Save the WAV

[TaranT]

(Tab's post is the motivation for this, but rather than step on his topic, I'll just start a new thread.)

Anecdote: when I transfer music from my CDs to my portable devices, I copy the WAV files. Why bother to compress them? It's a waste of time when I have a gigabyte or more of space on even the smallest of flash drives. Seriously, who needs MP3s (or ALAC or WMA or whatever) ?

MP3 files - and compressed music in general - are an artifact of a bygone era that was marked by dialup-grade bandwidth and storage measured in megabytes. These limitations are rapidly disappearing and are no longer an issue for many of us. From a practical standpoint, there is no reason for consumers to settle for compression except that it is what the new industry is selling us - the same way they sold us CDs and LPs and then complained when we decided we wanted better. (Wireless tech may be an exception to this statement, but only temporarily.)

It's probably too much to expect the the consuming public to start demanding their online music in CD-grade, DVD-grade, or even HD-grade uncompressed files. It would be nice if one of the major or even secondary sellers would start offering them, but it's not in their interest at the moment. For myself, I plan to start preserving whatever WAVs (meaning CDs) in the event that uncompressed music disappears along with music CDs themselves.

I'm not bringing up the lossless/quality issue since it's really beside the point. On the one hand, I'm not sure I believe the lossless claims. Music is experiential: lossless in a mathematical sense may not be the same as lossless to the person who is listening. (Of course, this argument was made against digital sampling when CDs first came on the market.)

But the real point is this: even if it does sound exactly the same after compression, why bother? This isn't like the analog-to-digital conversion 25 years ago. All we're really dealing with is a change in delivery methods (hard copy vs soft copy). The technology may have limited us at one time, but there is no reason to make the extra effort after those limitations are gone.

[Tono_Fyr]

I have two libraries of digitally stored music. One is my compressed library, which holds all of my MP3 rips, and the other is my wav library, which holds all of my uncompressed rips. The reasons I keep the MP3 library are quite simple.

1. I have a lot of music. If I were to try to plop my WAV folder onto my MP3 player, I'd run out of space less than half way through my collection, and even MP3 players that are DOUBLE the size of my current one wouldn't be of much help, as I'd still run out of space eventually (I'd miss thirteen gigs or so with a 60 gig player).

2. MP3s can hold relevant sorting data, such as band name, date released, album title, track number, etc which further helps in the organization process. Point me at an uncompressed container that can do that, and I'll jump on it... but I'll still use my MP3s for the simple fact that they fit so nicely on my MP3 player, and leave me a good deal more space to work with.

I can certainly understand your side of the argument, but it's impractical from the standpoint of someone with a large (see: 125+) CD collection.

[shumira_chan]

I'm not sure what your point is. I compress the music I rip because I then get 600 songs on my portable player. That said, I too lament the fact that someday music will only be available in MP3 format. I've never bought songs online, and I will buy CDs as long as they make them (well, I buy them used, but that's another story).

On the other hand, there are other serious problems with the way music is engineered nowadays: not only is it subjected to lossy compression, the dynamic range is also severely compressed. See:

http://www.y o u t u b e.com/watch?v=3Gmex_4hreQ

(spaces used to get around the asinine filter in place). I am absolutely dismayed by what I've been seeing with audacity, namely, clipping galore. The assault on musical quality on so many fronts is really sad to see, but I wonder if maybe someday we'll see a backlash.

[CrackTheSky]

I don't even own an MP3 player. I'll always buy CDs, and when they stop making them, I'll stop listening to new music. I hate all this iTunes downloadable digital crap (although I like iTunes as a music player/organizer), though pretty much all of the reasons I dislike the move towards completely digital music differs from your comments about music quality, so I won't touch on it.

But it is a relevant point. Eventually I see the quality of music deteriorating noticeably from CD quality in favor of smaller files. Damn shame.

[Otohiko]

When I can afford the disk space, we'll be talking. Otherwise, with 24days' worth of audio on a PC with a grand total of 200GB HD space (and that takes up close to a quarter of it), I don't see how anything above a decent-bitrate MP3 would be feasible for me.

So I'm not quite sure what your point is entirely. Maybe when we all have multiple-terabyte storage...

[TaranT]

Maybe when we all have multiple-terabyte storage...

One day we will all have multi-terabyte storage. That is virtually guaranteed, at least for those of use who want it. It would be a shame if old habits kept us from taking advantage of what technology can offer, in this case high-quality music files with little - or less - effort. Maybe what I'm suggesting is to use compression only as a short-term solution where needed (as in a shortage of disk space).

I can certainly understand your side of the argument, but it's impractical from the standpoint of someone with a large (see: 125+) CD collection.

Not to brag, but I have ten times that many. Which means that the time it takes to compress them all to MP3 is simply out of the question. It's bad enough having to rip the WAVs and catalog them for backup. However, I do agree about the ID3 tags which can be very useful.

As for lack of space on your PMP, that just means you need a new player.
Like the Archos 504 with a 160GB drive. (It'll play your XVid AMVs and anime ep's, too.) Seriously, this is a situation that time (and, well, money) solves as the technology improves.

{tube vid}

That was interesting. I have heard of this problem (the Loudness War), but don't know what to do about it. The level of stupidity involved with these music labels and producers is beyond comprehension.

[nailz]

Terabyte storage can be had for $300.