I collect flac wherever i can on my Computer and sync it to my phone with transcode to lossy. I agree tho, a good lossy encode cannot be distinguished from their lossless version. Even less when you dont have the immediate comparison.
Three reasons:
collectors appeal -> music on the internet comes and goes. Chances are that your file that you downloaded randomly becomes the only one available. having it in best available quality is the icing on the cake.
generational loss -> the ability to transfer your music to any future media you like without/with minimal loss. Also if you remix/cut/edit stuff it keeps quality high
killer samples -> given more agressive music, codecs might fail. There are some examples on hydrogenaudio.
I do something very similar. I have all my music on a network share with a playlist folder inside. I run a script that copies all the lines from an .m3u playlist file and copies them to another music folder inside my user folder, converting any FLAC files along the way.
I then user SyncThing to synchronize that folder with my phone. Makes it super easy to get all my music and playlists when I upgrade to a new phone.
a = *lines from playlist file*
new = *destinationFolder*
# If the mp3 version of the flac is older than the flac or doesn't exist in the destination,# convert it from Flac to variable bitrate mp3if [ "$a" -nt "${new[@]/%flac/mp3}" ]; thenecho Converting $a
ffmpeg -y -i "$a" -qscale:a 0 "${new[@]/%flac/mp3}"fi
There’s some cleaning and other steps done but I’m willing to share or provide more details if anyone is interested.
Its a shame that you NEED a secondary lossy archive. You can only do true on-the-fly functionality when the syncing and music app are not seperate. Currently i use MusicBee for the transcoding and resilio for the syncing. I should propably switch over to syncthing too tho.
I have several terabytes of free space on my server so I have no issue sacrificing a few gigs to have the lossy archive be portable and independent of the music software.
It gives me the freedom to drop the lossy archive to whatever device I want (SyncThing to make it automatic and wireless) and use whatever music play I choose.
I could, and have thought about, switching the script to use hardlinks for the MP3s which means the only storage used is for the transcoded MP3s. Plus it would get rid of the requirement to sync any updated MP3s from the original archive to the lossy one, the hardlinks would just update with the original.
killer samples -> given more agressive music, codecs might fail. There are some examples on hydrogenaudio.
Can you clarify what this is? Are there songs that cannot be stored in mp3 form? I tried searching it but I just got a bunch of results about murder instead.
Killer samples are lossy sounds that are distinguishable from lossless regardless of bitrate. They are usually handcrafted extremes that you wouldnt find in any real audio.
I collect flac wherever i can on my Computer and sync it to my phone with transcode to lossy. I agree tho, a good lossy encode cannot be distinguished from their lossless version. Even less when you dont have the immediate comparison.
Three reasons:
I do something very similar. I have all my music on a network share with a playlist folder inside. I run a script that copies all the lines from an .m3u playlist file and copies them to another music folder inside my user folder, converting any FLAC files along the way.
I then user SyncThing to synchronize that folder with my phone. Makes it super easy to get all my music and playlists when I upgrade to a new phone.
a = *lines from playlist file* new = *destinationFolder* # If the mp3 version of the flac is older than the flac or doesn't exist in the destination, # convert it from Flac to variable bitrate mp3 if [ "$a" -nt "${new[@]/%flac/mp3}" ]; then echo Converting $a ffmpeg -y -i "$a" -qscale:a 0 "${new[@]/%flac/mp3}" fiThere’s some cleaning and other steps done but I’m willing to share or provide more details if anyone is interested.
Its a shame that you NEED a secondary lossy archive. You can only do true on-the-fly functionality when the syncing and music app are not seperate. Currently i use MusicBee for the transcoding and resilio for the syncing. I should propably switch over to syncthing too tho.
I have several terabytes of free space on my server so I have no issue sacrificing a few gigs to have the lossy archive be portable and independent of the music software.
It gives me the freedom to drop the lossy archive to whatever device I want (SyncThing to make it automatic and wireless) and use whatever music play I choose.
I could, and have thought about, switching the script to use hardlinks for the MP3s which means the only storage used is for the transcoded MP3s. Plus it would get rid of the requirement to sync any updated MP3s from the original archive to the lossy one, the hardlinks would just update with the original.
I think musicbee had a plugin that could do that, havnt had any quick success with it.
Can you clarify what this is? Are there songs that cannot be stored in mp3 form? I tried searching it but I just got a bunch of results about murder instead.
Killer samples are lossy sounds that are distinguishable from lossless regardless of bitrate. They are usually handcrafted extremes that you wouldnt find in any real audio.
Neat, thanks.