I'm similar. I store FLAC on my desktop and then transcode it to opus before putting it on my music streaming server. MP3 doesn't really seem to have much relevance in the modern world other than legacy.
Any alternatives that work with iOS?
What software do you use to listen to music on your computers?
Is there a good media streaming server with iOS / desktop apps which I could use and then store FLAC on my server and have it transcoded to serve to clients?
The higher bitrates (above 128) aren't so advantageous.
https://wiki.xiph.org/Opus_Recommended_Settings (Dec. 2018)
That’s just because by about 128Kbps Opus is already effectively perfect, where it takes closer to 200Kbps for MP3 to achieve that.
Opus is just all-round better than MP3.
not for compatibility. mp3 is ubiquitous. my 2017 VW can play mp3 and even flac from an sd card. i doubt it even knows what opus is.
i think you'd be hard pressed to tell a difference between a well-encoded (flac source) 192kbps vbr mp3 and 160 kbps opus. the file size of the latter will be 30% smaller.
> What software do you use to listen to music on your computers?
on windows, foobar2000. it's superb, no bs and has tons of optional plugins.
Old school. I was using that back in the early 2000s. Had a lot of fun with it. But, I've been over in Apple-land for years now... and mostly Spotify for music.
Yep, this seems to be a common practice.