Apple Lossless vs iTunes Plus

Moral of story: Backing up hard drive is good.

Amen. Another moral you are missing: Store your iTunes library separately on an external hard drive...NOT on your main boot drive, especially if it is a significant size library. You will save wear on your boot drive if you listen frequently, it is more portable if you want to move it from computer to computer. One other thing I learned using my G5 (2.7ghz dual-core) as a server - though it makes for a blazing fast server, it is a terrible power-hog. I plugged a watt-meter into my computer system when we noticed our electric bills had gone way up and determined that if left on as a server it uses as much power as my refrigerator! That's a whole lot of power! I'm looking into swapping over to a MacMini or a laptop since I really don't need the speed of a g5 as a server.

My hard drive became too cluttered with my iTunes library so I took my Apple G5 computer to the local shop to see about getting a second hard drive installed.

They noticed that the seagate hard drive that was still under warranty was "sounding a bit too noisy" so they suggested I replace it. Since my Time Machine had been installed for over a year, this replacement was simple and I had my 'old' computer up and running in no time with a second internal hard drive just for my music.

Moral of story: Backing up hard drive is good.

We think of CD's and spinning magnetic disks as standards but they'll be obsolete soon enough, just like the analog tape and Syquest and Jaz disks we used to rely on.

Ummm, maybe YOU think of CD's as spinning magnetic disks, but I think most folks would think of them as spinning optical discs. They do not record information magnetically like analog tape or Syquest or Jaz discs. They DO have a potential to eventually fail, especially cheaply made media like that sold at Office MaxDepotWarehouseMegaoutlet Inc. I've never had one fail yet in over ten years of using them to backup data, but allegedly they will.

I agree with the redundant backup strategy you mention. Have two drives that either mirror each other in a RAID configurations (there are plenty of very reasonably priced 2-slot RAID solutions out there that are easy to swop drives into), or do a weekly swop of two separate drives that mirror your original.

It is not a question of IF your hard drive will fail, it is simply a matter of when.

Jamesw20 - you're right to be paranoid about your hard drive failing, it eventually will, but the best strategy for dealing with that is to have a backup of your hard drive, or two, but CD's or DVD's aren't necessarily the best option.

With drives costing $100 per terabyte right now everyone should have a second drive that mirrors the regular storage drive. If you're really concerned, have a third drive and rotate the backups, keeping one off site at all times. Sounds obsessive but if you back up to another drive once a week and rotate the two backups once a month your chances of losing more than a week's worth of downloads are very low and the $200 you spent on the drives will seem like nothing if you ever really need them. Taking that a step further, you probably ought to replace the drives every two or three years.

It's a fact of digital life that we'll have to keep duplicating all our data over and over as technology advances. We think of CD's and spinning magnetic disks as standards but they'll be obsolete soon enough, just like the analog tape and Syquest and Jaz disks we used to rely on. Fortunately the cost of storage is getting to the point that it's not much of a consideration.

I'm also interested in high def downloads but doesn't it make you a little nervous that you have no hard copy in the attic? I take some comfort knowing I can always reload if something terrible happens to my hard drive.

When comparing these file types, do use something other than the pc sound system.

I have difficulty descerning anything noteable using only the Altec 2.1 pc audio ... I do percieve diffs piping the sound into my main stereo.

I do find still greater diffs using FLAC vs. Apple lossless too... and this might be due to the media player or codec (s) being used. FLAC having simply more resolution and detail which offers greater presence. AIF is quite close though... and actually a near toss up.... again, I'm thinking it's the decoders and encoders being used.

In fact the Lame mp3 encoder I feel is better than the AAC format at the same bit rates. yet again, another encoder/decoder algorithim.

Yes. The new iTunes format is 256kbs AAC which is a lossy compression format. The bigger news here is that there are no longer any DRM restrictions (digital rights management) meaning you can copy the files and put them on as many devices as you like. This was not the case with the original iTunes downloads.

Apple Lossless is just that lossless compression comparable to WAV and AIFF. Most people prefer the Apple Lossless. The difference is not subtle.

Easiest thing for you to do would be to buy a few songs that you also have in Apple Lossless and compare them, then decide for yourself.