[351Cleveland]

Apologies in advance if this particular question has been posed before, but I searched and haven't been able to find any info on this subject.

I'm in the process of importing all of my cd's as .wav files so that I can convert them to AAC and LAME mp3, but I'm running into a storage capacity issue. If I re-import my cd's using Apple Lossless to free up some space, would I be able to get the same sound quality from an mp3 converted from Lossless, as opposed to an mp3 converted from .wav? Thanks for any info anyone can provide.

 

[HipHopScribe]

Yes, you get the same quality going from wav to mp3 as from apple lossless (or any lossless encoding) to mp3

 

[ILikeMusic]

If you're going to be converting to AAC or MP3 for your player anyway then I would suggest a non-proprietary format such as FLAC instead of Apple Lossless for archiving. Copying all of your CDs is a lot of work for a large library and you don't want to be tied to any specific manufacturer's hardware or software.

And as mentioned there is no quality hit if you convert from FLAC or Apple Lossless to compressed, the compressed lossless formats are exactly the same as their original WAV files in terms of SQ.

 

[krmathis]

That depends on the audio data stored in the WAV container.
If its PCM, you will get identical results. If its lossy encoded (ex. MP3), you will benefit from using Lossless files as a source.

 

[scompton]

iTunes can convert your wav files to alac. Just do as much as you have disk space for and delete the wav files after converting. I believe you can use foobar to convert from wav to flac in the same way. There's no real reason to save your music as wav. No mater which lossless format you use you'll never have enough disk space

Start saving for a bigger hard drive.