iPhone;330973 Wrote: > why use a compromising ripping format (on a home system) when FLAC and > other lossless formats are readily available?
A consumer is frequently in a bind when it comes to their audio: they often have no control over compromises someone else made (at the recording, mixing, mastering level), and they have some control over the playback environment but it comes at a very high cost. I was mostly pointing out that encoding is one of the few areas where the consumer has complete control, at a very low cost. For an audiophile, that's enough reason to go lossless right there. End of story. The rest of the world needs to weigh the benefits and costs, though. The cost is a few dollars worth of HD space and a small amount of time and effort. Everyone agrees about that part. There's some disagreement about the benefit, but I'm going to spell out what the non-audiophile world thinks, at great risk of grievous personal injury. The benefit is *cough* that some people (probably not you) may be able to perceive an audible (but not necessarily unpleasant) difference on some hi-fi systems (probably not yours) and only on some tracks anyway (probably not in your collection). For the rest of the world, it's pretty clear the costs outweigh the benefits, so they go lossy. -- CatBus ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CatBus's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7461 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=51021 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
