How much better is Apple lossless quality?

AAC 320 will do it fine. To discern a difference between that and lossless you'd need premium gear and more important premium listening environment which sure is not what an ipod is intended for. And given the latter you'd still need premium ears and premium attention to the sound.

IMHO lossless is not worth it for an iPod.

How much better than what?

Its better than nothing

It's depends on what you want to do with your ipod.  I use Lossless on mine but I have 32gigs.  With 8 it will leave you little space

MIght want to consider going 320 mp3's instead.

Apple lossless is as good as FLAC if that was your original question.

lossless is lossess

Don't waste your space. Just settle for 256kbps (mp3 or AAC) encoded at a variable bit rate, aka, LAME encoded V0.

Originally Posted by subxero 

lossless is lossess

^ What he say!
Apple Lossless is identical in quality to other lossless audio codec like FLAC, WavPack, TAK, LA, Shorten, Monkey's Audio, ...

Quote:

Originally Posted by krmathis 

^ What he say!
Apple Lossless is identical in quality to other lossless audio codec like FLAC, WavPack, TAK, LA, Shorten, Monkey's Audio, ...

Now, some people think that various DRM processes used on various lossless formats does have an impact on SQ.  I take no position w/ respect to that notion so take it as you wish.  Just the messenger.

If we assume that "normal apple format" is AAC 256 i'd say you'll get a very slight gain in space and air but as i already said lossless on portable devices is an overshoot unless you use that device as a part of a desktop rig or hooked to a high end hifi.Just my 2 cents.

What DRM processes would those be by the way? I know of no lossless audio format that protects its format natively unless you start giggling about DVD-A and SACD - everything else is free from those artefacts.
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Anaxilus 

Now, some people think that various DRM processes used on various lossless formats does have an impact on SQ.  I take no position w/ respect to that notion so take it as you wish.  Just the messenger.

Originally Posted by Anaxilus 

Now, some people think that various DRM processes used on various lossless formats does have an impact on SQ.  I take no position w/ respect to that notion so take it as you wish.  Just the messenger.

That may be - but then again DRM protection is not very common in lossless audio formats.

Quote:

Originally Posted by shigzeo 

What DRM processes would those be by the way? I know of no lossless audio format that protects its format natively unless you start giggling about DVD-A and SACD - everything else is free from those artefacts.

I seem to recall a Maximum PC article on it for M4a and Sony formats, perhaps Microsoft as well.  They did a format shootout of some sort.  It was probably more than 4-5 years ago so I have no idea if things changed or that was actually accurate at the time.  I'm just throwing the possibility out there in case someone knows better.  I honestly don't know about that w/ any certainty.  Perhaps it was also tied into download services.  /Shrug.  I'm honestly not up to date on the ins and outs of recent encoding developments.  Up till a a few months ago a decent sounding 128kb vbr using current LAME was a revelation to me.  
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheDreamthinker 

Could you please tell me what "DRM" means?

Digital Rights Management.