[JTori]

I originally posted this in the General Discussion forum. At the suggestion of the group, I am reposting it here.

I have several hundred songs, ripped from CDs, that are stored on my computer in AIFF format. Will there be a degradation in sound quality if I convert these to ALAC, or am I better off reripping directly from CD to ALAC? I'm concerned about loss from generation to generation.

I've done brief comparison of a couple of tunes, which I transferred to my portable rig (Nano 3G/Tomahawk/SE530/ALO Cryo Dock) and think the AIFF may sound a bit better (a little rounder, warmer and all there). I'm not sure whether this is me overthinking it or if there really is some loss associated with converting the files.

I'd really like to avoid having to rerip, if possible.

Feedback from the Headfi gang would be greatly appreciated.

 

[krmathis]

No loss!
ALAC (Apple Lossless) are, as the name say, an lossless audio codec.

As posted in the original thread.

 

[MoodySteve]

X2

Lossless is lossless. Some codecs have 'levels' which novices confuse with SQ (as they generally are with lossy codecs) but these are just the compression levels, which only affects how long it takes to compress the file.