Any reason not to use Apple Lossless over AIFF?

[admin_exported]

Hi,

Due to hard drive problem I need to burn my music again - about 1500 cds. I originally used AAC so happy to re-burn and improve the quality.I have an iMAC so going to use either AIFF or Apple Lossless.

Clearly lossless will take up less room but I want to make sure I make the right choice long-term.I have looked through the forum discussions and realise AIFF and Apple Lossless should ultimately sound the same played back as Lossless only compresses rather than losses any info (as the name suggests).

However, is there any other reason why I should use AIFF over Apple Lossless? E.g. can only be played via certain players etc?The

How To from WHF simply suggests using WAV, AIFF or Apple Lossless without distinction. Saw in a post that Editor Clare uses Lossless so I guess that means it's good enough with no issues.

Any advice welcome.

Thanks,

Simon.

 

[Anonymous]

I think most people end up using Lossless because it is just that. Nothing lost. Go for it.

Interestingly Apple downloads are all losing DRM (some already have) and becoming 256 K, which is good because AAC (Apple's compression format) is rather better than MP3 and will be difficult to distinguish from the full file. Therefore good enough for many tracks.

What I'm not clear on is whether this means that Apple Lossless loses DRM.

Ash

 

[John Duncan]

Well apple lossless hasn't got DRM if you rip from the CD (edit - afaik).

To the OP, it does depend on how you mean to stream the music, though I can't think of any media players (hardware that is, as oppsoed to software players) that don't handle apple lossless. Even if there were and you found that you'd chosen wrongly (the other obvious option is FLAC, but that doesn't play natively in iTunes), you can always convert them to another lossless format with something like Max without loss.

Lastly, back them up this time!

 

[Anonymous]

If you rip your own CDs they're not DRM'd.

I don't think that Apple Lossless can be played on all hardware and software though. I expect Apple charge a licence? Anybody know?

 

[John Duncan]

Off the top of my head the decoder is open source but the encoder is not - so only iTunes can create it, but anybody can play it with the right codec.

 

[Binman]

Use Apple Lossless. If in the future you purchase a player which cannot play apple lossless then its very easy to convert the files to another format using a program like dbpoweramp.

All my music was Apple Lossless, but then I bought a squeezebox which had a few issues playing the files, so I converted everything to FLAC, easy as that.

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks for all responses so far and very useful. And yes, I will be backing up - I actually had two external hard drives fail which caused all the problems.ÿ

ÿCheers.ÿ

 

[professorhat]

simonbygrave:I actually had two external hard drives fail which caused all the problems.

Now that's unlucky!

 

[Anonymous]

Tell me about it. Held my music on one and then a copy on the other. Failed a couple of days apart. Excellent stuff.