Apple Lossless Encoder - Audiophile Quality?

Rdc2000: Please, if you haven't already make sure you back it all up. I learned the hard way after burning 450 CD's.

I'm with the lossless crowd. I just re-ripped from AAC to lossless with hope of never having to do it again.

Couldn't you have simply used a conversion program such a Max? Why re-rip everything?

Sammie: AAC is a lossy compression format. If you rip to this format (or a similar one, like MP3) you are not creating a bit-perfect copy of the data on the original CD. If you want to create a digital music file that is guaranteed to sound the same as your CD, you are going to need to create a file with a lossless format.

Lossless compression is the way to go. An Apple-specific format is probably a mistake unless you are certain you will only use Apple hardware/software from now until the end of time. However, you can always convert from one lossless format to another without harming the data.

There is no reason to go with an uncompressed lossless format like AIFF or WAV, and anybody who says these formats somehow sound better than losslessly compressed audio is just plain ignorant (sorry, but there is no other way to say it...its kind of like saying three is not same numeric value as 3).

The only reason to go with any of the lossless compressed formats is hard disk space considerations. With the cost of large hard drives ever plummeting is that really a compelling reason to go that route?

Disk is cheap. Why compress 50%? Many of my customers have told me that AL and even FLAC changes the sound. Besides, you have a "true master" if it .wav and you can convert to anything you want later.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio