What is the best sound format to import a CD?

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Level 1

5 points

What is the best sound format to import a CD?

Dear people of the Communities,

What is the best sound format in terms of best sound quality for a CD import, regardless of file size, just sound pure quality?

The purpose is for saving my music CD and Vinyl library into a computer/drive, and listening to it using a computer connected to a 'Stereo' sound system (not 'Surround', regular home stereo) with high quality stereo speakers (L+R).

Until now, I have downloaded using MP3 format, at 320 kbps. The quality of listening, compared with a CD is very poor.

I'm using iTunes 10.7.x (as well as iTunes 12.x on a newer platform but the CD imports I use the 10.7 version)

All settings are as follows:

Import Using = MP3 Encoder

Settings = Custom

Use Error Correction = No

---------------------------------------------

Stereo BitRate = 320 kbps

VBR = No

Sample Rate = 44.100 kHz

Channels = Stereo

Stereo Mode = Normal

Smart Encoding = No

Filter Freq Below 10 Hz = No

I think it would be WAV but not sure, AIFF and Apple Lossless I know are better quality as well, but using an Apple encoder may restrict what will be the player, which is also important.

Thank you,

Alon

.

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X El Capitan (10.11.3), 13" Early 2015

Posted on Jun 1, 2016 4:16 AM

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Answer 1

hhgttg27

Level 5

5,597 points

Jun 1, 2016 4:42 AM in response to cohalon

Any lossless format will offer the best audio quality. Of the available choices:

WAV is probably the most widely supported but lacks the capability to embed metadata or artwork, so while you can move the audio files between different systems as soon as you go outside iTunes you will lose all artist / album / song information.
Apple Lossless (ALAC) is definitely the best choice within iTunes - it has the same metadata / artwork support as MP3 or AAC and supports full 16/44.1 audio with file sizes around 65% of the equivalent WAV file
AIFF is very similar to ALAC except that (in the variant used by iTunes) there's no lossless compression so file sizes will be larger

The determining factor here will be where else you intend to use the files - many other players support all three options listed above, either natively or (for ALAC and AIFF) using appropriate plugins. Unfortunately the lossless codec that has the widest support of all (FLAC) is not supported by iTunes. There are, however, plenty of utilities out there that can convert between ALAC and FLAC (and vice versa) if that proves necessary.

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