Quote:
Originally Posted by Mastiff
You should use the format that has most support. Simple as that. As for the original if you've got room for it, keep it. And use it as a base for conversion, instead of trying to force it into an iPod.  |
I think which format has has most support changes as someone comes up with a new format or new app or a new OS that ticks the boxes for people.
If, lets say, the latest winamp supported ape but not flac but winamp was just so superior that you
had to use it - do you think flac would remain the most popular? How would you feel if there was technically no way you could convert from Flac to the new format (whatever that was?)
And I think a lot of less sophisticated people would tell you that MP3 is the most popular 'standard' not flac.
I'm old enough in the IT sense to have repeatedly fallen foul of the 'de facto' vs 'de jure' standard issue.
The problem with de facto standards like flac is that it's only a standard as long as it's the most popular (see my comment about mp3 too) and the fact that it is not a de jure standard means that a new variant of flac with subtle changes eg 96KHz vs 48KHz sampling, say, could render your collection unplayable or force another conversion round.
In the media streaming world this is actually happening today because the latest version of MKV introduces a header compression feature that prevents playback on devices that were 100% compliant with the earlier MKV format.
The company I work for is currently paying megabucks to convert engineering drawings from a popular document format - PDF, back into it's original format so that it can be edited/updated. All because someone thought making it into a standard PDF format and throwing away the original made sense.
This same sort of issue bedevils us with converting ebooks too. For some (repeated) conversion will be fine, for others, keeping fidelity with the original may be important. YMMV.