I actually tried doing that when I first decided to start archiving my own CDs. I ripped with abcde to flac but kept both copies. The idea was to keep .wav as a sort of “master” original and then copy the flacs to my phone and laptop for listening. That way if something happened I could always go back to my “masters” without having to rip the CD again.
Honestly the wav files aren’t that much bigger than flac and I feel like storage wouldn’t be much of an issue today, but I started this project several years ago when an 8TB hard drive was still $600+ and I quickly ran out of space.
I guess the idea was that if something happened to flac like new devices stopped supporting it for whatever reason, or if a better lossless format came along, it would be much easier to go back to the wavs and convert them to a different format.
I actually tried doing that when I first decided to start archiving my own CDs. I ripped with abcde to flac but kept both copies. The idea was to keep .wav as a sort of “master” original and then copy the flacs to my phone and laptop for listening. That way if something happened I could always go back to my “masters” without having to rip the CD again.
Honestly the wav files aren’t that much bigger than flac and I feel like storage wouldn’t be much of an issue today, but I started this project several years ago when an 8TB hard drive was still $600+ and I quickly ran out of space.
Why would you need “masters” when you use lossless codec anyway?
I guess the idea was that if something happened to flac like new devices stopped supporting it for whatever reason, or if a better lossless format came along, it would be much easier to go back to the wavs and convert them to a different format.
It is easy to convert them back to wav, so…
Converting back and forth, even from lossless to lossless, is a good way to lose or corrupt data. I abandoned the idea years ago anyway, but thanks.