FLAC vs Apple LossLess - Page 3  

This is so TRUE ! I have a digital 24 bit AIFF copy of Michael Jackson's Thriller. The 24 bit master is full of mixing errors which has been removed in later mixdown for 16bit CD released to the public.

Edited by tivi player - 10/23/12 at 10:11am

xD what a shame, a 24bit should be mixed better! but for it to be full of errors is just sloppy... but then again I don't buy music from iTunes <3

ALAC works in every major music playback software- Media Monkey, jRiver, Foobar, Winamp etc..while FLAC does not work in any apple device. That would make ALAC a no brainer for people who care about quality..as most of the programs above are better than itunes.

Summarising your argument: "Only ALAC works under Apple's proprietary software. Apple's proprietary software is rubbish. Therefore one should use ALAC."

 

I agree with your premises, but your conclusion needs a little reconsideration. ;)

Hey, I'm not defending Apple or their firewall on open software/devices. But ALAC is a better choice than FLAC for those who need to use both types of devices/software..just sayin. It is frustrating to download the FLAC files from HD Tracks and have to convert them to ALAC in order for iTunes to use them...they should just offer ALAC there. Many other download sources offering ALAC now.

 

Or! Maybe Apple will decide to support FLAC? Uhmm probably not. So ALAC it is! And I do like ALAC too.

only flac

ALAC is open source now so is just as free as FLAC is, and arguably better supported. And the two formats definitely sound the same if the player is written properly.

Some of the information about uncompressed formats sounding better is very out of date. A modern CPU will only spend a single digit percentage of its capacity decompressing audio. So there is no way decompression is causing any jitter. This is indisputable if the player decompresses and caches the track to RAM like many good ones do.

Flac is DRM free :)

Flac is supported on more players 

 

read here for the side by side comparison:

http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Lossless_comparison

The very fact that FLAC is not supported by any apple medium kinda shoots that down. I cannot think of a single playback software program that does not support ALAC. As for portable devices, they are convenience devices and most people use Apple..which doesn't support FLAC. For those who use other portables, their syncing software will transcode if needed..

 

PS- There are no DRM issues with ripping files to ALAC.

No, most portable devices these days are Android phones. If you bought a crippled Apple device then you have to live with it, but the rest of us don't. ;)

Edited by Henry Flower - 11/9/12 at 4:43pm

If Android doesn't work with ALAC, it is crippled "fo show!"

Fortunately your subordinate clause is in English, so I get the gist of your post. Android does work with ALAC, and FLAC, and whatever else you care to throw at it. That's the point. Most of us don't have to cut our cloth to fit a closed-source OS.

Speaking of which, did you know that your choice of what product to buy determines your moral fiber and worth as a human being? If you dare to listen to ALAC you might as well admit that you have sold your soul to Jobs you horrid little sheeple.

 

I also have problems with your bold appropriation of vernacular in an online conversation.

The fact that Android phones outsell iPhones does not equate to Android being the dominate mobile music device. You can not discount the hundreds of million of iPods sold.

Also I would be willing to bet that the percentage of iPhones sold that are actually used for music is higher than for Android, as there are a lot of low end Android phones sold to people who just use them as phones.

If we're going back to the good old days of standalone music players, even most pre-iOS ipods will happily be rockboxed and play FLAC.

 

Fundamentally there's no disagreement here: if you chose an iOS device, you chose to restrict your lossless options to ALAC. If you didn't, you didn't.