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Topic: Keeping seperate databases for lossless & lossy? (Read 2812 times) previous topic - next topic
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Keeping seperate databases for lossless & lossy?

OK, after reading the replies to my "Transferring vinyl to PC (or MAC) Home Theater & iPod" thread - plus doing more research & listening; I'm convinced that I'll be going to move from my ION ITTUSB w/ a Stanton 500V3 to an AT PL-120 with a Denon Moving Coil or a Grado Prestige cartridge (probably with a Herbie's mat) and will break out the protractor & calibrate & balance diligently.

Next, I will be listening to this music on both a pretty good  home theater system (Denon AVR2807, Orb Audio speakers) as well as on my iPod (headphones & car). At this point I am thinking I'll be using Audacity to transfer my files and MediaMonkey to organize them. My question is whether it makes sense to rip seperate libraries for my home server and for my iPod? I guess the big factors are $s and the time it will take. We're getting a lot of GigaBytes/$ these days but will the time factor be prohibitive?

I'm guessing that most members here would consider even a 192 mp3 utilizing LAME and maybe DFX enhancement to be a poor substitute for FLAC, APE or other lossless formats.

Any and all advice is encouraged.

Thanx!

Keeping seperate databases for lossless & lossy?

Reply #1 –
Quote from: Bruin on
I'm guessing that most members here would consider even a 192 mp3 utilizing LAME and maybe DFX enhancement to be a poor substitute for FLAC, APE or other lossless formats.

Any and all advice is encouraged.

Thanx!


For listening purposes 192 kbps MP3 Lame is an excellent substitute. Use lossless for backup only.

Keeping seperate databases for lossless & lossy?

Reply #2 –
The time should not be an issue.  Once you have everything ripped into lossless, you can use a batch encoder to transcode the lossless audio into something smaller for your iPod.  It may take more time, but not really time that you have to sit in front of the computer and mess with it.
 

Keeping seperate databases for lossless & lossy?

Reply #3 –
Creating a lossless archive is a good way to save a lot of time and work in the future. Though ripping to AAC or MP3 might look more reasonable at the moment, you'd quickly change your mind as soon as updates to the existing lossy encoders or new implementations were released. Having a lossless archive in stock would allow you to frequently update your collection without being forced to rip the whole lot of CDs (or to transfer the vinyl to PC) and tagging the resulting files over and over. In addition to this, encoding to different formats is always possible, which is very useful for different portable devices. Especially flash-based devices with their limited storage can greatly profit from being filled with music created from codecs, which provide better quality at low bitrates compared to MP3. In my opinion transferring a 192 kbit/s MP3 collection to a 512 MB mobile device with Vorbis/AAC support isn't exactly the best course of action. 80/96 kbit/s Vorbis/AAC is often more than enough while listening to music through your earbuds. Judging by the latest Hydrogenaudio multiformat tests, ~96 kbit/s VBR LC-AAC is even indistinguishable from the sources by many people. Vorbis' portable usefulness suffers a little from its higher battery hunger, but quality-wise my own ABXing revealed it as being very comparable to Nero's LC-AAC implementation.

To summarize things, if I were you I'd create a lossless archive in conjunction with a lossy one. Since compatibility isn't a problem this way, you can safely go the AAC route for your iPod. The bitrates are up to your ears, personally I'd suggest you to ABX the 80 - 128 kbit/s range. If the resulting quality wasn't satisfying in all of these cases, you'd best go with LAME MP3 -V5 or even better. Reasons for using the more modern codecs in the 128 - 192 kbit/s range are thin these days, at least for non-audiophiles who consider the resulting MP3 quality as transparent.