[gazeds]

is there a great differance between the quality of flac files and apple lossless

 

[DaBomb77766]

There is no difference.  The quality of all lossless files is identical.  "Lossless" simply means that no data is being thrown away.  When decoded they will all give you the same uncompressed file.

 

[xnor]

A simple analogy: Lossless codecs can be compared to file archiving tools like WinZip, WinRar, 7zip etc. While all formats are different and different compression algorithms are used they all store the same data, compressed without any loss.

 

[danroche]

To put it another way, the only ways one (working) lossless format can be measured against another are:
 
1. If one format encodes faster than another
2. If one format creates smaller files than another from the same source file
3. If one format is playable by more devices/players/software than another and therefore more accessible
 
Personally I rank these in order of ascending importance.