I'm weird and old school. I like some form or feeling of a collection, that I can create and manipulate hard copies of if I like, and will always have access to as long as there's electricity, not internet. If I'm buying physical media, I like records. If I'm downloading, I'll usually go for FLAC and fill hard drives.
That's how I was until I hit a few hundred GB and then said "this is getting ridiculous" and have kind of left that alone for the time being. Records and cassette tapes are where it's at for physical copies. Side note: do you hate the Blue Jays as much as I do right now?
I really don't want to invest in that right now, don't see much of a reason to unless I were to start downloading FLAC which to be honest I don't really care about quality as long as I can get 320 I'm happy with that digitally, anything "better" is what my record player is for. Plus a lot of what I listen to, as you all know, is lo-fi / grunge-y / garage rock stuff where the recording quality itself isn't very good so. Uphill battle. Yeah...the O's are, uh, kind of not very good this year. The AL East has been a weird division and it must have been very hard for you to root for the Yankees but I'm proud of you.
Realistically, a standard listener can't hear much of a difference above 192 kb/s, but there always some things that make it more obvious. Listening to classical piano I end up noticing things more. I listen with very nice headphones and it will pick up tiny encoding errors that annoy me, but it's also just nice to know that I have pure quality. I'm able to pick everything out, I can manipulate the files if I want and have everything there. And like 90% of the time, it's not important. And yet.... What even more frustrating about the O's is the fact that, by all metrics, we should have been so much better than last year. A resurgent Crush Davis, a full season, much improved Manny Machado, the return of Wieters, Hardy's injuries solved, Caleb Jospeh coming into his own, and a fleet of Duquette style "unrefined diamonds" that, even in a few didn't work out, one would pan out surely and stick well. But it didn't. Wieters sucked, Hardy's still hurt and powerless, Steve Pearce was mostly hurt or bewilderingly benched, and none of our pickups worked. The entirety of our rotation, save Chen, imploded so hard with absolutely no reason. The new hitting coach worked great for a month, and has led to shit since. It's completely inexplicable. And now the fans on our subreddit are calling for Duquette's head as if he's the worst GM ever because he didn't pull another Nelson Cruz and Steve Pearce outta thin air. And now we have to deal with nine (!!!) free agents. Ugh. The only good news is my boy Kevin Gausman is actually really developing well. He's been solid, filthy, and he's finding that third pitch. This is more amazing given that we haven't developed a good pitcher in... almost thirty years. And that Caleb Joseph's under team control until 2021. Love that guy.
I hate them so much, but I hate my own team even more right now. Just absolutely fucking abysmal. I found myself rooting for y'all yesterday against Boston just so we don't end up in last. Here's to a Pirates-Astros Fall Classic! *Downs a shot of antifreeze.