The only problem with Apple Lossless or any lossless format is the file size. I encoded a 4:15 song using 256-Kbps AAC and it was 8 MB. I encoded the same song with Apple Lossless and it was 30.4 MB!
For me, I encode with 256Kbps MP3, true stereo and constant rate. I can play these songs on most everything.
In the early days, I tried dual encoding methods. One for the HD and one for iPod and other MP3 devices. Then I went to one encoding method for everything.
While AAC is good, it won't play on everything out there. So for me, it's MP3.
Space wise, the AIFF file takes about 10MB per minute. My MP3 encoding takes about 1MB per minute. So a song that is 4:30 long would be 45MB in AIFF after encoding to MP3 is 4.5MB. Roughly speaking of course. But good enough for my needs. Plus I like being able to carry more music on my iPod than if I used AIFF or Apple Lossless.
Yeah I had to really cut down what I carry to make it work at first. But to be completely honest I'm okay with that. I was carrying a lot of stuff I never listened too. Now I can shuffle and hear stuff I really want to listen too.
When I re-encode my library (somehow some songs were deleted a year ago by accident), I am only going to encode those songs that I really like and skip the rest. So out of 100 CDs, I may only encode a couple hundred songs instead of close to 1,000. Time to weed out the chaff.
I have had the Drobo for 5 month's now. I love the ease of use. It really is as simple as advertised. Just add a drive as it get's full and keep on going. The not having to match drive size's is nice just toss in any SATA drives you have laying around the house and you're good to go. I did worry a bit about the "what if" of a complete failure, but I figure no HDD is fail proof. I tried to cover my ass by buying my HDD's that I loaded into the Drobo from different batches so that if I picked a bad batch I wouldn't have all of them fail at once. I have been thinking about buying a second Drobo to use as a backup of the first Drobo, I really do love the little guy.
Glad to hear that your Drobo is working well for you.
I'm concerned about their proprietary format should multiple HDs crash at the same time.
Do like the way they look and operate -- other than the concern above.
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Good to know. Thanks.