I note that some psarc files are significantly larger than others.

 

I understand that to some degree the quality of the original audio, duration of the track, number of instruments & number of notes tabbed may be a significant determinant of the psarc file size, but I wonder if isome custom developers just packing using the full audio file (again) instead of a shorter intro/sample file?...All of which leads to a bit of bloat.

 

Some tracks for example play 30 secs worth of the track if you happen to be scrolling through the tracklist in RS2014, others seem to play the whole track. 

if you hear the full song as preview it means the charter didnt make preview at EoF, and when you generate the package the toolkit tells you that there is no preview and ask if you want to use the full song as preview.(if you say 'no' it wont generate anything so ye..:P)

making preview is very easy and takes 5 sec but i think many dont know about it.

i dont know if full preview double the file size,back then when i didnt know about how to make preview my cdlcs were still around 4-5 Mb

and now that i use 30 sec preview and quality 8 they are around 8-15 Mb so i guess its the quality:)

It just that they created no preview audio file for the customs.

 

The variation mostly lay behind the complexity and lenght of the song. My lightest files are 2 guitar part and 2min songs with no lyrics at approx 5Mb and the biggest are 5/6min songs with all arrangement available at approx 13 Mb but i'm using the same quality setting for the audio compression.

 

The lenght of the song will be the most important factor here.

As others have said, and, the audio portion of the psarc file accounts for maybe around 99% of the total file size. The arrangements, tones etc. are just a tiny bundle of compressed text/xml files.

 

Therefore the size of the file will be mostly related to the length of the song, the length of the accompanying preview audio, and the compression levels used at all three stages of audio encoding. Low compression levels can create a >20mb file from a 5min track, higher levels will get that down to <3Mb.

 

The length of the preview audio, and the compression levels used are probably more important factors.

An additional harddisk costs less then 60$, and my Rocksmith files take less then 40gb of a 700gb hd, so what's the point?

Use best quality whenever possible, don't reduce size of your mp3, use constant bitrate, I like to see 20mb cDLC, and frown at 3mb.

 

In case of missing preview, file sizes are not doubling, in fact they get shorter.

No point of using space for information you can't use either but that's not the question here. yes the fact that their is no preview reduce the file size because their isn't the preview file of 30 seconds but that leads to have a bad preview of the song in RS which include the silence at the start of the song.