"Why MP3? It's simply not a great codec to target. If you have a music server, then why not flac?"
I still encode to plain old 128k mp3. Here's why ...
First, I keep the WAV originals and those are what I listen to on my music system, in my music server, etc.
Second, if I am using the mp3s it is because I am going to some unknown place to interface with some unknown tool to play these - let's just make life simple and use something that will work everywhere - even the dumb creative audio bluetooth adapter that was in that airbnb that one time ...
Finally, 128k mp3 is typically a 10:1 compression ratio and makes size and space "budgeting" easy. It's easy to remember.
One other thing:
When I export my ripped CD wav collection to mp3 I also compress the filenames - I flatten to ASCII 256 and truncate the filenames to 64 characters, etc. LOTS of car audio interfaces just puke when they hit weird unicode characters or can't display long filenames ... it creates all manner of havoc.
I'm really sorry for dogpiling on your setup here, but why keep wav files rather than flac? Flac files are lossless compression, so you can always get the exact same wav out of them, they take less disk space and they can hold Metadata. Flac support is also really common these days.
The only argument I’ve heard that makes me go “OK, fine!” in favor of FLAC is that they forced a standardization of metadata.
FLAC is well-supported. But, PCM RIFF WAV files are triv-i-al. Any CS101 student can write a parser. They don’t need decoding.
2:1 lossless compression is nice. It’s quite a technical feat.
Meanwhile, as an old software engineer, I focus pretty hard on technical simplicity. And, the complexity ratio of PCM vs. pretty much else everything is a a very, very small number. Very small :p
If enough time or technology has passed that someone has to write a wav parser, how do you expect them to mount your file system, assuming it has survived?
I still encode to plain old 128k mp3. Here's why ...
First, I keep the WAV originals and those are what I listen to on my music system, in my music server, etc.
Second, if I am using the mp3s it is because I am going to some unknown place to interface with some unknown tool to play these - let's just make life simple and use something that will work everywhere - even the dumb creative audio bluetooth adapter that was in that airbnb that one time ...
Finally, 128k mp3 is typically a 10:1 compression ratio and makes size and space "budgeting" easy. It's easy to remember.
One other thing:
When I export my ripped CD wav collection to mp3 I also compress the filenames - I flatten to ASCII 256 and truncate the filenames to 64 characters, etc. LOTS of car audio interfaces just puke when they hit weird unicode characters or can't display long filenames ... it creates all manner of havoc.