Best Import Encoder ? - Apple Lossless?

Apple Lossless is one of many lossless audio compressors, meaning that it can achieve a certain level of file compression without compromising the audio data at all in the process. Unlike WAV and AIFF files, Apple Lossless files support full tagging with metadata, and output file sizes tend to range from roughly 50-70% of the size of uncompressed WAV or AIFF files.

As far as the consistency of the compression, it's lossless, so unless some bizarre error occurs during compression (VERY unlikely), the output is always the same as what it would be if you were encoding directly to WAV or AIFF.

I re-ripped my entire CD library from MP3 to Lossless. I playback from a mini's digital output directly into an Arcam receiver with dynaudio 52se speakers.

Lossless sounds better and sounds great.

Jim, I agree that Lossless is the best bet for ripping a great sounding file with a reduction in file size compared to AIFF or WAV. I was not willing to sacrifice that much room on my 60GB iPod, nor storage space on my iMac for Lossless files. The happy medium for me has been AAC@256 VBR,in my opinion, comes pretty darn close to the original. I use Shure SE310 earphones, & have a pair of Bose Companion 5 speakers on my Mac. Those 256 files sound GREAT!

Hi,

I've imported my CD library twice. First time at AAC 192.

Then I heard a buddies Apple Lossless rips on my equipment.

And I went back and did 'em all in Apple Lossless.
Use error correction when ripping as you get better results when you decide to pipe digital audio stream back through your stereo.

Drawback is that lossless takes more space.

Good news is you can always use itunes to convert from Lossless to a lower resolution. but you cannot go to better res from a lower.

Do it right the first time.

-Alex

Just put 500 songs in itunes. Some from itunes store others direct from cd. Downloaded many with only 128 bit rate. Then realized I can download at 256 bit rate and did the balance at 256.

Any benefits to having itunes convert those at 256 and 128 to Apple Lossless?

Thanks to anyone who can help me with this question.

The ONLY thing you will gain by converting 128 or 256 to Apple Lossless is a 400%-1000% file size increase. There will be NO increase in quality.
Can't put back what was thrown away when it was converted to 128 or 256.you don't have.

Can't think of any reason to ever convert from a lossy compression (AAC or MP3) to Apple Lossless.

Chris

Would you set the default for apple lossless encoder for all future imports?

Thanks for the input. I don't know much about encoding.

Leonard

Personally, I use 192 kbps AAC.
Quality sounds pretty good (enough for my use).
Apple Lossless files are gonna be ~60% of the original size (~20MB-30MB).
Same file with AAC 192 will be around 4MB-6MB.

I'm not archiving my CDs. Just want the music on my iPod and computer.

One thing that hasn't been mentioned so far is that if you rip to lossless, you can expect higher battery drain on your iPod (if you use one) since you'll be asking it to do a lot more decoding than if it were playing a lossy MP3 or AAC.

The advantages and disadvantages look like this:
Lossless - best possible quality sound but you'll probably only be able to tell the difference if you've got good speakers and hifi components (no audible difference from a high-quality lossy file if you're listening on your iPod sitting on the bus!) but higher battery drain and uses way more disk space.
Lossy - much better use of disk space, easier on the batteries, can sound great if you rip at a high rate and listen through regular computer speakers (you probably won't be able to spot the difference).

If you do a test and can tell the difference between high quality lossy (eg AAC 256) and Apple Lossless, there's one more option - you can rip to AAC320kbps using XLD (and probably others).

Hope this helps.

anyone here compared LAME and/or the Max encoder with Apple Lossless?

i'm getting ready to rip about 200 or so of my cd's to my laptop and over to my ipod. got lots more storage space than i need; so, i want to pick the best sounding encoder. from what i've read here, it looks like the best choice would be lossless for the laptop and AAC/256 for the ipod. agree?

also, read that using higher bit rate formats on the ipod will tend to wear it out earlier. any truth to that?

As LAME is a mp3-format, it cannot really be compared to Apple Lossless. The latter obviously sounds better, as already stated in this thread. However, I did compare LAME to the iTunes aac and mp3 encoder (both by listening and analytically), and would rate them as follows:

Best: iTunes AAC
Second: LAME (being closer to aac then to iTunes mp3)
Last: iTunes mp3

As such, I agree with your proposal 😉.

Message was edited by: Matko D

I don't know for sure about the total size of my iTunes library, but I do know one thing. My CD's that I imported using Apple Lossless sounds very different with good quality headphones or when sent via my B&W speakers. Iv been importing CD's into iTunes for 4 years now and I'm thinking of removing all the old ones and importing again with Apple Lossless. Never realized how much difference there was in the sound quality until I used high quality equipment. Question is would deleting and importing my CD's again double the amount of HD space used?

How to get the best quality with you own CD's?

BTW, can you purchase music from the ITMS with Apple Lossless? Iv never paid attention before.

The increased amount of disk space depends on the bitrate you have been using so far. Uncompressed music (CD) has a bitrate of 1411 kbps. Lossless formats (Apple Lossless, Flac) reduce this to about 750 kbps.

So, if for example all your music was encoded at 320 kbps, you will indeed need about twice as much disk space, but probably even a little more if you encoded at a variable bitrate (VBR).

As for the best quality on importing CD's, check this out:
http://homepage.mac.com/marc.heijligers/audio/ipod/compression/compression.html

And no, ITMS offers no Lossless files, the best you get is 192 kbps AAC.