How can I ensure my imported CDs play in Lossless format?

"Lossless" in this context means CD-quality audio (16 bits per sample, 44.1 KHz sampling rate) with none of the information thrown away. AAC is "lossy". Like MP3, it throws away information to obtain smaller file sizes – and when you play or decode the compressed file, you do not get full quality back.

In Music, if you go into File > Settings…, select the Files tab, and click the Import Settings… button, an Import Settings dialog comes up. The Import Using pop-up menu has five options:

• AAC encoder
• AIFF encoder
• Apple Lossless Encoder
• MP3 encoder
• WAV encoder

AIFF, WAV, and Apple Lossless are lossless encoding methods. They will keep 16-bit, 44.1 KHz data "as is", and not throw any of it away. The AIFF and WAV methods do no compression, and will produce very large files. The Apple Lossless method, will do compression – but because it will not throw away information, it can't compress music as much as AAC and MP3 can.

There may also be an option to change the encoding method at the time that you import music from an audio CD.

KiyoshiShidou wrote:

I'm just bought some CDs, and imported them into the Apple Music app on my PC. It works perfectly but when I download or play them on iPhone/iPad, it doesn't appear 'Lossless' button and when I check the capacity, it is only (8-10MBs) per song, while the imported file is 30-40MBs. How can I fix it, or it only support download AAC on my own albums?

How are you transferring your purchased songs to your iPhone or iPad?

Are you doing "manual" synchronization, where you connect the iPhone or iPad to your PC with a cable and use iTunes to download music from your PC's music library onto the mobile device?

If so, and if iTunes for Windows offers the option of using Apple Lossless encoding, I believe that there should be some way to load those files onto an iPhone or iPad. (There might be a setting somewhere in iTunes that lets you tell it to limit all downloads to 256 Kbps. If that's set, just clear it.)

If you are doing synchronization using the iTunes Match subscription service, or the similar Sync Library feature of the Apple Music subscription service, what's happening is probably that Apple is "matching" the songs on your PC to 256 Kbps versions in their library, and then downloading those 256 Kbps files to your iPhone or iPad.

256 kb AAC is what Apple calls “lossless”.

But you also need to consider how you are listening; you can only hear lossless with a wired connected device, because Bluetooth is lossy. And unless you get transducers in the $10,000 range, the speakers will also not be lossless. And on top of that, if you are over 30 years old (or 20 if you have damaged your hearing by listening to very loud music) your ears aren’t lossless, either.