Sorry, I meant that not being able to discern any difference is literally the definition of useless.
And MP3s get stored on a lot of things that aren't SD cards, so that's a pretty weird metric.
But you're getting dangerously into gold-audio-cable-and-tinfoil-hat territory. Most people (including me, literally an audio expert) can't hear the difference in most cases so you're arguing for the increased space, and significant cost based solely on some notion of purity. That makes sense for archives, where they're being preserved for posterity and potential future processing, but not for casual listening.
Would you prefer that all websites served you only PNGs?
Gold audio cables? Now you're talking tinfoil hat territory :)
It IS "archival." Maybe when I'm dead and gone, so distant relative will be listening to this. Maybe they'll be able to hear the difference. Who knows?
I don't think the SD card is a weird metric at all. It fits in the phone, so even if, worst case, I'm traveling and rent a car (assuming it has Bluetooth), I still have all the music.
I'd gain absolutely nothing by having them as MP3s, and the price of a TB is only going to keep dropping.
Of course, I'd also gain nothing if you switched to FLACs. You perceive different tradeoffs than I do, so that's fine.
I still listen to my dad's classic rock records from the 60s and enjoy the hell out of it. But they sound like shit. ;-) If anyone someday down the line inherits your FLAC collection, they'll be listening to it out of nostalgia, not for the pristine audio quality.
You started with "I don't know why you'd..." and the answer is "because it's a waste of money" and "because you (mostly) can't hear a difference" and "because they work in my car".
As a side note, I have a phone that does take an SD card (in part because I like having my complete music collection there), but most people don't.
> I still listen to my dad's classic rock records from the 60s and enjoy the hell out of it. But they sound like shit. ;-)
You know why they sound like that? Because sound recording and copying technology was also shit. Garbage in, garbage out.
FLAC was made 50+ years after these records, and is basically indistinguishable from the real thing when made from something close to the original WAV masters, and played back on decent but affordable equipment. Until recently, this wasn't possible.
Not only that - with sufficient care, it will literally never degrade even by a single binary bit when it's being copied or stored, no matter how many times it's played or duplicated.
I have no problems listening to a FLAC now, or when I'm 90. I'm sure my descendants, if they care about my taste in music, wouldn't mind listening to the same files (possibly transcoded to another lossy format, or somehow improved by [REDACTED]) well into the 22nd century.
> If anyone someday down the line inherits your FLAC collection, they'll be listening to it out of nostalgia, not for the pristine audio quality
I beg to differ on that. The 30s jazz records that are so wonderful musically still sound like shit nowadays. That's a major deterrent to playing them.
> I have a phone that does take an SD card ... but most people don't.
I can't say about the numbers, but I didn't have much trouble finding a phone that took them in April 2021.
In general terms: over the last 50 years, it's never been a terrible move to waste CPU cycles or disk storage. Especially if it's a permanent choice.
One particular reason why you might want to preserve the lossless original is because: what if you want to re-encode it later? Including wireless transmission via Bluetooth.
I don't have great hearing, and I don't try to pretend to hear the difference between one well-enoded lossy file and the next. I can't.
However, audio that's been through multiple lossy encoding steps is generally not good.
> Sorry, I meant that not being able to discern any difference is literally the definition of useless.
That you think you might later re-encode is absolutely an argument for lossless formats. I'm not arguing that there's no use for lossless formats. The comments I was originally replying to was questioning why they're not universal. The reason they're not universal is because you need a special reason for them to make any sense.
> This seems rude.
I meant it tautologically: literally the definition of useless is a difference which has no measurable impact.
As the recipient: I've decided to cut @wheels some slack. You should, too. It's difficult to tell whether your online interlocutor is really a jerk, or just guilty of occasional jerk-seeming behavior. Who of us can say they've never done the latter?
And MP3s get stored on a lot of things that aren't SD cards, so that's a pretty weird metric.
But you're getting dangerously into gold-audio-cable-and-tinfoil-hat territory. Most people (including me, literally an audio expert) can't hear the difference in most cases so you're arguing for the increased space, and significant cost based solely on some notion of purity. That makes sense for archives, where they're being preserved for posterity and potential future processing, but not for casual listening.
Would you prefer that all websites served you only PNGs?