trying to locate individual tracks in massive torrent files of presumably 10,000's of tracks each sounds horrible, Meta data and tracks and located in different areas. Audio is reencoded to OGG Opus.

For this to be useful for me I would have to spend about $6000 on hard drives (20/terabyte X 300 TB), than convert the files to MP3, and somehow rename the files to their original songs and artists and create appropriate directories.

Do not think this is practical.

https://annas-archive.li/blog/backing-up-spotify.html

[–] fonix232@fedia.io 14 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

Or stop being an idiot and consider using self-hosted media solutions that handle the metadata for you. Like Plex, Jellyfin, or any of the roughly three dozen options here.

The right torrent client will also allow you to pick and choose which files to download, and you could even go a step further and add a new source provider to e.g. Lidarr that would handle these torrent files and pick out the music you want.

Result?

no need to transcode to MP3 (not sure why you'd want to do that anyway when OPUS files can be played by practically any modern device)
no need to manually do any namings
no need to manually get metadata
no need to get 300TB storage

Hell if you really wanted to, you could even vibe code a solution that includes a torrent client, these music torrents, and a web interface + API that provides all the necessary info for existing clients to be essentially used as a quasi Spotify alternative, only downloading music you actually listen to.

[–] skarn@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 19 hours ago (2 children)

OPUS files can be played by practically any modern device

The radio of my car (bought in 2020) begs to differ.

[–] floquant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Then you're either transcoding when burning the CD or plugging in a modern player via aux, aren't you?

I understand why people might not want a music library in FLAC, but just pre-transcoding everything to MP3 in 2025 just seems silly

[–] skarn@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago)

I use, depending on mood or circumstances, a SD cars with a dozen GB of MP3, or use Finamp on my phone via Android Auto.

My collection is still made exclusively of MP3, mainly because it's a large-ish collection of pretty high quality files (mostly LAME V0) with all the tags just right (Picard+beet and a ton of work).

I curated this over the years, it sounds more than good enough on my hardware, and I don't feel like throwing the whole thing away because something a little fancier came along, especially if in this day and age it still means taking a loss in terms of compatibility.

Both with the car, and with my Yahama network receiver/amplifier. The car is relatively new (2020) the amplifier is a little more seasoned, but it can direct play mp3, while I'd have to transcode opus.

Someone shoot me the day I change HiFi hardware over codecs.

With this being said, I'm not sure I'd transcode Opus into MP3 on purpose.

[–] fonix232@fedia.io -1 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Given you can buy a car made in the 1950s in 2020, that statement is worth about as much as the dump I just took

[–] skarn@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Only if you think I'm here to screw you over.

It was a new car. A Skoda Fabia. Ordered in January, delivered in May after the first lockdown. The autoradio supports AAC, MP3, FLAC, WMA and vorbis.

And I do use the SD slot, with a dozen GB of MP3. Anything fancier does not make much sense in a car.

[–] lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago) (1 children)

And I do use the SD slot, with a dozen GB of MP3. Anything fancier does not make much sense in a car.

I guess my American is showing here, but, do you not want a better stereo in what is arguably one of your most expensive purchases? Your Skoda is just a VW Polo under the skin, and lots of aftermarket headunits are available. I've replaced the headunit in most of my vehicles over the years. Worth it every time, plus it's one of the easier ways to modernize an older vehicle (even my 2008 Toyota Sienna got a new headunit).

[–] skarn@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 hour ago

I don't think any car can ever have the acoustic qualities needed to tell the difference between FLAC 192/24 and a decent MP3. Assuming that's possible at all, but that's a different discussion.

I don't think I'd care to go through the trouble of replacing the headunit (which already supports Android Auto) to optimize for codec selection. If anything I'd replace the speakers.

But I don't use the car so much on local movement (german city, plenty of other options) and on the highway I think the noise is bit too loud to be worth it. I'll probably just wait until the current ones age enough to annoy me, then buy a nicer set.

[–] floquant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 18 hours ago

Archival and practical use are different goals. This is not about making it easy to use as a music library

[–] Strawberry@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 8 minutes ago

most of them are vorbis actually, and not reencoded from spotify