1kyle Posted January 9, 2007 Report Share Posted January 9, 2007 Hi all -- I've got a large library (around 1500 CD's worth) all in ATRAC Lossless. I still use HI-MD a lot even for portable play back -- 7 Hrs of music on a single MD is quite enough for me for a few sessions. ( If I've I've got enough time during the day to listen to 7 hours of music then what on earth am I doing --assuming I'm not travelling which I do quite a lot and there must be something seriously wrong with your social skills if you have to sit in a busy office wearing headphones and listening to music by yourself).I've also got some Apple Lossless stuff. (Non DRM'ed of course). I'm gradually getting more and more of this format. I'm using MAC laptops in any case now and "Virtualise" a Windows machine when I need to run SS.Should I re-encode my Atrac Lossless to Apple Lossless as a lot of players support Apple Lossless. If I need to make a MD from stuff in the library I can convert Apple Lossless to WAV without any loss of fidelity and use PCM on the HD or convert the PCM to Atrac Hi-SP without too much problem.I don't want to store multiple music formats on the PC. Atrac lossless was a good lossless compression but not very useable. Apple Lossless will play on a few devices as is (no conversion required). Converting Apple Lossless to Atrac lossless doesn't seem like a good idea either.I'm trying to make myself independent of SS (or at least the library). I can always make "Virtual CD's" from the Apple lossless stuff when creating a MD and then use Simple Burner to burn to MD.I basically only want Music on the computer as a backup. I really (if ever) actually listen to tracks directly from a computer as even at home I'd prefer to use a high end stereo system.If only Sony would allow direct playback of other music formats.So any suggestions as to storing large volumes of music (losslessly) on a computer as backup which requires the least amount of hassle to get it to play at a decent fidelity n current and future players including MD's , 'Pods and equivalent. I'm not interested in relatively low bit rate (128 kbs) mp3 compression type algorithms. Computer processing speeds and hard disk sizes allow for much better music storagr algorithms these days.Not only the storage but also tagging / data retrieval and cataloguing. A problem with compiling your own Virtual CD and burning it to MD is that you don't have access to Gracenote so you'll have to add track data manually which is a real pain.Maybe it's time for me to abandon MD as a playback device (I can't believe I said that) --however as a recording device it's still number one.Cheers-K Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richard Posted January 9, 2007 Report Share Posted January 9, 2007 * Moved to Software Discussion Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ghankstef Posted January 9, 2007 Report Share Posted January 9, 2007 It seems like you have the worst of proprietary formats. Its a difficult problem. I usually just use my MD unit as a recorder and iPod as a player. The iPod is just such much easier to use as a player (at east for me) even though the MD sounds great.It seems to me you need to get away from proprietary formats. Maybe use FLAC for archiving and 192 or 256 VBR mp3 for listening or maybe just 256 VBR mp3 or 320 cbr mp3 for everythingiTunes now supports multiple libraries so you can have an archive library and a portable mp3 library. Good luck - tough problem Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
timonoj Posted January 9, 2007 Report Share Posted January 9, 2007 (edited) It seems like you have the worst of proprietary formats. Its a difficult problem. I usually just use my MD unit as a recorder and iPod as a player. The iPod is just such much easier to use as a player (at east for me) even though the MD sounds great.It seems to me you need to get away from proprietary formats. Maybe use FLAC for archiving and 192 or 256 VBR mp3 for listening or maybe just 256 VBR mp3 or 320 cbr mp3 for everythingiTunes now supports multiple libraries so you can have an archive library and a portable mp3 library. Good luck - tough problemBut mp3 is a lossy codec whatever the bitrate. I would suggest APE wich is true lossless. I think apple's AAC is quite more compatible. If your apple lossless codec is AAC-based, i would stick to it, since it's a good codec and quite supported by quite a lot of programs (quite more than atrac, at least).Another open codec might be OGG...(again, i don't know wether it is lossless -since i wouldn't notice, i didn't bother in studying them that much) Edited January 9, 2007 by timonoj Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greenmachine Posted January 9, 2007 Report Share Posted January 9, 2007 ogg is a lossy codec, flac its lossless brother, both open source. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raintheory Posted January 9, 2007 Report Share Posted January 9, 2007 I use and highly recommend FLAC. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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