Posted by david on 11/29/05 15:11

BTW, I'm running lame 3.92, so I'm not quite as lame as I thought, but
still a good idea to keep current.

So based on our scientific poll we have these 101% accurate results so
far:
1. I should offer a range of bitrates.
2. Everything should be free!

Regarding (1), it looks like our friends at DGMlive have taken this to
heart, so they are offering what you might say is the best and worst of
all worlds: mp3 at 128 kbps and FLAC. So you get the "quality" of 128
kbps or the inconvenience of lossless, plus they get to pay the extra
hosting costs for having multiple copies of stuff available. (At least
they support Bit Torrent!) This is a pretty awful situation, and it
reflects the state of the net--the have bandwidths and the have
nots--but also exposes what I think is misplaced fanaticism over
lossless encoding. I would argue that nobody is going to be able to
tell the difference between --alt-preset xtreme and FLAC, except for a
few audio engineers. I'm still leaning in the direction of only
offering a single product format, with an "if you aren't completely
satisfied, here's the FLAC" policy. As for serving the low-bandwidth
community, they can wait a little longer. To put on my geezer hat,
back in my day we were thrilled to go to bed downloading an entire
megabyte over our 14.4 modems... funny, but so true. BTW, while I'm on
the topic, the DGM folks have done an excellent job with their new
website! This is an exciting time for music.

As a side note, one question I'm trying to answer is: how simple can I
make it, and still make it work?

Take care,
david

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