Which Lossless format!

[admin_exported]

I am about to re-rip all my CD's into a lossless format. Apple Lossless is of no use to me as the M4a format is not supported by my Onkyo 905 which leaves me with the option of FLAC or WMA Lossless. A number of 905 owners on the forums recommend ripping to FLAC. If this is the case what format do you then convert the files to for playback on your 905?

I also own an I Pod and don't believe I Tunes supports FLAC so i'm reluctant to go down this route. To confuse the matter further, i was considering purchasing the Sonos system for my kitchen which doesn't work with WMA lossless. Does anyone have any suggestions to save me wasting times ripping CD's twice and/or holding three different files for each track on my NAS?

 

[Gerrardasnails]

hole_in_one:
I am about to re-rip all my CD's into a lossless format. Apple Lossless is of no use to me as the M4a format is not supported by my Onkyo 905 which leaves me with the option of FLAC or WMA Lossless. A number of 905 owners on the forums recommend ripping to FLAC. If this is the case what format do you then convert the files to for playback on your 905?

I also own an I Pod and don't believe I Tunes supports FLAC so i'm reluctant to go down this route. To confuse the matter further, i was considering purchasing the Sonos system for my kitchen which doesn't work with WMA lossless. Does anyone have any suggestions to save me wasting times ripping CD's twice and/or holding three different files for each track on my NAS?

Well WMA Lossless will save you some hard drive space, FLAC will take up more. They will all sound the same though - Lossless files that is.

 

[Anonymous]

You have my sympathy. I have just restarted reripping my collection. I started off with WMA on Windows Media Player and then moved to 256kb AAC on iTunes. Now after reading PJPro's post I have gone to Foobar2000 and FLAC. Although iTunes looks nice I found it to be slow and clunky not to mention the odd hang up when conflicting with other music software. I find Foobar2000 neat and quick.

After some thought I really want to resist downloading tunes and continue to buy CD's. I have small collection of 400 odd at the moment and FLAC lossless copying gives me the ability to be faithfull to the music and expand my tangible collection but have the flexibility of usage via the PC.

Which is more important to you, music fidelity or convenience?

If you go with WMA Lossless you won't be able to use your I-Pod but should cover your other angles.ÿ

 

[Anonymous]

WMA Lossless was the route I was erring towards anyway as I'm certain the files can be imported into I Tunes and compressed fairly simply thereafter. There seems to be a lot of support for FLAC on the forum and i was trying to understand what extra the format would offer me, but after reading your thoughts I don't think there's enough benefits to outweigh the fact i would have to convert FLAC into two different formats. I think i'm going to run with the WMA Lossless format and maybe investigate alternatives to the Sonos system.

 

[Anonymous]

hole_in_one:
WMA Lossless was the route I was erring towards anyway as I'm certain the files can be imported into I Tunes and compressed fairly simply thereafter.

Re the itunes import of WMA files - could someone please confirm if this is correct.

 

[Anonymous]

Yeah its true. Whe you import a lossy WMA file into your library it tells you that iTunes needs to convert it to Apple Lossy to play it, its all nice and easy n

 

[Anonymous]

I'd recommend flac over wma becuase because the codec is more open and supported on more platforms. A normal low-end computer will recode flac to mp3 (320 kbps) pretty fast (around 20x and more) which you can play on the Onkyo. But recheck again about the Onkyo not supporting m4a as I think it does.

iTunes can play flac if you install a certain plugin (can't recall the name), at least on OS X. But your ipod won't play flac, so you'll need to recode. The benefit of using Apple Lossless is your ipod can play it without recoding. Depending on the NAS you have you can also try installing a streaming server on it like mt-daapd. mt-daapd supports both flac and apple lossless. When I used to keep my music on the WD Mybook NAS I had it hacked just to be able to install mt-daapd, it's very practical if you have different computers with itunes, it can also stream to some other devices.

 

[Anonymous]

Check also Monkey's Audio APE. It's fast and has better compression ratio than FLAC.

 

[spinaltap]

I rip my files in AIFF in iTunes without any problem. This lossless format will be compatible with your iPod.

 

[John Duncan]

Think I've missed the boat here, but seeing as the Onkyo is a UPnP client (or at least that's how I read it), a UPnP server on your PC or Mac which transcodes to WAV is all you need, then you can go the Apple Lossless route (or indeed any route you like, thou apple lossless works with your iPod).

Eyeconnect does it on the Mac, dbPoweramp's Asset Server on Windows.

 

[PJPro]

foobar2000 provides a UPnP Server. See here.

 

[Anonymous]

I know this has been asked a million times but I forget the answer??! whats the general thought regarding the apple lossless format in itunes? it seems good to me but then i haven't tried the other lossless formats you mention above?ÿ

ÿam I missing out?ÿ