[Mad Max]

That makes a lot of sense.  Even without emmodad's post, I still don't see your point, Ham Sandwich.  DRM isn't added to files I encode to ALAC or AAC.  "Walled garden" is your imagination, or people limiting themselves to only buying from iTunes.  So DRM being possibly applicable to ALAC is beyond a possibility, and as far as I can tell, irrelevant.  I would be concerned if I were encoding my music to those formats and erasing the original data for some reason.  Since I still have the original data, it really means nothing to create a few copies in a proprietary format just to use in one specific player.
 
So ALAC and FLAC use less battery if a decoding chip is included with the player to take some of the load off the player's CPU.  And then?

 

[Ham Sandwich]

I mentioned potential future DRM support as just one of the possible reasons for the development of ALAC.  I don't consider that to be the main reason and DRM support isn't something that I'm necessarily against.  I won't boycott or pan a format just because it has DRM support.
 
There are many reasons that are part of a decision for a company like Apple or Microsoft to go and develop their own lossless codec rather than use an existing codec.
 
My issues with ALAC aren't so much the means but rather the ends.  The means about how and why it was developed isn't the issue.  I don't mind that ALAC exists and is used.  My concern is about the ends and how things are affected by the way ALAC is used an implemented.  I'm concerned about how converting my library to ALAC would restrict my choices in what hardware and software I could use.  It is that sort of restriction of choice and the freedom that goes with it that I'm referring to as a walled garden.  Inside the walls all is nice.  But try to hop over the wall and things get difficult and don't work so well.
 
My digital music collection is one of my most important assets on my home computers.  I like music (that's why I do the headphone thing).  I will make computing decisions and platform decisions and software decisions based on how well my music library is supported and how well I can do what I want with my library.  Having ALAC be so tied to just Apple software and iDevices is not appealing to me.  I find that very restrictive.  I'm not going to put my library in ALAC format and subject myself to that walled garden no matter how nice it is inside those walls.
 
I'm also unwilling to create a separate library just to support a particular portable player.  I'm not going to manage two or more libraries.  I have a hard enough time just managing one library.  There is no way that I could be willing to manage two libraries in two different media player/management programs.
 
If a solution to using lossless on an iPod becomes "just make an ALAC version of your FLAC files" then I'm going to say "what the hell?".  Why should I have to keep two versions of a lossless file?  The lossless compression is getting around 60% so keeping a file in two different formats would end up costing me about the same amount of disk space as if I hadn't compressed the file to begin with.  What if I should have to support three lossless file formats and be obliged to keep three versions of all my music just to keep a few different devices happy?  That's a lot of disk space.  And my poor brain and my limited free time can't handle trying to manage that sort of situation.
 
So either the lossless formats learn to get along and be usable in the ways I want to use my files, or I will reject the formats that don't.
 
And for the record, I feel the same about WMA Lossless.

 

[sparktography]

Quote:

I'm also unwilling to create a separate library just to support a particular portable player.  I'm not going to manage two or more libraries.  I have a hard enough time just managing one library.  There is no way that I could be willing to manage two libraries in two different media player/management programs.

If you don't buy into the iPod world then you don't need ALAC. If you do, then why keep two copies of the file? Since I'm an iPod fan I keep everything as ALAC, and when I buy FLAC tracks online I transcode to ALAC and throw away the FLAC file. Since you can always transcode back if you decide to switch away from the iPod line in the future you are protected.
 
The iPod is not for everyone. If it's not for you then don't use it, or ALAC.

 

[Mad Max]

I think I understand now.
 
I guess our different mentalities are dictated by storage space then?
My FLAC copies are backups outside of my hard drives, so I'm only managing one library only.  I'm not even throwing everything into my ipod as it wouldn't easily fit, and some music I don't enjoy as much in my portable rig as I do out of my desktop rig.
If I switch from an ipod, to say, a Cowon player, I will just delete the ALAC copies and copy more FLAC files to my computer, probably choose more music to encode to mp3 (since there aren't 120gb cowons and I prefer to carry a lot at a time now) and end up managing a new library anyway.  It's not like it would take me more than five minutes to do, and I'm not as lazy as you.  =p
I've had a hard drive kick the bucket on me in the past, so I've learned to always backup everything important. 

 
Memory is that cheap and abundant around here in the deep south. 

Hence my indifference, I reckon.
 
I am grateful for Apple at least supporting a lossless codec at all, even if it is of their own design.  (And better than Microsoft's - WMA "Lossless"?  Bullsh**, but that's another can of worms.)

 

[Packgrog]

Quote:

If a solution to using lossless on an iPod becomes "just make an ALAC version of your FLAC files" then I'm going to say "what the hell?".  Why should I have to keep two versions of a lossless file?

You don't.  Keep the ALAC long enough to add to the library and sync to your iDevice, then delete the file.  I don't need to do that last step since my iPhone is only a 16GB model, and thus I can only have about 12GB of ALAC at any time.  I've found that this is PLENTY, actually, as it's still a lot of music that doesn't wind up getting played during my 1 hour commute each way every day.  So yeah, just keep whatever you're planning on using on your iPod/iPhone/iPad/whatever, and only for as long as you're needing it for that device.

 

[Ham Sandwich]

Quote:

You don't.  Keep the ALAC long enough to add to the library and sync to your iDevice, then delete the file.  I don't need to do that last step since my iPhone is only a 16GB model, and thus I can only have about 12GB of ALAC at any time.  I've found that this is PLENTY, actually, as it's still a lot of music that doesn't wind up getting played during my 1 hour commute each way every day.  So yeah, just keep whatever you're planning on using on your iPod/iPhone/iPad/whatever, and only for as long as you're needing it for that device.

 
Yes, you can transcode on the fly when syncing if your software supports that.  I transcode my FLAC files to MP3 when syncing my iPod.  I use J River Media Center.  It has the option of transcoding on the fly when syncing.  However, doing that "on the fly" when syncing an 80 GB iPod can take all day, literally, if every file transfered needs to be transcoded.  J River has the option of saving the transcoded files in a cache directory so when you sync the same files again they don't need to be transcoded again.  I use the caching option and take the additional step of pre-populating the cache with all of my FLAC files so that no matter what files I decide to sync they are all ready to go.  J River manages all that and keep the cached MP3 files consistent with my FLAC files.
 
So I've got my FLAC files duplicated as MP3 files.  I'm willing to do that with MP3 but not so willing to duplicate them in a different lossless format like ALAC.  Duplicating them as lossless would take too much space.  My library already almost fills up a 1 TB drive with the music and all the other assorted files that go along with it.  I don't want to have to buy an additional drive just to support a particular portable or device.

 

[Ham Sandwich]

 
Quote:

I guess our different mentalities are dictated by storage space then?
 

I think we differ on the degree to which we manage the library, especially as the library gets larger.
 
I spend a lot of time tagging and managing.  Updating tags so they are consistent and meaningful.  Creating custom fields to help manage and categorize.  Organizing and reorganizing.  I'm constantly updating tags for one reason or another.  Then adding new albums regularly.  I'm always updating album art with better versions.  Artwork I can't find online I scan myself and spend hours editing then submit it to AlbumArtExchange or Amazon.
 
With all that I cannot maintain two separate libraries and keep them both in sync.  That would just not be possible.  I either manage everything in one application for management, playback, and syncing, or it just can't be done.
 
With all that I cannot be cavalier and just copy over FLAC files from archive when I want to switch formats.  Anything in archive is out of sync with current tagging.

 

[Mad Max]

Quote:

 
I think we differ on the degree to which we manage the library, especially as the library gets larger.  
I spend a lot of time tagging and managing.  Updating tags so they are consistent and meaningful.  Creating custom fields to help manage and categorize.  Organizing and reorganizing.  I'm constantly updating tags for one reason or another.  Then adding new albums regularly.  I'm always updating album art with better versions.  Artwork I can't find online I scan myself and spend hours editing then submit it to AlbumArtExchange or Amazon.
 
With all that I cannot maintain two separate libraries and keep them both in sync.  That would just not be possible.  I either manage everything in one application for management, playback, and syncing, or it just can't be done.
 
With all that I cannot be cavalier and just copy over FLAC files from archive when I want to switch formats.  Anything in archive is out of sync with current tagging.

I do the very same.  I think ahead and predict how I will need things organized and tag accordingly, but I rarely find myself retagging much.  I also add new albums/tracks regularly as well and updating/improving their album art, too.  Overkill persnicketiness it is, lol.  My father's the same way so it rubbed off on me over the years.
I, too, improvise when I do not find the album art or find it at a quality that I do not like.  I even submitted improved versions of album art to Amazon and I forgot where else, but I stopped doing that.  The stuff I have put away already has some preliminary tagging, so I would have to add or change very little or nothing at all.  My organization is more focused around having everything by album or playlist, I take it you do more than that or differently?
And then a little bit of anime - but that's another can of worms.

 

[aamefford]

Currently, all of my library that matters is ALAC, except for a few HDTracks downloads in 24/96 FLAC.  I think I will begin all new rips as FLAC, and begin a backup program of my ALAC rips to FLAC.  I'm an Apple fanboy for the most part, but there is something to be said for the longevity and robustness of open source community support such as FLAC.  Even if that is not the format I chose to actually use the files in, I am giving very serious thought to switching my archival library to FLAC, and using MAX or something similar to transcode.

 

[cevinuubf]

/img/forum/go_quote.gif


Well, you can be assured there are no data loss.
But to be 100% sure you can always decode the same track using iTunes and one or several other applications, then bit compare the resulting files.
 
Alternative applications for decoding
http://sbooth.org/Max/
http://tmkk.hp.infoseek.co.jp/xld/index_e.html
http://craz.net/programs/itunes/alac.html

Why I cannot open the link here? Is the link invalid?

 

[mikemalter]

I was a little miffed about FLAC and ACC for a while.  What caused me to stop caring about it was the introduction of the Wadia i170 which sources a digital signal from my apple device to a DAC.  Once I started getting bit perfect digital output my CD player and my turntable started to collect dust.  All I care about now is being able to rip my CD's with iTunes.
 
At some point I am going to get a PS Audio PWD DAC with the network bridge card.  Then the only thing I'll care about is a media server that will be able to play whatever formats I have.  In other words, I do not care about the format, I do care that it is lossless and that there is something that will decode it so I can listen to it.

 

[RedSky0]

I've read through this whole thread and nothing explains why Apple would need to explicitly restrict FLAC use. There may have been practical and legal reasons behind the introduction of ALAC but it is quite clear that the restrictive exclusivity of it was driven by either a desire to drive and control industry direction or raise the effort required to transition away from their products or both.

 

[ramicio]

Then they should make iTunes a Mac-only program and make their iDevices self-destruct when plugged into anything but a Mac.  MP3 and AAC aren't Apple codecs, yet iTunes and iDevices support both.  FLAC will never have their support because it's not an industry standard.  ALAC has already been back-engineered so I don't see the problem.  Linux has a lot of plusses and is probably my favorite OS for something that NEEDS to be stable, like a server.  I would never use it for my desktop.  I have tried it already and I just don't care for the time and effort it takes to set it up to not even the point I can get Windows set up for what I need to do in like an hour.  I love it for simple command-line things and servers.  Linux is closer to Mac OS X than Windows is to either, so I don't see why they can't support it.

Quote:

Apple has very valid reasons for not supporting Linux - if you want to use their products, use their platforms. If you don't want to use their platforms, then you can use one of the many other offerings.

 

[KEVIN101]

hate to get off topic this is my first post 
I reply to you because I just purchased my first computer now in market for i pod.
will classic sound better that i pod touch it being a disk drive vs flash
please help

 

[mikemalter]

I have an iPod and an iTouch and both sound the same to me.  I am playing them from a Wadia i170.