All lossless formats are equal. That's the easiest answer but the only
one everyone will agree on! It's either lossless or it isn't. It's
simple because it isn't audio - it is just data and it isn't what
someone perceives or bothers to take a blind-test with, spending $1000
on a cable will not make the data better. The data either comes back
complete or it doesn't. How it sounds after that has nothing to do
with the format itself, only the player or hardware it is paired with.
However if you think towards the future there is only one format to
choose, and that's FLAC. It's obvious to all that lossy is dying, you
can have as much as a LAME extreme encoded mp3 as you want, you can
even rip it with EAC but chances are a Windows Media Player ripped
lossless WMA sounds better.
One thing I think every FLAC, APE, Apple Lossless or WMA Lossless user
will agree on is that they think quality matters even if they think
its a waste of time ripping with EAC. If they also own a portable
player it would be silly to be using anything other than WMA/AAC's that
have been converted from their lossless files. Apart from the battery
life issues right now it's just not worth trying to do lossless on a
portable when you have them lossless at home. LAME mp3's are overkill,
mp3's in general should die and Ogg's & MPC's are nice but compatibility
hell when it comes to pairing with a portable.
I personally think Apple Lossless is the most dangerous threat for the
future and most pointless format to use. Apple Lossless is cool
because iTunes is nice and because the iPod is cool and because AIFF
sucks. Even ignoring the fact that it was actually screwed up and
buggy not long ago what uses does it have?
- Making iTunes a lot of money when all those DRM'd Lossy AAC's can
be sold again as DRM Lossless. Yeah, there will be 1 terabyte iPod's
one day with batteries that might manage to decode & play more than a
few hours of lossless music. Vinyl->CD->iTunes DRM Lossy->iTunes DRM
Lossless - ignoring any "Remasters" you could've bought the same thing
4 times!
- Any time "FLAC->AAC" is mentioned Apple can say "No".
At least with Windows Media Player you can play your FLAC files, but
for Microsoft it's the same.
- Make a lossless format because everyone else has. Of course it has
to be a DRM-ready lossless format.
- In a few years time resell DRM lossless WMA's to all the people who
bought the Vinyl, the CD and the DRM'd lossy WMA.
It's sad but if you're a Muse Pack or Ogg supporter there's nothing to
win. It was nice moving forward away from the old mp3 and at least
sticking two fingers up at MS/Apple/DRM for a while.
If you decide to stay a while in the lossy era why not use M$'s and
Apple's formats against them? Lets see everybody who hasn't been
frightened away from P2P ditching the mp3's and replacing them with
AAC's and WMA's with the evil stuff taken out :D
There's no imaginary gap for LAME MP3 to fill anymore, alleged
transparency with a CD is yesterday's news now DVD-A extracting is
giving FLAC 8 more bits of audio than the most perfect EAC rip could
ever do.
It's nice to see Monkey's Audio (APE) did open its source up eventually
which at least guarantees as long as it is needed someone will maintain
it. Yeah you do save a bit of hard disk space and these days maybe it
isn't noticeably slower on a Athlon64. But nobody knows or cares
because now its their DVD player or Squeezebox is decoding the FLACs.
The best thing The Monkey could do is bow out gracefully and not end up
in an Ogg/Muse Pack situation with FLAC. Yeah, the Monkey was nicer
than an acronym, the Monkey had a GUI and would have had all the
support had the F in FLAC not stood for Free.
The most important thing about where music is going now is not how much
better it can sound, it's about how much control you have over it -
about you deciding where to play it and what to play it on - they'll
help each other out but do you think Apple & M$ are gonna do anything
for Linux?
How can a Apple or WMA Lossless user have any interest in those formats
because presumably they believe in quality music, yet at the moment
their creator's mp3-era formats are the only thing interesting them
because of the DRM? They will be interested in lossless one day once
everybody wakes up to the fact that FLAC is the new mp3 and
downloadable music quality has finally got back to CD level again and
sometimes even above!
However it wont take Steve & Bill long to be saying crap like FLAC is
only 32-bits
we do 36,a strategy to monopolise the lossless format.
With the money of M$ & Apple don't kid yourselves that a simple "our
numbers are higher" trick won't work. Someone must be buying those
iTunes and keeping Steve very happy right now. Yeah, call it the
iPod effect if you will but Ive got an iPod and myTunes have always
been just that - mine !
Hopefully all ex-Ogg, MPC, LAME and APE users will say FLAC to lossless
DRM before it has a chance to happen and we can all manage our own
digital rights.
--
Jim
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jim's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=213
View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=16867
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