also being lossless you are futureproofed on new formats you might need to convert to.
I mantain both: a tree of lossless files and an exact copy already encoded as 320kbit mp3 that is automatically mantained (just because i can quickly cram those into a usb thumbdrive and they'll play anywhere -- i can't say the same about flac support).
How do you _automatically_ maintain a shadow-library? I always argued against the parallel-collection-approach as you'll likely run into inconsistencies while trying to maintain it manually.
I'm glad iTunes offers to transcode my lossless collection to lossy AAC on the fly before syncing to the iPhone (yes, some people still do that).
Of course my concern is storage in mobile devices. Yours seems to be flac support? However is that really an issue these days? I use ALAC (due to using iOS devices), but even then I never run into compatibility issues. Any worthwhile software/hardware supports either format - with Apple being the big outlier requiring ALAC.
> also being lossless you are futureproofed on new formats you might need to convert to.
Part of my original point was that I've been using AAC exclusively for 15 years now, and with all the content encoded in AAC now I don't see support for it disappearing in the next 15 either.
I mantain both: a tree of lossless files and an exact copy already encoded as 320kbit mp3 that is automatically mantained (just because i can quickly cram those into a usb thumbdrive and they'll play anywhere -- i can't say the same about flac support).
o/