U2start.com | why flac to mp3

krizziz

17 years

They also say at u2torrents.com : dont convert to mp3
why convert to mp3 ??
with the downloading speeds nowadays !!

loftarasa

17 years

Space on your Hard drive

when you don't wanna burn it to CD

jean_pasquerel

17 years

as my stereo system can play mp3's I always burn the weekly bootleg show to a CD-RW in data disc format. That's quite economic, don't have to change the CD's, OK, the SQ may suffer a bit, but I'm no way a SQ maniac. I don't really expect much from a bootleg, but the feeling of a show.

stefano1973

17 years

Originally posted by krizzizThey also say at u2torrents.com : dont convert to mp3
why convert to mp3 ??
with the downloading speeds nowadays !!

I don't see the problem in converting into mp3 as long as it for personal use only....I have all the shows in mp3, of course I do not trade them but I don't see the problem....and maybe not everybody has a 200 square metres home to host hundreds of burnt cd's...

drewhiggins

17 years

I would agree with Stefano on the basis of 'personal use' and many of the traders (the decent ones) say you can convert it to MP3 but don't go sharing it and confuse for lossless (as many people still do). Even lots of people I speak to think the only audio format that exists is MP3 and it's the best. No it isn't the best but it's probably the most common.

To be absolutely honest, I'm not a big fan of MP3s encoded at 128Kbps or less, but give me 160Kbps and that sounds decent enough to me. The idea is that while you can rip your proper CDs into 192Kbps or 160Kbps or FLAC is fine (as I do with 192), for live shows it's what you get. Others recommend (and myself too) if you're ripping the audio from a DVD you'd convert it to FLAC or AC3 or WAV then down to an MP3 for sites like this.

Plus many of us have MP3 / MP4 players using the garden variety earplugs and headphones and like to share shows with friends, and not heaps of space to store stuff so MP3 is more than capable and usable for the job.

Comparing a 40MB FLAC file to a 4MB MP3 is a big difference - but then again can you really compare no loss of quality to a loss quality? Methinks so. But do I hear a loss of quality in that? A little bit, but not enough to make me think "Wow, what a shitty format MP3 is". It's not the best by far but it's convenient enough and with the download limits some of us have and speeds (128Kbps, 512Kbps, 2Mbps and 5GB download quotas and maybe a little bit more of up to 10GB) FLAC files aren't really an option there, nor are SHN or any other lossless types.

I don't mind trading MP3 discs as long as they're 160Kbps or higher either as I have said before.

Originally posted by krizzizThey also say at u2torrents.com : dont convert to mp3
why convert to mp3 ??
with the downloading speeds nowadays !!

I'm not annoyed with you or anything, but also they say over there that don't convert to AVI, WMV, MPEG video formats etc, only use VOB and H.264 - which can be pretty big. Would you download an MP3 or MPG file then if it was the ONLY way to get a show or file? I'd like to open a poll, and answer this truthfully:

Is MP3 more convenient and more universally accepted?

germcevoy

17 years

yep traders and tapers only want their material shared in the highest quality available with no compression so they favour Flac. They think that encoding their recordings to mp3 ruins them (and rightly so) as anything at 128kp/s sounds crap. I have the odd Flac show but can only notice superior quality when listening to the files using a decent hi-fi. On your mp3 player though you'l struggle to hear a difference between 192kp/s mp3 and Flac.

Ali709

17 years

Originally posted by drewhiggins

Is MP3 more convenient and more universally accepted?

It is of course more convenient and more accepted.
If you ask me, I don't really care, I wouldn't notice the difference with my current equipment, and about download speeds, I'm low here!! If the shows weren't available in mp3 I wouldn't have heard as many bootlegs as I have heard now