You know guys I thought long and hard (read: 20 secs) about that, before ripping, if I should go lossless or whatever as an intermediate step. I decided not to for a few fundamental reasons:
- Quality. I never find myself in a listening situation where I could be able to tell, IMO, the theoretical difference between 320 kbps mp3 audio and lossless audio - or for that matter, the difference between 256 kbps AAC and lossless. I'm not a hi-fi freak, I love music not audio, and some of my most cherished moments with music has been with horrible audio quality in a state where anything goes. Mad beats are mad wether 128 or 1280 kbps.
- Availability. I'm super lazy, so if I have to re-encode to whatever format my current listening device supports, I just wont' do it. If I had all of my music in a proprietary format, it would be just that, a bunch of proprietary files on my disk never being accessed. Neither my ipod nor my cellphone support any usable formats except mp3. I'm too lazy to transcode.
- And third, and this is most important. Rest of post on this:
One can not DRM-ifize mpeg layer 3. Mp3 is a holy format that must never, ever die or be left behind. The alternatives will kill music. Mp3 is what keeps digital music alive, it is the current lifeblood of music and it was the spark that ignited the revolution. Because it is all-encompassing, it works everywhere, any product that wants to survive MUST support the mp3 format.
Ogg, Flac, whatever, yes they are brilliant and good and perfect and better options technically than mp3. But they do not have the sheer massive force of mp3, they do not carry any weight on their own. Being better is not necessarily good enough in today's world. (I KNOW.)
Do you not realize that if we fragment audio formats, there will eventually come something "better" to replace mp3, and you can bet your flOGGed ass it will be crippled and controlled and preloaded with DRM crap and we will all hate it. Blue-ray? HD-DVD? Does anyone really WANT those?
IF there comes a new global audio format, it will only be the result of years of standardization done by huge corporations in coop with dirty lobbying from content producers (read: major labels, Hollywood, TV/radio networks, Microsoft etc), and it will SUCK MUD. It will be impossible to use for anything proper, and it will be hacked within two days, and a never ending battle between users and producers will kill us all.
The reason mp3 is important is because it MUST NOT DIE as a format. It MUST NOT become a tool of the trade, it has to stay a tool for both the users and the producers. My mom knows to play an mp3. She has no idea what ogg or flac is, and if she is forced into using another format you and I and DVD-Jon all know that it won't be flac or ogg, it will be whatever format Microsoft or Apple or someone else than her has decided is good for her. She does not approach these matters as we do and she shouldn't. There are more moms than DVD-Jons in the world. This is why mp3 is important. It is established pre-DRM. Every time you choose to use mp3 you reinforce the power of mp3. Therefore I use mp3 and I will until the end of the world or something better, in all aspects, comes along.
Good god I should written this as a separate journal entry. Oh, look I just did. Hah, thats the power of writing and running your own blog software. I'm like the Fraunhofer Institute of blogs!
