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Topic: MPC Quality: -standard or -xtreme? (Read 19130 times) previous topic - next topic
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MPC Quality: -standard or -xtreme?

Reply #50 –
Just wait two years and you can go lossless. You can get a 160GB IDE hard drive right now...two years from now the max should be around 300-400GB.

But lossy may not be dead even then. Figure that in two years, DVD-R burners will become affordable, and you'll be able to fit about 50 hi-quality lossy albums on a single DVD-R. Such portability could be quite attractive.

MPC Quality: -standard or -xtreme?

Reply #51 –
OT: about lossless compression
How do those of you that use it cope with all the data? Either you don't really have much music or you have some kind of storage "solution". Since you probably won't get two albums on one CD I would think that file organisation is a mess. How do you manage your files?

MPC Quality: -standard or -xtreme?

Reply #52 –
Quote
about lossless compression
How do those of you that use it cope with all the data? Either you don't really have much music or you have some kind of storage "solution". Since you probably won't get two albums on one CD I would think that file organisation is a mess. How do you manage your files?
I have no problems with storage or organization. I only require instant access to around 2000 songs, which I keep in one folder on one hard drive. I do NO backup of my lossless files, other than having the original CDs. 500 CDs is no big thing, they will fit on two 160 gig drives. And do you really need instant access to EVERY song on all of those CDs? I certainly don't. Some CDs I compress every song off them. Many others, I only have three or four songs off them.

MPC Quality: -standard or -xtreme?

Reply #53 –
In general the lossless isn't *that* huge of a size increase factor, at least not compared to a few years ago (when 128kbps was the standard).  If you store most of your albums in some sort of high-quality lossy format, they're going to take around 200 kbps, possibly more.  With good lossless compression you can get around 2x compression, which translates to around 700 kbps - so your music will take up 3.5x as much space as is currently does.  So if you currently have say a 60gb hard drive, that means you'll need a 210gb hard drive, which is just on the horizon (you can already buy two 120gb hard drives).  If you're like most people and have more in the range of 40gb or less of compressed audio, you can fit them all losslessly on a single 160gb hard drive.

Now if you want portability and so use CD-Rs instead of hard drives, it's obviously less convenient, but I personally don't see any benefit to that, and given the extremely poor longevity of CD-R's, it'd be a bad idea to use CD-R's for anything other than portability (i.e. as backup or permanent storage - they're unlikely to last more than 5 years reliably).

MPC Quality: -standard or -xtreme?

Reply #54 –
Never experienced a head-crash, huh?

MPC Quality: -standard or -xtreme?

Reply #55 –
Quote
FK wrote:
But the main advantage will be more stable quality than SV7. 
Especially the little bit too much treble problem should be fixed in 
SV8.

Huh?!!!!!
You mean that SV7 has a "too much treble problem"?
Is this where where we get the sibilance problem from?
Ruse
____________________________
Don't let the uncertainty turn you around,
Go out and make a joyful sound.

MPC Quality: -standard or -xtreme?

Reply #56 –
Quote
Originally posted by Delirium
Now if you want portability and so use CD-Rs instead of hard drives, [..] and given the extremely poor longevity of CD-R's, it'd be a bad idea to use CD-R's for anything other than portability (they're unlikely to last more than 5 years reliably).

That's about the same for Hard Drives!
There are different grades of CD-R's, some will last 100 years if you keep them under right conditions (that is: not play them  )
-
Ge Someone
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.

MPC Quality: -standard or -xtreme?

Reply #57 –
Quote
Never experienced a head-crash, huh?
No, actually I never have.

MPC Quality: -standard or -xtreme?

Reply #58 –
Well... that just statistically raises the possibility that your hard disk is going to burst sometime in future

MPC Quality: -standard or -xtreme?

Reply #59 –
Quote
Originally posted by GeSomeone
That's about the same for Hard Drives!
There are different grades of CD-R's, some will last 100 years if you keep them under right conditions (that is: not play them  )
Well I personally have had no hard drive ever fail; the oldest is now entering its 9th year of continuous usage (a 1993 Connor Peripherals 810MB IDE drive).  And the rest are all Western Digital and Maxtor...if I had bought "quality" drives they'd be even less likely to fail. =]

But I've had tons of CD-Rs die...the best-rated I've seen are some that claim to be rated for 20 years...where can I find 100-year rated ones?

MPC Quality: -standard or -xtreme?

Reply #60 –
I experienced a headcrash about 5 years ago. I wanted to boot from my shiny new hard disk (Maxtor or IBM i think, it was about 3 weeks old), when i heard a sound like "KKKKKKKKkkkkrrrrrrrrrrLLLLLLLL...........", and knew that something just went horribly wrong. The drive didn't want to boot anymore, making weird sounds each time i turned the power on.

I returned it to the store the same day (luckily it was no mailorder), and the store clerk suspected a virus... yeah right, a hardware virus, eh...? After telling him about the weird sounds and about my puny attempts to recover any data, he eventually handed me a replacement drive. I left my old drive there, waving goodbye to all my data. This event teached me about doing regular backups.

MPC Quality: -standard or -xtreme?

Reply #61 –
anyone lost a CD-R? Ever?
I\'m new at this...

MPC Quality: -standard or -xtreme?

Reply #62 –
Quote
Originally posted by astro
anyone lost a CD-R? Ever?


I believe the bottom line here is that there isn't a perfect backup method. You could spend lots of money to create raid units, do remote backup, store your CDs inside a Swiss safe, and your data can still be lost.

So, the better idea is not to worry and stress too much on the subject. I mean, it's just music. You won't be ruined if you lose your favorite tracks. In the worst of cases, you can probably find the album somewhere and buy it again.

Regards;

Roberto.

MPC Quality: -standard or -xtreme?

Reply #63 –
Quote
Originally posted by astro
anyone lost a CD-R? Ever?


Several.

On one CD, the disc label suddenly peeled off. I managed to peel off the rest of the label and had a nice transparent CD. Apparently the protective layer was also destroyed. Of course, the CD drive refused to load the CD. This happened again later, with a different CD.

Then i have some older CDs (~5 years), where single folders produce blue screens. This sounds weird, i know, but some folders can't be read anymore, in no drive i tried.

Then there are those CDs that can be read out, but the drive has it's difficulties. I can often hear how the CD drive spins the CD down to 8x or 4x speed, when it encounters too many errors. I think i have a handful of those CDs (all older ones).