[patsyleung]

Quote:

With hard drive space as cheap as it is now I'm not sure why anyone is still using a middle-ground like lossless.

With compressed lossless (FLAC), while requiring processing overhead to decompress, you will almost never encounter errors from reading off the medium due to checksums embedded in the file to match the decompressed audio to what was compressed. With uncompressed lossless (WAV), there are no safeguards built into the file itself to ensure an exact copy is in the memory cache. The larger file also causes more wear and tear to the storage medium, reduced battery life, etc.

Basically, there are no cons to storing compressed lossless and may even have added ensurance of a bit-perfect copy being played every time. Please correct me if I am wrong in any regard.

 

[Jensen]

Quote:

Originally Posted by grokit /img/forum/go_quote.gif I use both platforms and have everything in ALAC, but have been trying to convince myself to do a final, master archive of all my discs in WAV on a FAT-formatted drive on the Windows side of iTunes, because I should also be able to access that information on a Mac, and Windows doesn't like AIFF? Does "lack of support for metadata" mean that iTunes can't do it's automatic library sorting thing with WAV, which I believe depends on metadata? edit: I think Windows can deal with AIFF after all, and this is my new plan for archiving: CD>iTunes/AIFF>Windows/FAT32>iTunes/ALAC>Mac/FAT32 I believe this will let me: - Preserve metadata for iTunes library functions - Lets me convert/export to other compressed or lossless codecs - Lets me access the song files from both Mac and PC I really want to get rid of my CD's, but this is a complicated decision and why I have stuck with ALAC for so long. I doubt I will need any other format, but as it's proprietary I want to have options. Also need to look into this EAC you speak of; it is multi-platform, and iTunes-compatible? edit: No.

You are making this overly complicated. Windows can deal with ALAC fine, and there is 0 reason to create a "master archive" in AIFF. ALAC is proprietary but can easily be converted to FLAC at a moments notice. Dbpoweramp does this (google it).

If you have a lossless file, whether it be FLAC, ALAC, or an uncompressed version (WAV, AIFF) - they are all interchangeable with each other and there is no reason to store multiple copies.

 

[grokit]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jensen /img/forum/go_quote.gif You are making this overly complicated. Windows can deal with ALAC fine, and there is 0 reason to create a "master archive" in AIFF. ALAC is proprietary but can easily be converted to FLAC at a moments notice. Dbpoweramp does this (google it). If you have a lossless file, whether it be FLAC, ALAC, or an uncompressed version (WAV, AIFF) - they are all interchangeable with each other and there is no reason to store multiple copies.

Thanks for the response. There's a couple of reasons I want to have a separate backup "rip" of my physical discs before I get rid of them.

One, I've worn out a few of Apple's "Superdrives" ripping audio CDs, and have noticed a few stray errors here and there in my ALAC collection. What worries me are the errors I haven't noticed yet. I am now using an older Pioneer external drive that seems much better suited for the task of decoding a large quantity of older and non-major label audio CDs without taking so long, reducing error possibilities.

Two, my ALAC collection is huge, and I like to clone and re-clone the master HDD for various listening stations. No problem for the Mac drives as they are all formatted in HFS+, but when I try to copy to a FAT32-formatted drive for use on a PC, I get errors on the overwhelming majority of my song files. I have been able to copy some individual albums, but even ALAC files from recent, major-label CDs have problems copying as well; there seems to be no rhyme or reason to which albums will copy, and which will not.

I suppose If I had originally ripped my ALAC files on the Windows side of things, I would be having no problems copying to a Mac-formatted HDD. But I didn't anticipate this situation, and I kind of doubt that when I started this journey that the HDD formats were this cross-compatible anyways. Since storage is cheap now and I'm already going to re-rip, I thought I would go one generation closer to the CD's original Redbook encoding this time around; the bonus is that I won't be tied to a proprietary format anymore either, although that has never really been a concern of mine

 

[markkr]

Quote:

Originally Posted by grokit /img/forum/go_quote.gif Thanks for the response. There's a couple of reasons I want to have a separate backup "rip" of my physical discs before I get rid of them. One, I've worn out a few of Apple's "Superdrives" ripping audio CDs, and have noticed a few stray errors here and there in my ALAC collection. What worries me are the errors I haven't noticed yet. I am now using an older Pioneer external drive that seems much better suited for the task of decoding a large quantity of older and non-major label audio CDs without taking so long, reducing error possibilities. Two, my ALAC collection is huge, and I like to clone and re-clone the master HDD for various listening stations. No problem for the Mac drives as they are all formatted in HFS+, but when I try to copy to a FAT32-formatted drive for use on a PC, I get errors on the overwhelming majority of my song files. I have been able to copy some individual albums, but even ALAC files from recent, major-label CDs have problems copying as well; there seems to be no rhyme or reason to which albums will copy, and which will not. I suppose If I had originally ripped my ALAC files on the Windows side of things, I would be having no problems copying to a Mac-formatted HDD. But I didn't anticipate this situation, and I kind of doubt that when I started this journey that the HDD formats were this cross-compatible anyways. Since storage is cheap now and I'm already going to re-rip, I thought I would go one generation closer to the CD's original Redbook encoding this time around; the bonus is that I won't be tied to a proprietary format anymore either, although that has never really been a concern of mine

Just curious which solution you've ultimately decided on?

Will you rip on PC to AIFF
Will you rip on Mac to AIFF
What software will you use to rip with?

I'm struggling with a similar situation. It seems like yesterday (7yrs ago) that I "decided" that ripping my entire collection to 320k AAC would "last me forever" (FAIL). I'm staring at nearly 1000 CD's that I want to re-rip again in some form of lossless format. I'm demo'ing dBpoweramp on my PC as we speak and its pretty sweet... but all my computer listening is done on my Macbook Pro. So maybe I should just use iTunes or Max... (this was all much easier when there were less options

)

 

[grokit]

I am staying in the iTunes universe for now, and I have started re-ripping in Windows 7, AIFF; that is what I have decided will give me the most flexibility in the future. Hopefully it will work out as my "final solution". However, I have just been informed by Microsoft that my OEM copy of W7 has lost its validity, and this is an interesting development as well, although it's more of an enterprise solution.

 

[headibob]

There are people (mathematicians and computer programmers) who spend their whole life
working on loseless compression algorithms, automatically means *NO* loss upon uncompression.

There are so many popular algorithms out there to do it, and have existed for many years. Not just on audio content, but anything you can think of, like in a fax machine, you notice if you fax a gray paper, it takes the longest, because it is the hardest to "abberiviate" the gray tone, vs black or white.

Using (2)88 or (4)8 to represent 8888 is just one of the many ways to do it.

 

[ZoNtO]

I don't get why people complain about ALAC's compatibility with software and hardware. I've never had a problem in this regard!

1. Set up EAC for bit-perfect ripping with AccurateRip.
2. Set up REACT2 Mod script with LAME and iTunesEncode for ALAC
3. Losslessly encode to ALAC
4. Download a few hundred KB file size plugin for foobar2000
5. Drag the ALAC files into Foobar and play them with WASAPI outputting to your Pico
6. Drag the ALAC files into iTunes and play them
7. Load the ALAC files on your ipod and play them
8. Enjoy the music and stop whining.

It's lossless. Lossless is lossless. And this debate is old.

 

[krmathis]

^ Well said!

 

[Jensen]

Quote:

Originally Posted by grokit /img/forum/go_quote.gif I thought I would go one generation closer to the CD's original Redbook encoding this time around; the bonus is that I won't be tied to a proprietary format anymore either, although that has never really been a concern of mine

Everyone should re-rip their music in a lossless format, so I'm glad threads like this exist to remind people of that. So I don't mean to come off rude or anything, but to people reading this thread not in the know - they need to understand that the above part of your post I quoted is misleading.

1. AIFF is not "one generation closer" to the original encoding. In a digital world - ALAC, FLAC, WAV, AIFF are all E X A C T L Y the same, sound quality wise.

leading to your next point...

2. As long as software like dbpoweramp exists (it's not going away), whether or not a format is technically proprietary has zero practical impact on the discussion. I just ripped an album into FLAC, hey I just converted it to ALAC, hey now I just converted it to AIFF, hey now I converted it back to FLAC again. And I did that in SECONDS on a modern PC. Do you see my point?

dbpoweramp is free software. I use it everyday. If you feel like using formats like AIFF to store your music thats cool. I guess it's fun to brag to friends I have a 100 gig music collection instead of a the 60 gig music collection I would have if I stored the same files in FLAC. Except that they sound exactly the same and I just wasted 40 gigs for nothing?

 

[Skylab]

dBpoweramp changed my life w/r/t FLAC and ALAC. Being able to transcode losslessly from FLACs that I download to ALAC (where my whole computer audio library lives) in one easy step makes dBpoweramp one of my most used audio tools.

 

[grokit]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jensen /img/forum/go_quote.gif Everyone should re-rip their music in a lossless format, so I'm glad threads like this exist to remind people of that. So I don't mean to come off rude or anything, but to people reading this thread not in the know - they need to understand that the above part of your post I quoted is misleading. 1. AIFF is not "one generation closer" to the original encoding. In a digital world - ALAC, FLAC, WAV, AIFF are all E X A C T L Y the same, sound quality wise. leading to your next point... 2. As long as software like dbpoweramp exists (it's not going away), whether or not a format is technically proprietary has zero practical impact on the discussion. I just ripped an album into FLAC, hey I just converted it to ALAC, hey now I just converted it to AIFF, hey now I converted it back to FLAC again. And I did that in SECONDS on a modern PC. Do you see my point? dbpoweramp is free software. I use it everyday. If you feel like using formats like AIFF to store your music thats cool. I guess it's fun to brag to friends I have a 100 gig music collection instead of a the 60 gig music collection I would have if I stored the same files in FLAC. Except that they sound exactly the same and I just wasted 40 gigs for nothing?

So now I am "misleading" people" and "bragging"? I don't think so, and I don't appreciate your insinuations

1. I do see your point, but I was not speaking of sound quality; AIFF is one digital generation closer to the original codec. That is all I said, and because of that, it may be less prone to error in the future and less proprietary. And it may not, but my original point had nothing to do with the sound quality.

I also realize that lossless formats are just that, I have made that same point myself when people try to say one lossless format inherently has better sound quality than another.

2. dBpoweramp exists only on Windows; I use it occasionally for convenience when I am using a PC. But if it is not part of iTunes and does not run on a Mac, it is not a permanent multi-platform solution that stays within the iTunes universe. And that is what I need before I get rid of my CDs, YMMV.

I do have a lot of available storage at the moment, so that is not an issue to me.

 

[davidhunternyc]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ZoNtO /img/forum/go_quote.gif It's lossless. Lossless is lossless. And this debate is old.

I don't think this debate will ever get old. I think everyone comes to this question at some point in their audio experience and this forum is the perfect place to discuss it. With that said...

In the opening post, I was also concerned with a lossless file being a generation removed from the original source than an AIFF or WAV file was. There is an extra algorithm that compresses the lossless file. I brought this up to John Atkinson but what convinced me that the files were the same, was studying the link in the opening post which shows the charts comparing the files. It is hard to argue with measurements.

 

[Skylab]

Not just that, but you can rip a CD to apple lossless, put the lossless file on an iPod, put that iPod in a Wadia i170 to get the digital signal, send that to a HDCD capable DAC, and guess what? It will properly decode the HDCD just as it would have from the original CD. Unless the ALAC was a 100% bit-perfect representation of what was on the CD, that would not work, since the HDCD subcode is buried in the least significant bit.

 

[deniall83]

Guys, i'm currently ripping my cd's in itunes to AIFF but I just wanted to know what settings to go for for best quality. It gives the option of auto and then a bunch of others. Does it make a difference?

 

[grokit]

For AIFF, unless you are trying to avoid wasting disk space for mono or spoken word or something I would just go with auto for music. If you have a 5.1 surround mix it will change from 44.1 to 48kHz on it's own if it needs to.