Hello Wilfred!

** On Sunday 02.01.22 - 12:26, you wrote to me:

We tested recordings with quiet passages, and specific
recordings that featured super low pipe-organ notes. They
all seemed to reproduce in FLAC and AppleLossless equally
well.

That is to be expected with lossless encodings. The
surprise would be if they didn't! ;)

It came at a time when I didn't have a way to play FLAC
directly for the long-term (I only had VLC). But I read
somewhere that conversion between lossless codecs was..
lossless. So, the tests included the comparison of FLAC
converted to AppleLossless.

From that, I gained confidence that AppleLossless is quite fine
for "archiving" certain parts of my collections and had
assurance that I could always reconstitute a fine physical
audio CD specimen out of them if required.

I purchased a 4-CD set of one of the The Band's live
performances, The Last Waltz, from eBay, for a friend. A bit to
my shock and horror, the set was missing Disc 4. :/ But a CD
produced in the FLAC->AppleLossless->CD process saved the day.

--
../|ug

--- OpenXP 5.0.51
* Origin: (2:221/1.58)

Hi August,

On 2022-01-02 09:57:00, you wrote to me:

From that, I gained confidence that AppleLossless is quite fine
for "archiving" certain parts of my collections and had
assurance that I could always reconstitute a fine physical
audio CD specimen out of them if required.

For archiving you will have to consider: can it be decoded in 10, 20, 30, ... years. Will there be hardware + software available that can do that.

AppleLossless probably isn't opensource, Flac is. Apple can go bankrupt, Flac can't! ;)

Bye, Wilfred.

--- FMail-lnx64 2.1.0.18-B20170815
* Origin: FMail development HQ (2:280/464)

Hello Wilfred van Velzen!

** On Sunday 02.01.22 - 16:37, Wilfred van Velzen wrote to August Abolins:

From that, I gained confidence that AppleLossless is
quite fine for "archiving"...

For archiving you will have to consider: can it be
decoded in 10, 20, 30, ... years. Will there be hardware
+ software available that can do that.

For 10 years, I'm not too worried. For 20, maybe. For 30, I'll
probably be too old to care. ;) Nobody else needs to own my
audio treasure except me.

AppleLossless probably isn't opensource, Flac is. Apple
can go bankrupt, Flac can't! ;)

Apple can't render my existing iTunes program inoperative. So,
I'm fine with that. The iTunes prog only complains about
access and requires a login only when you click on the "Store"
button.

Besides.. I can always transcode the AppleLossless to FLAC
using something else.
--
../|ug

--- OpenXP 5.0.51
* Origin: (2:221/1.58)

Hi August,

On 2022-01-02 11:09:00, you wrote to me:

For archiving you will have to consider: can it be
decoded in 10, 20, 30, ... years. Will there be hardware
+ software available that can do that.

For 10 years, I'm not too worried. For 20, maybe. For 30, I'll
probably be too old to care. ;) Nobody else needs to own my
audio treasure except me.

Are you sure, it won't be of value in your inheritance to someone? ;)

AppleLossless probably isn't opensource, Flac is. Apple
can go bankrupt, Flac can't! ;)

Apple can't render my existing iTunes program inoperative.

Are you sure?

And will your hardware+os the software runs on last as long as the files? Do you have backups?

Besides.. I can always transcode the AppleLossless to FLAC
using something else.

Are you sure that will exist and function properly, after Apple had gone bankrupt? ;)

Bye, Wilfred.

--- FMail-lnx64 2.1.0.18-B20170815
* Origin: FMail development HQ (2:280/464)

Hello Wilfred!

** On Sunday 02.01.22 - 17:19, you wrote to me:

probably be too old to care. ;) Nobody else needs to
own my audio treasure except me.

Are you sure, it won't be of value in your inheritance to
someone? ;)

Sting was interviewed many years ago and asked a similar
question. He said, "I'm not leaving anything for my kids.
They can work hard to build their own damn fortune" ..or
something along those lines. I doubt that he's changed that
sentiment. I have a similar attitude.

Apple can't render my existing iTunes program
inoperative.

Are you sure?

Pretty sure; it works quite fine offline.

And will your hardware+os the software runs on last as
long as the files? Do you have backups?

Not too worried about that. I have at least 2 other XP pcs, and
two Win7 pcs as alternatives. I haven't really started a FLAC/
AppleLossless programme yet. I realized that a commited project
to convert 2000+ CDs would take a while! LOL. And.. I would
really need some terrabytes of storage that I do not have.
Sofar, I haven't come across a CD of mine that isn't
represented on Spotify - so, the urgency to FLAC isn't there.

Besides.. I can always transcode the AppleLossless to
FLAC using something else.

Are you sure that will exist and function properly, after
Apple had gone bankrupt? ;)

I don't need iTunes to transcode AppleLossless to something
else. I've been using AnyCoder and dbPoweramp in that manner.

I doubt that Apple in particular would ever go bankrupt in my
remaining lifetime. But there is nothing to say that they
wouldn't close down the iTunes service for lack of sales.
However, they are still competing with the likes of Spotify and
TIDAL.
--
../|ug

--- OpenXP 5.0.51
* Origin: (2:221/1.58)

Hi August,

On 2022-01-02 13:10:00, you wrote to me:

And will your hardware+os the software runs on last as
long as the files? Do you have backups?

Not too worried about that. I have at least 2 other XP pcs, and
two Win7 pcs as alternatives.

They will all break down in X years! ;-)


Bye, Wilfred.

--- FMail-lnx64 2.1.0.18-B20170815
* Origin: FMail development HQ (2:280/464)

Hello Wilfred!

..I have at least 2 other XP pcs, and
two Win7 pcs as alternatives.

They will all break down in X years! ;-)

You misremember. It's X+6 for 2038. The 2038 issue may indeed
be a little niggly issue. :(


--
../|ug

--- OpenXP 5.0.51
* Origin: (2:221/1.58)

Hi August,

On 2022-01-02 18:59:00, you wrote to me:

..I have at least 2 other XP pcs, and
two Win7 pcs as alternatives.

They will all break down in X years! ;-)

You misremember. It's X+6 for 2038. The 2038 issue may indeed
be a little niggly issue. :(

X was supposed to be randomish number, not necessarily the roman numeral for 10 ! ;-)

But indeed 2038 is a real problem for fidonet...

Bye, Wilfred.

--- FMail-lnx64 2.1.0.18-B20170815
* Origin: FMail development HQ (2:280/464)

Hello Wilfred van Velzen!

** On Monday 03.01.22 - 10:50, Wilfred van Velzen wrote to August Abolins:

X was supposed to be randomish number, not necessarily
the roman numeral for 10 ! ;-)

But indeed 2038 is a real problem for fidonet...

But, I would think that iTunes (as a local program, acting as a
player, converter, burner, database) will not necesssarily fail
to operate if the pc date is rolled back to "20:45:52 on
Friday, 13 December 1901", will it?

--
../|ug

--- OpenXP 5.0.51
* Origin: (2:221/1.58)

Hi August,

On 2022-01-03 11:54:00, you wrote to me:

X was supposed to be randomish number, not necessarily
the roman numeral for 10 ! ;-)

But indeed 2038 is a real problem for fidonet...

But, I would think that iTunes (as a local program, acting as a
player, converter, burner, database) will not necesssarily fail
to operate if the pc date is rolled back to "20:45:52 on
Friday, 13 December 1901", will it?

You never know until it happens. ;-)

But regarding "break down" I was thinking more about your old hardware not surviving another X years...

Bye, Wilfred.

--- FMail-lnx64 2.1.0.18-B20170815
* Origin: FMail development HQ (2:280/464)

Hello Wilfred!

** On Monday 03.01.22 - 18:03, you wrote to me:

But regarding "break down" I was thinking more about your
old hardware not surviving another X years...

Ah, yes. There's that other niggly thing.

I was well into my first year of ownership of my shop (now 10
years as of Jan 12, 2012), when the main office pc that was
operating as a file server to the network wouldn't boot up one
morning! It was a Dell. I assumed it was the infamous on/off
switch issue. Opening the case, and testing the switch contacts
eliminated that issue. Something on the mobo was most likely
the issue. It was a bit of a mad scramble to steer the
fileserver fuction to another DT pc. I didn't have time to
investigate further electronic causes. But I moved the HDD to
an external USB case and continued to access the files (or at
least copy the main ones) that way on yet another pc that was
connected on the network.

About a year later, that latter pc (a small compact/slim DT
model) wouldn't boot up consistently either! (Arghhh! Here we
go again.) I replaced that one with my Lenovo 3000. So far, so
good.
--
../|ug

--- OpenXP 5.0.51
* Origin: (2:221/1.58)

Hi August,

On 2022-01-03 14:06:00, you wrote to me:

But regarding "break down" I was thinking more about your
old hardware not surviving another X years...

Ah, yes. There's that other niggly thing.

I was well into my first year of ownership of my shop (now 10
years as of Jan 12, 2012), when the main office pc that was
operating as a file server to the network wouldn't boot up one
morning! It was a Dell. I assumed it was the infamous on/off
switch issue. Opening the case, and testing the switch contacts
eliminated that issue. Something on the mobo was most likely
the issue. It was a bit of a mad scramble to steer the
fileserver fuction to another DT pc. I didn't have time to
investigate further electronic causes. But I moved the HDD to
an external USB case and continued to access the files (or at
least copy the main ones) that way on yet another pc that was
connected on the network.

About a year later, that latter pc (a small compact/slim DT
model) wouldn't boot up consistently either! (Arghhh! Here we
go again.) I replaced that one with my Lenovo 3000. So far, so
good.

As long as you have backups that are not too old, and which are tested to work... ;)

Bye, Wilfred.

--- FMail-lnx64 2.1.0.18-B20170815
* Origin: FMail development HQ (2:280/464)