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Can I add a lossless file to my itunes library?

Can i add a lossless music file to my itunes library? Usually what i do is drag the file or folder into music/itunes/itunes media/automatically add to itunes and it works fine, everything shows in my library and plays perfectly. But with this lossless file i drag it into the automatically add to itunes folder and it goes into the folder but doesnt show up in itunes. I think i know that itunes doesn't support lossless files, so can somene tell me how to convert them into apple lossless or MP3s (preferably apple lossless). Please help.

Windows 8, Music Problems

Posted on Feb 15, 2014 4:24 AM

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Posted on Feb 19, 2014 5:14 AM

The are a variety of different lossless audio formats, some supported by iTunes, some partially supported and some not at all.


The best lossless audio format to use from an iTunes point of view is Apple Lossless aka. ALAC. iTunes can import (rip) audio CDs using this format. Other lossless formats supported by iTunes include WAV (partially) and AIFF, however these formats use more disk space than Apple Lossless and do not sound any better, and further more do not support meta-tags as well as Apple Lossless.


Another lossless format you may hear of is FLAC, iTunes does not support this format but it can be otherwise considered equivalent to Apple Lossless in file size and capability. You can convert FLAC to Apple Lossless with of course no loss of quality but you will need to use another utility to do the conversion.


There is also WMA Lossless, this is not supported for playing by iTunes but I believe can be imported (only in iTunes for Windows, not Mac).


So, contrary to your message, yes iTunes does support lossless audio files.


For what its worth I have all mine in Apple Lossless and share it with Windows Media Player and Microsoft Media Center which can also play Apple Lossless (with an additional free directshow filter).


Note: Music purchased from the iTunes store will all be in AAC format which is a lossey format.

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Question marked as Best reply

Feb 19, 2014 5:14 AM in response to aidsbums

The are a variety of different lossless audio formats, some supported by iTunes, some partially supported and some not at all.


The best lossless audio format to use from an iTunes point of view is Apple Lossless aka. ALAC. iTunes can import (rip) audio CDs using this format. Other lossless formats supported by iTunes include WAV (partially) and AIFF, however these formats use more disk space than Apple Lossless and do not sound any better, and further more do not support meta-tags as well as Apple Lossless.


Another lossless format you may hear of is FLAC, iTunes does not support this format but it can be otherwise considered equivalent to Apple Lossless in file size and capability. You can convert FLAC to Apple Lossless with of course no loss of quality but you will need to use another utility to do the conversion.


There is also WMA Lossless, this is not supported for playing by iTunes but I believe can be imported (only in iTunes for Windows, not Mac).


So, contrary to your message, yes iTunes does support lossless audio files.


For what its worth I have all mine in Apple Lossless and share it with Windows Media Player and Microsoft Media Center which can also play Apple Lossless (with an additional free directshow filter).


Note: Music purchased from the iTunes store will all be in AAC format which is a lossey format.

Feb 19, 2014 9:32 AM in response to aidsbums

aidsbums wrote:


Thanks


Do you know any good free programs that can convert FLAC to apple lossless? At the moment I have Freemake Audio Converter and it doesn't seem to be working.

Unfortunately the ones I know are for the Mac and not Windows, XLD being in my opinion the best (Mac) one.


I believe an approach that might be possible is to use (one of) Foobar2000, or dbPowerAmp to do the conversion, they would need the Apple Lossless plugin adding to them but then they will be able to do both FLAC and Apple Lossless.

Can I add a lossless file to my itunes library?

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