[wazoo2u]

Originally Posted by uhclem

Who said anything about transcoding? No one is suggesting you should transcode all your shows just because new formats keep coming out. I have hundreds of SHN files archived. I sure as hell don't plan to transcode them all just because of wavpack.

I think you are really missing the point. This site is dedicated to the distribution of live music via bittorrent. If there exists a format that's every bit as easy to use as FLAC and just as robust, but offers even better compression, why shouldn't we be allowed to use it here? If a seeder were to torrent some wavpack files here I can't for the life of me see why you would object to that because harddrives are so cheap, blu-rays are coming, and you have 7,000 shows already. What's that got to do with anything? This is a total red herring.

Btw, I've got a ton of dirt I have no use for but I sure could use another harddrive. Where do you get them for less than dirt? I'd love to know.

Well, I think you're taking my humor a bit too seriously, and I don't agree about the herring (although I do enjoy it once in a while). My point is that I don't see that Wavpack offers such significant space savings and benefits that it needs to be positioned to supercede FLAC as the compression flavor of the year. I've already read several comments speculating about the future compatibility of current file formats with future OS'es. Wouldn't it be wise for the trading community to REALLY establish a preference that's a reasonable choice and stick with it ? I think it would help to encourage development and insure future compatibility. Is Wavepack easier to code and work with ? Look at how hard it has been to get hardware FLAC support. ONE vendor (RIO) actually with product, and another (Neuros) screwing around with it for a year ? It's obvious to me that they just don't see a big market, and it's to everyone's advantage to concentrate interest on ONE compression format. FLAC seems to be pretty popular, so what's the advantage of something else that doesn't offer significant gain replacing it ?

I don't see storage size as a significant issue. I paid $450 for a 120 MEGABYTE hard drive 10 years ago, and just bought a 200 GIGABYTE drive for $100. DVD archive media costs have dropped to almost the same price as TY CD's. Will Wavepack REALLY save me a lot of money on archive storage ?

My point about transcoding (storage formats) was meant to illustrate the tremendous amount of work and time that the average collector needs to devote, just to archive considerations. I should've used the term CONVERT, cause it's obvious that you got upset at the thought of TRANSCODE . Of course I wouldn't convert everything to Wavpack. I'd couldn't, and would need to hire a staff, just to do the job. I already have a couple of hundred DAT's full of SHN's that I need to transfer to optical.

I've dealt with this issue many times before in the TV biz, where formats and hardware change significantly over time. Archiving and market compatibility are 2 of the most significant considerations that are discussed, and these hardware/format changes are NEVER taken lightly because they have marketwide impact. I think we need to be just as conservative in promoting changes to this hobby. Is a format change what's really NEEDED ?, or maybe the efficiency of the TRANSFER method (BT) could be improved. What about bandwidth, and the changes we'll see in upstream capacity in the near future ? All of these factors impact our judgement.

I respect your knowledge and opinion, but someone needs to paint a picture of Wavepack that illustrates SIGNIFICANT gains over FLAC, in order to convince me that it would be a benefit to add it to the mix.