Apple Lossless vs MP3 LAME

They are apples and oranges, really.

MP3 is a lossy format, which means that the encoder tries to make the music transparent (that is, perceptually equal in quality to the original uncompressed source) by permanently throwing away data that its psycho-acoustic model tells it is inaudible to the human ear.

Apple Lossless is a lossless format, which means that it never loses any data from the original file. Instead of relying on a psycho-acoustic model that may not work for everyone's ears, it uses alghorithyms similar to those used in compressed ZIP files. Apple Lossless will always be transparent. The catch is, as you discovered, that it results in larger file sizes. It can be very useful, however, if you want to keep a permanent digital archive of your music for in-home streaming. You can also take advantage of such an archive by using it to transcode to lossy formats like MP3 for your portable players, which still don't yet have the kind of storage space required to carry full libraries of lossless files.

Frankly, 320 kbps with LAME MP3 is overkill, and I think that it will very likely sound exactly the same as Apple Lossless to you. If you want to use LAME MP3, you should really take advantage of its VBR presets that have been heavily tested for transparency. Or you can try Apple Lossless for your peace of mind and transcode to lossy formats to satisfy different needs.

To some extent it is all of those things. WAV and AIFF, for example, are formats used to encode uncompressed CD quality audio (Stereo, 44.100 Hz, 1440 kbps). Because they are as close as you can get to "pure audio" on your computer, they have the widest compatibility with different software and hardware, and so are important in developing professional audio, software, and in some professional archival situations.

AAC, MP3, MPC, Ogg Vorbis, and other lossy audio codecs all try to do the same thing: make transparent audio at ever-lower bitrates. There are some compatibility issues (Ogg Vorbis is open source, with one of the reasons behind its development being to create a patent-free codec, unlike MP3 and AAC), but each codec was developed primarily to try to out-do the others.

For any given person, the bitrate at which they achieve transparency will probably be different for each lossy codec, because the different codecs throw away different information. That's why there's really no "one-size fits all" standard in the lossy audio world, because each person's ears are different, and the different codecs produce different kinds of audio artifacts that different people may find more or less noticable. Buying better quality speakers can also expose artifacts that you wouldn't have noticed at lower bitrates.

Some codecs have been heavily tested, however. LAME's VBR presets, for example, have been developed and tested over a very long period of time and have been shown to be transparent for most people on most equipment. AAC has not been as extensively tested, but what testing has been done has shown it to reach transparency for most people somewhere around 192 kbps, depending on the music and equipment.

Powerbook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.3)

aiff. Isn't that the best?