Which one, AAC,AIFF,MP3,WAV or Apple lossless??

[admin_exported]

Ok, I have myself a great pair of Denon's AH-D2000's they look and sound great. What I would like to know is what is the best sound format to download CD's on to play through my Ipod. When I put a CD in to down load I get several options listed in this title, I know nothing about Lossless, WAV etc so can someone explain in VERY simple terms which is the best.

Also, should I use a portable AMP to get the best out of my Denon's?

Thank you in advance

 

[professorhat]

My advice would be to use Apple Lossless, or AIFF for ripping. They use lossless compression which means, although the song is compressed, no data is thrown away in the process. In these formats, you can use software to simply convert to any other format if you need to in future, without having to re-rip.

WAV is essentially just ripping the CD as is - with no compression, it takes up a lot of space for not really any gain. It can also present issues for transporting data due to the way tagging works. For this reason, unless you have a very specific reason to use it, I'd avoid it.

Finally, unless you're incredibly tight for space, I'd avoid using AAC or MP3 - they use lossy compression which means data is thrown away during the ripping process - although this makes the files much smaller, this data can never be retrieved if you wanted to change to a different format. So if you rip everything to AAC now, then in a few years time decide you want to move to a lossless format, you'd have to re-rip your entire collection again. In my experience, this is really only something you ever want to have to do once!

 

[Andrew Everard]

My advice would be to use Apple Lossless, or AIFF for ripping. They use lossless compression which means, although the song is compressed, no data is thrown away in the process.

Just to clarify. AIFF doesn't compress at all. It's just Applespeak for standard uncompressed PCM, and takes up the same amount of space as WAV.

 

[professorhat]

Ah, nice one Andrew. Apple Lossless it is.

 

[Trefor Patten]

Rip to AIFF/WAV (it's the same thing in essence) and you have the best available quality from your CD rip (it's not downloading, it's ripping). Then if you want to save space on your iDevice, select 'export higher bitrate files at 256kbps' in the relevant iTunes menu.

 

[Anonymous]

Most of my music has been downloaded to AAC some on Lossless. Now I have noticed that I can change a AAC song to Lossless when I right click is this any good?

 

[The_Lhc]

Most of my music has been downloaded to AAC some on Lossless. Now I have noticed that I can change a AAC song to Lossless when I right click is this any good?

No, it's a waste of time, you'll just use more disk space with no increase in quality.

 

[MajorFubar]

Use Apple lossless. The file sizes are slightly smaller than AIFF and WAV which is always a good thing, and no data is thrown away during compression. As for converting from any lossy compression (like MP3 or AAC) to lossless or uncompressed (WAV, FLAC or Apple Lossless), there is no benefit most of the time because it can't put back what has been already thrown away.

 

[Anonymous]

Thank you for your help its a little clearer now

 

[KT66]

No, always, always, ALWAYS rip to WAV, then once you have that file, you can convert it to something else,

everything plays WAV and hard drive space is so cheap now, unless you really are a "tag sleeve-art tart" there is no

reason not to use WAV

 

[Andrew Everard]

No, always, always, ALWAYS rip to WAV, then once you have that file, you can convert it to something else,

everything plays WAV and hard drive space is so cheap now, unless you really are a "tag sleeve-art tart" there is no

reason not to use WAV

Unless of course you want to see album art, track titles and so on, in which case FLAC or ALAC are preferable, as they carry the tags. And anyway, if you rip in FLAC or ALAC, you can always uncompress (decompress?) to WAV or AIFF later if you wish – they're lossless, after all.

For use on an iPod, I'd stick to ALAC (aka Apple Lossless).

 

[Alec]

What Andrew said. I'd never rip straight to WAV unless, as someone else said, I had a very good, specific reason to do so (and I can't even think of an example of such a reason).

EDIT I'm not sure if you use an Apple machine or a Windows one. If the latter, WMA Lossless is an option.

 

[datay]

As Andrew said, rip to alac if iTunes is your main player (you can always decompress later if needed) and you also listen to the music on your main system (you probably don't of course, as you're ripping CDs for portable use). I then think 320 or maybe 256 kbps aac is fine for an iPod, you won't hear the difference from alac, the files are half the size and the processor has less to do. If that makes you itchy, then stick with alac for your iPod too.

 

[ahtil]

I spent today allmost 5 hours to understand can human ear regocnice diffrence between AIFF Beatbort format sounds and Apple Itunes AAC format sounds. And no luck Maybe here somebody can explain me that. My primary intrest is EDM music (trance).Thank you advanced.

There is lot of diffrent opinion. Like: Even with an expensive high-resolution system, you will be hard pressed to tell the difference between 256 kbps AAC and lossless. http://www.stereophile.com/content/optimizing-my-sound

 

[MrAcoustat]

After much testing in Itunes AIFF & WAV are the exact same thing best quality ( 1411 kbps ) Apple Lossless is ( 757 kbps ) AAC is ( 256 kbps ) then there are three quality of MP3's ( 128 - 160 - 192 - kbps ) please keep in mind the better the quality the more space it take's on your hard drive. MrAcoustat

PS: I have 412 albums and a total of 244,80 gbs on my 500 gbs SSD drive.

 

[The_Lhc]

there are three quality of MP3's ( 128 - 160 - 192 - kbps )

No, you can go an awful lot higher than that, everything on my phone is 320kbps (CBR) mp3, for example.

 

[iMark]

When you compress AIFF or WAV to Apple Lossless (or FLAC) you will notice that they are about half the size of the original file. But that doesn't mean that any information is missing. The compression is similar to a Word file and zipped Word file. Once decompressed, all the original information is still there.

I can't hear any difference between a CD or AIFF file or Apple Lossless. And noone should unless there is something severerly wrong with the equipment. Lossless audio compression is a very clever trick to halve file sizes while retaining the original quality.

In my experience it is much more important to rip your CDs with error correction on. This way your ripped files are already properly corrected.

I use Apple Lossless simply because I use Macs and all our music is in iTunes. When recording vinyl I also record in Apple Lossless. When I burn CDs from LP rips, this is extremely easy in iTunes. The ALAC files are decompressed on the fly before burning AIFF files on the CD. When we play music from iTunes over the Airport Express ALAC is also the best option because no conversion is needed.

On my iPod Nano (both with earphones and used in the car) I find Apple Lossless overkill. I have set iTunes to downsample to 256 AAC so I can fit roughly double the amount of albums on my Nano.

I find it quite remarkable that after so many years of digital audio there are still people that don't understand the difference between lossless and lossy compression.

 

[chebby]

Try 320K AAC VBR in iTunes (with error correction box ticked) and see what you think.

 

[iMark]

I've tried it and it is very good. Almost as good as ALAC.

 

[iMark]

I've tried it and it is very good. Almost as good as ALAC.

 

[Muso]

Your no nonsense approach appeals to me ! I am about to start the process of ripping cd's into iTunes and understand the relationships between wav/aiff and flac/alac and have decided to go for alac which your post clarified for me thank you. Aware that my iTunes asks me whether to apply error correction or not, I don't understand what is being corrected and as you recommend it, I'd be interested to learn if you have a couple of minutes spare please ? My aim is to download onto a nas and feed through a decent streamer/network player.

 

[iMark]

Hi Muso,

Here's a short explanation about error correction on Redbook CDs.

Red Book is the standard for Compact Disc-Digital Audio (CD-DA) and was established in 1980 as the first of the 'books' which defined the CD for audio use in domestic CD players. To identify themselves, Red Book discs usually have the familiar 'Compact Disc Digital Audio' logo printed within the label area.

[font="arial,helvetica"]The Red Book standard specifies that a compact disc can have up to 99 tracks of data, with each track containing a single audio selection. These tracks are divided into blocks of data referred to as sectors. Each sector holds 3234 bytes of data, as mentioned earlier, arranged as 2352 bytes of audio data, plus two 392-byte layers of error-detection and error-correction codes (commonly referred to as EDC/ECC), along with 98 control bytes which are often referred to as the sub-codes or sub-channels and are designated by the letters P through to W. These control bytes contain the timing information which allows the CD player to cue instantly to the beginning of each selection, display the selection's number and running time, and provide a continuous display of elapsed time.[/font]
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jan98/articles/cdformats.htm When you rip a Redbook CD with error correction all corrected information will be written away in the file that is written away on your computer. This is especially important with dirty or scratched CDs but audiophiles recommend always ripping with error correction. When you play a CD in a CDP the player has to correct the errors while playing. One of the great advantages of ripping is that the files that end up on your computer of NAS are already corrected. Some audiophiles will only rip CDs with software that does 'bit-perfect' rips. In practice the error correction in iTunes is more than good enough and seems to produce 'bit-perfect' rips. It does slow the ripping process down, especially with scratched or dirty discs. But since you're only ripping once in your life that shouldn't be a problem. Personal recommendation: make a copy of all the music files on your NAS. Then make a copy of that copy and leave that somewhere else. Believe me, with a largish CD collection you only want to rip once.

 

[hybridauth_Facebook_10100289030654917]

Hello,

I have been told that Apple lossless alters files automatically to be better suited to apple headphones, thereby altering the original track.

I use music for treatment purposes and want an easier way to hand out tracks to patients, but in full uncompromised quality. Portable cd players are getting harder to come by and all decent Hi res, WAV players are above £200, which is too much for each patient, so considering Apple lossless but worried re above.

Any advice on hi-res WAV players or question above would be appreciated, thanks!

 

[Dom]

Hello,

I have been told that Apple lossless alters files automatically to be better suited to apple headphones, thereby altering the original track.

I use music for treatment purposes and want an easier way to hand out tracks to patients, but in full uncompromised quality. Portable cd players are getting harder to come by and all decent Hi res, WAV players are above £200, which is too much for each patient, so considering Apple lossless but worried re above.

Any advice on hi-res WAV players or question above would be appreciated, thanks!

Perhaps it does sound better for headphones, however its lossless meaning a perfect reproduction, you could copy it 100 times and still end up witha perfect copy.

I think the headphone thing is a myth.

 

[MajorFubar]

I have been told that Apple lossless alters files automatically to be better suited to apple headphones, thereby altering the original track.

You have been misinformed. An ALAC conversion of an audio file is so absolutely bit-perfect to the original file that if you load the ALAC file and the source WAV file into digital audio software and invert the phase of one of them, they will mathematically cancel out each other to null, giving you complete silence. There is no manipulation of the data to make it sound better on Apple earbuds, or for any other reason. Try it for yourself.