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  1. Hi all, I've been digitising my entire music collection in to WAVs over the last four years, and organising them into decade folders on my computer, such as 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990's.

    This has been mainly so I can play my music in SAM. In each folder I have about 3,000 to 4,000 tracks. I've been backing them up on DVD. Unfortunately I'm tired of backing up a decade to 25+ DVD's, and I'm NOT a fan of backing stuff up on to hard-drives as they can just crash in a flash.

    As I'm about to buy a burner, I'm looking into buying either Verbatim or Taiyo Yuden BD blanks, in particular, the 50GB discs. In Australia, the lowest price you can get these at are $9 to $10 a disc, way too expensive, hense my excitement when I saw these on ebay:

    http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/New-50-Taiyo-Yuden-blu-ray-bd-r-dl-50-GB-blueray-dvd-4X-Ful...item416484a1f3

    These work out to be AU$3.49 per discs. I checked the Verbatim online store, and they were still charging $25 per discs, inspite of them being on a spindle.

    http://www.verbatimstore.com/category.asp?CatID=57

    I would naturally go for the ones on ebay, but the large price variables tell me there is something else between the lines, perhaps fakes. So I'm just wondering does anyone know any places were I can buy genuine Verbatim / Taiyo Yuden 50 GB BD-R discs for a reasonable price.

    Perhaps this thread could be a place to note where genuine Taiyo Yuden BD-R Discs can be bought.
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  2. You can buy Taiyo Yuden's on Amazon. They aren't that eBay price, but they're legit.

    Amazon: Taiyo Yuden 10-disc 50GB BDR spindle
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  3. Member FulciLives's Avatar
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    You are better off with the 25GB discs. The 50GB discs are dual layer and dual layer discs are never as reliable as single layer discs. The places that I know where to purchase stuff cheap are mainly for the USA so you would probably spend extra in shipping but rima.com is one of the best places I know of.

    You mentioned SAM and I have no idea what that is but you should really compress those WAV files using a lossless audio codec and the most popular one is the FLAC format. FLAC can compress a WAV file in such a way that NO quality is lost. This is why it is called lossless compression (the MP3 format would be lossy compression since the audio is changed and degraded). You can expect, on average, to decrease a WAV by 30% (give or take). Most media players can handle FLAC files without issue. Also you can always convert the FLAC back to WAV if you need to burn a CD from the files. The WAV will be 100% identical to the way it was prior to being compressed.
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    Taiyo Yuden ONLY makes single layer BD-R LTH discs. The LTH process enables them to utilize existing DVD production lines. The original LTH discs that TY produced over a year ago were in the eyes of many people (including me) the BEST BD media ever. Those discs were fantastic. JVC stopped production of them and I guess due to demand restarted them, but they're not exactly the same. The media ID has changed and they are less compatible than the original discs were. My LG burner and Momitsu BD player both refuse to see them. My Pioneer BD burner can still burn them and they work fine on BD players belonging to friends and family. LTH discs are a bit of a crapshoot as the compatibility is not as good as normal BD-R and some players won't play them. There are no 50 GB BD-R LTH discs. TY's single layer (25 GB) BD-R LTH discs vanish periodically from all the resellers in North America and they are currently very difficult to get in North America.

    maggot21's link is broken. All I can tell you is that I cannot confirm through retailers I trust, including retailers who sell legitimate media directly from Japan, that TY really makes those discs. I have my doubts. TY is VERY conservative and they have always only made single layer BD-R LTH discs. It would be unheard of for them to start making 50 GB BD-R discs. You cannot make 50 GB BD-R LTH discs, so that would mean that they would have had to invest in a new production line. I have my doubts. Just because it's on Amazon does not mean it's legit. Those discs are from a reseller. I trust
    http://www.nikonekoya.com
    for buying directly from Japan and they don't have these discs, but they do sell TY BD-R LTH discs. You buy those discs in your link or on Amazon, you take your chances. Nikonekoya will ship to Australia. If Nikonekoya starts to sell those 50 GB TY discs, then I will believe that they are legit. Bootleg TY media does exist. TY has a niche market with dedicated customers who will seek it out and pay more for it, so bootleg media is known.

    Verbatim makes reliable BD-R media, both in 25 GB and 50 GB sizes. You can also buy 25 GB LTH discs if you like those. Verbatim's 25 GB LTH discs are currently also incredibly difficult to find in North America right now. It was actually cheaper for me to buy some from Nikonekoya (due for delivery later today to my home according to the post office) than to pay what the few US companies were charging that still had some.
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  5. Member solarfox's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by FulciLives View Post
    You mentioned SAM and I have no idea what that is but you should really compress those WAV files using a lossless audio codec and the most popular one is the FLAC format.
    SAM is a DJ program for streaming audio via Shoutcast or Icecast. It's popular with a lot of people who run internet radio stations, or do streaming for clubs in online environtments like Second Life (although it has a somewhat steep learning curve for casual users). It doesn't support FLAC as an encode format so, assuming he has some reason why he doesn't want to compress to MP3, he's actually using the right file format for his particular application.
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  6. Member FulciLives's Avatar
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    According to the SAM website it supports OGG but not FLAC. Gee that makes a lot of sense LOL
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  7. Member solarfox's Avatar
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    Actually, it makes perfect sense when you consider the purpose SAM is intended for. It is not designed to be a general-purpose media player, like WinAmp; its sole reason for existence is to be the "DJ booth" for streaming internet radio stations.

    Therefore, it supports OGG Vorbis because OGG is a valid format for streaming via Icecast. FLAC, on the other hand, isn't a valid format for Icecast or Shoutcast streaming (which isn't surprising, as the bandwidth requirements to serve FLAC streams to more than a handful of listeners at a time would be enormous), therefore SAM doesn't support it.

    It makes exactly as much sense as the fact that your web browser supports displaying tabular data via the HTML <table> tags, but can't display the same information by loading an Excel spreadsheet from your hard disc. Since Excel binary-file data is never embedded directly into HTML documents and isn't part of the HTML standard, it's hardly surprising that your web browser doesn't support it; that's not what it's designed for.

    (In any case, I think we've wandered somewhat off-topic, here. )
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    solarfox - the OP is saving all his files in WAV format which apparently SAM supports. This actually makes no sense to many of us that SAM fails to support FLAC because FLAC is lossless thus FLAC files are somewhat smaller in size than WAV but completely indistinguishable. The bandwidth requirement to server WAV streams is greater than FLAC would be, yet FLAC is not supported and WAV is. This really makes no sense.
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  9. Member solarfox's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by jman98 View Post
    solarfox - the OP is saving all his files in WAV format which apparently SAM supports. This actually makes no sense to many of us that SAM fails to support FLAC because FLAC is lossless thus FLAC files are somewhat smaller in size than WAV but completely indistinguishable. The bandwidth requirement to server WAV streams is greater than FLAC would be, yet FLAC is not supported and WAV is. This really makes no sense.
    *sigh*...

    Obviously, you don't stream in WAV for the same reason you don't stream in FLAC; the bandwidth requirements would be enormous. And, had you actually taken a moment to look up the subject in Wikipedia first, you would know that WAV is not a valid format for either Shoutcast or Icecast streaming, therefore your objection has no basis in fact.

    As the caveman said in the Geico commercial: "Yyyeah, next time, do a little research."

    WAV is supported as an input format primarily because SAM allows the DJ to play sound effects simultaneously with the music and/or when they're speaking over the microphone, and WAV is generally the most convenient format for sound clips that are only a few seconds long because most compressed-audio formats have a minimum time-length restriction imposed by the encoding scheme.

    That being said, supposedly the next version of SAM has support for a broader array of file formats, including FLAC, on the roadmap. SAM 5 has been on hold for a while, though, due to the company having been sold, so the exact timeframe for release is up in the air still.

    (And honestly, even with a good pair of high-end headphones, I can't hear any actual difference between a FLAC file and a 320K MP3 anyway... and I'm one of those who, even at the age of 44, can still walk into a room and tell if a CRT-based TV set has been left turned on just because of the 15KHz flyback whine, can hear the phase distortions at high frequencies on anything below about 160K MP3, and can still hear that there's "fuzz" on the phonograph needle just by the sound, so I think I've got pretty good ears still. )

    Not everything needs to be a Swiss Army Knife. I, personally, much prefer to have several programs that each do one thing, and do it well, vs. one program that tries to do everything, and does a half-arsed job of all of them.
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  10. Member FulciLives's Avatar
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    The ultimate point of my comments is that it makes no sense to store audio files as WAV format when there are lossless compression formats like FLAC.
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    solarfox - Despite your blathering, all you did was confirm exactly what I said. There's no good reason for SAM to not support FLAC, so the next release will - if it ever comes out.
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