I'm so confused. I am trying to burn a bunch of CDs of my son's band so they can sell at their gig. BUT... I don't know what format to use. AIFF, MP3, WAV... help please.
MacBook Pro
I'm afraid John Lockwood's original post was wrong and has caused confusion. Apparently he didn't understand that a 'full blown' or 'audio CD' are actually using AIFF/ WAV.
Commercial Audio CD's use the redbook format…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_Disc_Digital_Audio
The audio contained in a CD-DA consists of two-channel signed 16-bit Linear PCM
sampled at 44,100 Hz.
WAV or AIFF is the correct format to burn if you plan on distributing it & want the widest range of CD players to play it.
AIFF is effectively the same as WAV but was developed by Apple, WAV was developed by IBM, Microsoft
If you view a commercial CD in Finder you will see AIFF files. Those are normally uncompressed audio. I suspect a PC will show WAV files - in effect the AIFF/ WAV format is how the device decides to rip the data.
See the section Data access from computers on the Digital audio page, it explains how computers rip to AIFF/ WAV. Basically the OS wraps headers around the uncompressed audio to make it a AIFF or WAV.
As for AAC and MP3 those formats are lossy, compressed formats. They should be avoided because not all CD players will read those formats.
Apple Lossless is not an industry standard & should also be avoided if distributing CD's - it will not play on all CD Players.
Thank you, John. Please refer to my reply to Drew.😉
Do AIFF CDs play on car stereos?
