which is better; aiff or apple lossless

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Level 1

19 points

which is better; aiff or apple lossless

Hi

I have two questions, thus requiring help.

Q1

As an experiment, I down installed a musical CD twice to the same folder in the iTunes media>music>compilations>folder A. In the folder are two files, namely .aiff and .m4a (apple lossless selected encoder). The .aiff files are bigger than the .m4a files. Which is the better codec for an eventual play on HDTV (1080p) via the 4th generation Apple TV.

Q2

I installed some musical CD's into iTunes and in Adobe Bridge the file arrangement is as follows: iTunes>Album Artwork>iTunes Media>Music>Compilations>Folders (1-10). I then manually created 3 new main folders, listing them as A, B and C. I manually moved folders 1, 2, 3 and 4 into main folder A; folders 5, 6 and 7 into main folder B and; folders 8, 9 and 10 into main folder C. The titles in each main folder are the same, but, different venue and year.

However, all the installed files are listed one after another in the main iTunes window with 1) the albums (top right hand corner) and 2) title (drop down list) selected. I have a total of 200 musicals that I would like to load into iTunes. In the iTunes window, all 200 albums will be listed and the page will be long with the scrol bar becoming small. How can I create the same album arrangement in the iTunes window as I have it in Adobe Bridge. How can I create main album A and then transfer albums 1, 2, 3 and 4 into it. To do the same for main Albums B and C in iTunes. Am I doing the right method or is there another way. Any help will be appreciated.

Robin

Posted on Feb 5, 2016 9:10 AM

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Answer 1

turingtest2

Level 10

272,811 points

Feb 5, 2016 9:22 AM in response to Robin_Bowen

Unless you need to play the tracks on something that supports AIFF but not Apple Lossless then use Apple Lossless. The audio quality is the same, Apple Lossless is smaller and has support for more tag fields.

iTunes doesn't care where files are located, it only reads the metadata. If you want to do comparative tests add something meaningful to each version of an album, e.g. Album [AIFF], Album [ALAC], Album {MP3-256k] etc.

tt2

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Answer 2

Limnos

Level 10

411,247 points

Feb 5, 2016 10:16 AM in response to Robin_Bowen

In terms of quality they are essentially equivalent (I only say "essentially" because probably some audiophile will undoubtedly come on here and claim they are the one per two billion people who claim they can hear a difference (in their heads, yeah)).

Size-wise AIFF is larger. Unless you have an application/player which can't play Apple Lossless you're better off with ALE.

I have never even heard of this Adobe software so I have no idea what it does. iTunes ignores (nay, may even rearrange) file folder organization you do in Finder. All it does is read the tags stored in the files with track information and then display you "files" according to that. It's like to old card catalog system where the order you hold them in your hand isn't necessarily how they are arranged on the shelves.

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Answer 3

turingtest2

Level 10

272,811 points

Feb 5, 2016 10:26 AM in response to Robin_Bowen

See also Grouping tracks into albums for some background on iTunes organization. In iTunes each collection of tracks that have a common album title and album artist (or marked as a compilation) should be listed as one album. Again using a scheme like <Musical> <Venue> <Year> for each album title should allow you to pick the particular version of a production that you want to listen to.

tt2

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