On an entry on one of the sites I follow on Facebook, Alan Parsons is talking about the downward turn of the music industry, and the .mp3 file being the major cause of this.. And I agree that .mp3 files aren't nearly as good as full files or lossless but getting a player to play full lossless is tricky.. when I started to download concerts from several sites back a few years ago they were all lossless or FLAC files that meant they were the best you could get and the begged everyone to not convert to lossy format or .mpeg3 type of files.. they want it to be a form of pure.. I get that and I fully agree the best way to listen to music is lossless or the way you buy the music at the store on compact disc and whatever form therein.. That being said I feel that while listening to music in .mp3 defeats the purpose, but... You have to consider what everyone is listening to the music with.. To listen through an i-gadget of any kind the speakers are extremely small and hi-fidelity isn't that important and so the file can be smaller.. 320 bit rate is the highest in .mp3 files, but that size is large and takes up a lot of space on the hard drive.. Back when I started to convert the music files for computer I think I decided 256 was good enough for me to enjoy the music.. There just was no need to have it in wav files and then after this computer was restarted to windows 7 it deleted all the music that was on here.. Then last week I upgraded the computer to windows 10 and with it all the music again was lost.. Actually that isn't true, I didn't put any music on here knowing I would be upgrading by about the first two weeks of June.. However I did it earlier.. But when it came time to put the music on here there was an issue, how big would the files be?? How big did they need to be? Well I Googled the question of how small a file would have to be to still be listenable.. To my ears and I thought I could tell when the sample rate was too small.. What gets lost?? I ripped music at three or four sample rates, knowing full well 320 wasn't what I was going to go after, I tried 256 but again knew that was likely what I had before.. I took the disc that I burned the music I bought from i-tunes on to.. The files were .mp3 of course but what stunned me was they were sample rate at 128.. 128?? Well I checked and yes, that still sounds alright, what did we lose?? Does it sound like a cassette tape??? As far as I could tell the files sounded alright.. What music I used was music I knew and there was little change.. What did I listen to these on?? I used the computer, that is where these files will be listened to, and I used an unfair advantage to listen to them, I used the best headphones you can but, noise cancelling Bose headphones, and the unfair advantage is when I listen on the sound system of the computer it likely won't sound as good.. But in the same sense that most people don't listen to this kind of music (.mp3 files) on a huge sound system, they won't even notice..
I started ripping music last week and am using sample rate (CBR) of 128.. And instead of loading directly to the computer I am loading to a SD card.. The reason why is so I don't have to rip from disc again.. I will store the entire music selection on SD or flash drive.. Again the reason is to keep the music easily accessible so that if the next time the computer takes a dump the music is even easier to load up..
And then there is the rate or number of discs I am trying to do per day.. That varies, depending fully how many songs per disc.. The first few discs were the Rhino box sets.. That is a must.. From Nuggets, to Frat rock to the new millennium sets, What I think of as the best true rock and roll is in those box sets.. Seeing this music and memory escaping me, I loaded more music and will go back and determine what should stay and what should go.. Then there was the stories behind the ability to buy these sets.. The Nuggets sets were as seen on tv ads as well as the mailer that my little brother got every year, right after the new year.. The one set that eluded me the longest was the Syd Barrett set Crazy Diamond.. A triple disc set that took quite a while to find.. I couldn't find it and the guy that runs the record store made it his mission to find it.. And he did.. It was in a record store in of all places, Omaha.. Getting that set was a crowning achievement, but in the years after getting it I have added some of the best bootleg material, some of which isn't on a regular disc, from your record store.. Games for May being the ultimate.. There are more in there but Games For May is the best at nine discs.. Really shows his career as well as Pink Floyd.. It is the ultimate best of Floyd, no doubt about that.. How long will it take to get all the music like I had three weeks ago?? It may never happen, I am limiting the amount I have on here to about 16GB.. But 16GB of 128 sample rate is a lot more than even I thought it would be..
Badge Henry
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