How do you burn a high quality CD from a lossless file?

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Ocean 17 Author

Level 2

202 points

How do you burn a high quality CD from a lossless file?

I am trying to burn a CD from a lossless file.

Apple says online to go to preferences, and then to burn, and then choose the burn format.

Only: that dialog is not there. And the Apple page is from 2008 - nothing newer available via google search.

I burned a CD, but iTunes just burned the lossless files on CD - which cannot be read by most CD players I suspect.

How can I get iTunes to burn a regular CD format onto the disc so I can play it in my car?

Looks like iTunes 11 is quite a dumbed down version of iTunes with less control over what you do.

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2), 512 Gb SSD, 16 Gb RAM,

Posted on Jul 29, 2013 12:54 AM

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Answer 1

Jul 29, 2013 1:44 AM in response to Ocean 17

Hi,

Nothing has changed regarding burning Audio CD. You create a playlist with a maximum time of 80 Min. You select burn playlist and pop up box will show burn options. Select Audio CD and insert blank disc. Itunes does the rest - creates and audio disc that can be played in CD drives.

See http://support.apple.com/kb/PH12147

When you burn an audio disc, itunes converts the format automatically - burned disc will show files as AIFF.

Jim

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Answer 2

Ocean 17 Author

Level 2

202 points

Jul 29, 2013 1:54 AM in response to Jimzgoldfinch

Thanks, Jim.

I was constantly coming across an older Apple page that referred to setting up the burn in preferences.

I see it's all automatic now - and it works.

I checked the files - all AIFF.

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Answer 3

Jul 29, 2013 2:26 AM in response to Ocean 17

Ocean 17 wrote:

I checked the files - all AIFF.

Just for the sake of clarity, when you open an audio CD in the Finder, it shows the contents as being AIFF files: this is a trick for operational convenience. In fact files on a CD are in a special format (Solomon-Reed cross interleave if you really want to know) consisting of one continuous file (with powerful error correction) and a table of contents. It's actually quite a clever trick that the Finder shows them as AIFF and if you drag them out converts them to AIFF on the fly.

The repositioning of several facilities in iTunes 11 is causing a lot of confusion, particularly with the out of date help pages lying around.

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