Ripping CDs to lossless in Itunes.. HiFi approved?

It's hard to say just how fast the computer needs to be to hear no difference in Apple Lossless VS AIFF. My 2.8 GHz iMac sounds the same with a Wavelength USB Crimson DAC. My MacBook Pro 2.1 GHz sounds inferior on Apple Lossless.

I now run all my music using AIFF. Hard drives are so cheap, why bother with Apple Lossless.

In my experience, Apple Lossless is inferior to .Wav, although it is close. Hard drive storage is so cheap there is really no reason to be using Apple Lossless. You can get a 750GB drive for under $150 these days.

Blackstone,

One good reason not to use WAV is that WAV files can't store tags, unlike every other computer-based file format. If you insist on storing file uncompressed, I'd use AIFF format, as they stores tags.

There is no reason why apple lossless should sound any different than wav, unless the decoding device does not handle Apple Lossless directly and the PC is too slow to handle the decoding in real-time. An Apple lossless file decoded is bit-perfect with the original CD from which it is ripped (just like a WAV file).

I'm ripping to loasless from CDs using error correction during the rip. In my home system I playback through an iPod Classic 160G/Wadia 170i/Playback Designs MPS-5's coax Digital Input. When I compare CD playback to iPod playback through the same upsampling DAC, they're the same.

Dave

John, you are absolutely right about the tags. That is sort of a big deal I don't want to downplay that issue.

However, I personally believe that .wav is the only way to go for ultra high-end systems simply because it removes all doubt that the format is compromising the sound in some unknown manner, however slight. The fidelity of the source material is important enough to me that I am unwilling to accept even the slightest chance that something is being lost for some reason we don't understand. It is simply one variable removed from an equation that already has too many variables.

The problem is one of confidence. With .wav and error correction you can be reasonably certain that you have taken your archive of redbook CD as far as it can go. So when the time comes to audition that next upgrade or tweak, you can be confident your source is as close to reference as possible.

That said, am I confident I could distinguish .wav files from apple files in a blind test? No absolutely not. Apple lossless sounds very good to me. But again, do we even know what we should be listening for? Do the difference, if there are any, manifest themselves on all recordings, at all volume levels, or on all equipment? Will a more advanced system five years from reveal some distinction that my system today wasn't capable of? I don't know, and I don't have to know because I .wav.

Use compression only if storage space is really at a premium.