless format that shows any sign of becoming as ubiquitous as mp3 (apart from CD itself!)? I don't see this happening any time soon.

Cheers,
David.

Trying to understand why people go lossy.

Reply #20 –
i think QEST's questions are answered....and then some!!!

Trying to understand why people go lossy.

Reply #21 –
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... a collection of over 8000 albums.
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=282650"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Trying to understand why people go lossy.

Reply #22 –
Quote
Quote
... a collection of over 8000 albums.
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=282650"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]


[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=282755"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]


You have money to buy 8000 albums, but can't justify a 60 dollar dvdr burner, and buying media for around 20 cents a disc, or even how cheap hard drives are these days.  All well. I am one to rip my cd's to Ape and archive to dvd. I like knowing I have an exact backup incase a cd gets damaged, lost, or whatever; which they do. I also rip to ogg to listen to on my computer.

Trying to understand why people go lossy.

Reply #23 –
A collection of that size is bought over a large number of years. The monetary impact is nothing like that if you were to build a music server to store that lot losslessly.
daefeatures.co.uk

Trying to understand why people go lossy.

Reply #24 –
Quote
You have money to buy 8000 albums, but can't justify a 60 dollar dvdr burner, and buying media for around 20 cents a disc, or even how cheap hard drives are these days.  All well. I am one to rip my cd's to Ape and archive to dvd. I like knowing I have an exact backup incase a cd gets damaged, lost, or whatever; which they do. I also rip to ogg to listen to on my computer.
[{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]



I second this. My CD collection isn't that large (nearly 4000 for the time being), builded in 15 years. But nevertheless, being most of them (~80%) classical / jazz music I can get very good compression ratios: so I decided to store them all losslessly --> single APE image + cuesheet, checksums, artwork etc.. quite a task I know...  I did some approximative math: with around 350 Mb for disc (prudential, usually I get away with less) the ratio for a single backup dvd-r is ~12,5, so  I'm going to ask for some 300+ dvd (and the same number for cd-r filled with PAR files, following the procedure described [a href="http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=31146&st=25]here[/url], post #41. All in all, I should do with nearly 500 $, a lot of work and a lot of fun, also. Meanwhile you can of course transcode from lossless to everything you want for PC, iPods, car etc. etc.

All of this is nothing new. So, back to square one: why people go lossy? With a collection of, say, 500 cd you could do the all work with a single 50-dvd stack. So: why take the trouble of secure ripping your collection just for getting something lossy you'll need to change in the near future because the new alpha... or the new portable... or the girlfriend's Mac... or the new USB external HD.... Think you'll be happy rerip everything twice or...? You HA people, I mean, not the average user who doesn't even know of lossless.. 

And, 2Bdecided: ok, 5x money and space (it depends from the kind of music, anwyay)... but why 5x time to back up? Maybe encode to Flac or Ape takes 5x than encode with Lame? It's not just the time you spend on burning dvds... And with lossless you're doing something that's gonna last for long, long time (at least I hope  )