Downgrading FLAC albums to 320kbps (aussie.zone)

submitted 1 year ago by briongloid@aussie.zone to c/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com

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I've been looking at Lidarr for when I finish transferring my media server to a new system this month, what I am unsure is how difficult it would be to downgrade my 650 FLAC album library down to 320kbps.

It was great locally, but now most of my listening is remote via Plex (Plexamp/Symfonium) and I have found 320kbps albums to be more seamless than FLAC for my usecase with little difference in quality.

I have yet to add my music library to any of my family members accounts as I am unsure how they would listen to it without plexamp and I'm still considering their options.

The main thing is I was hoping Lidarr could get me a downgraded copy to replace all my library with, does anyone have any experience in this matter?

I know that Radarr/Sonarr don't like downgrading versions automatically.

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[-] returned@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

I'd go for MP3 V0 instead of 320kbps. Most will agree that the quality is the same but the size difference is quite noticable. I mean as long as you're going lossy, you might as well be efficient with it and not throw away space.

I tried Lidarr but gave up on it and I'm just using Beets right now for organizing and converting my stuff. I don't download music so often and a bit manual work isn't an issue for me. I use FDK AAC and encode everything to VBR4 which is then available in Navidrome, but keep the FLACs of course.

[-] armeck@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

Thanks for that. I buy often from Bandcamp and they present lots of formats to download. Space is a concern for me, so I don't go FLAC but wasn't really sure what would be the best lossy format. I'll start giving V0 a shot and see if my bad ears can even tell a difference.

[-] twistedtxb@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

I agree. V0 > 320. dBpowerwamp works great

[-] armeck@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

[-] returned@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

There's barely a chance an excellent set of ears would hear the difference...but nevertheless, a set of excellent ears would go for FLAC anyway.

I can't hear anything above 15KHz and in all of the ABX tests I ever did I couldn't really hear a difference, at least with the best equipment and headphones I've had, so even V0 is an overkill for me but still much more efficient than FLACs

Being an audiophile is a rich people's game, the one I'd like to taste but wouldn't like to get into. The sole reason I keep FLACs is for archival purpose of music because lossy formats barely have any archival value, and you can always transcode FLACs into some better lossy format that might release in the future.