Help differentiating between lossy and lossless

[Kellen]

Hi, I am new to this game and am starting the process of ripping, tagging and organizing my digital library for use with a SB3 and a Duet both running on Squeezecenter.

I've read around a bunch but I am not quite certain how to go about accomplishing what it is I'd like to do. Here's what I'd like my setup to be and hence do:

Have separate folders that house my lossless and lossy files and which allows my SB3/Duet the ability to selectively choose to play "only" one type or the other during a listening session. IOW, if I choose to have a "serious" listening session and only want my lossless files to be accessible and displayed during that session, how is this best done ?

Thanks

[aubuti]

I would set up a directory tree with a top level directory called "music", and sub-directories called "lossless" and "lossy". Or "flac" and "mp3", or whatever, you get the picture. So you would have this:

/music/lossless/<artists>/<albums>/
/music/lossy/<artists>/<albums>/

For your serious listening sessions, you could point squeezecenter to /music/lossless as your library (specified in settings), and when you want all your music available, you could point SC to /music. Note that when you change the music library location, you'll need to do a full clear and rescan of the music library, which can be an annoyance if you have a large library and/or a slow server. Also, note that if you have both lossless and lossy copies of a track (e.g., one for home and one for a mobile player), then pointing SC to /music will show both copies of that track.

A different approach would be to use SC's capacity for multiple genres, and add "lossless" genre tags as appropriate, and then when you're feeling serious, start by browsing by genre, looking only in the "lossless" genre.

You might also consider Erland's Multi Library plugin.

[Pale Blue Ego]

IOW, if I choose to have a "serious" listening session and only want my lossless files to be accessible and displayed during that session, how is this best done ?

Why would you ever want to listen to the poorer-sounding version of a song? Am I missing something here? Or could this be a new feature for the audio industry - like have a switch on your amp that makes it sound rotten for those times when you aren't listening "seriously".

[Rick B.]

Why would you ever want to listen to the poorer-sounding version of a song? Am I missing something here? Or could this be a new feature for the audio industry - like have a switch on your amp that makes it sound rotten for those times when you aren't listening "seriously".

I don't see that they said that their lossy and lossless files are all duplicates of the same songs? I took it to mean they have files of both types, not necessarily duplicates.

[jsprag]

Why would you ever want to listen to the poorer-sounding version of a song? Am I missing something here? Or could this be a new feature for the audio industry - like have a switch on your amp that makes it sound rotten for those times when you aren't listening "seriously".

I'm going to guess that the same song is not ripped in both lossy and lossless. In other words (maybe due to space or online purchases?) the majority of his music is lossy but selected music worth "serious" listening is encoded lossless.

I also think the Erland multi-library plugin would work for you.

[Kellen]

I'm going to guess that the same song is not ripped in both lossy and lossless. In other words (maybe due to space or online purchases?) the majority of his music is lossy but selected music worth "serious" listening is encoded lossless.

I also think the Erland multi-library plugin would work for you.

Actually, I'm just beginning the process of ripping all of my CD's into FLAC so the majority of my music will be lossless once I'm done.

But, almost all of my current digital music are those I bought as downloads and which are, unfortunately, in lossy formats. I'm not not going to listen to them just because they are lossy but would also like to be able to bypass them during those times when I seriously am listening to my system.

Thanks to all for the suggestion of the Erland plugin. Hopefully it'll allow me to set this up as Id like too.