[X4U] Which format for Music?

[DZ-Jay]

On Aug 14, 2005, at 00:51, Crandon David wrote:

> If I'm not mistaken, Apples Lossless Encoder still compresses 
> somewhat, therefore, I  believe the AIFF encoder, which is analogous 
> to the way CD's are recorded themselves, is the choice you want.

You are right in that ALEC (Apple Lossless Encoder) is compressed, but 
the compression is "lossless", meaning that after decompression you 
have essentially the original version.  Decompression is performed on 
playback, so while on disk, it uses up less space.

An AIFF file takes roughly 1MB of disk space for each minute of audio, 
while an ALEC file takes about half of that.

One more thing to consider:  ALEC is a closed Apple proprietary format, 
which at least at the moment does not contain play restrictions (like 
AAC), but there is no guarantee that this will always be the case, nor 
is there any guarantee that it will be playable on non-apple software.  
There are plug-ins for playing/decoding ALEC files from third-parties 
(and I think even on Windows), but as I understand it, they are either 
Apple-sanctioned and controlled, or created by reverse-engineering the 
format.

On the other hand, AIFF is an open standard for audio encoding, and 
transends platforms and operating systems.  It just takes more space on 
disk.

So my suggestion to the original poster is:  If you have unlimited 
space; and want the best lossless quality; and require an open format 
to guarantee access and playback on a variaty of 
players/systems/platforms; use AIFF, which is close (if not identical) 
to how audio is stored on a CD.  However, if you need to conserve disk 
space while mantaining high, lossless quality; will mostly use the 
files in a Mac environment; and don't see a reason to mistrust Apple to 
hold your files for ransom in the future (and, honestly, I don't); go 
with ALEC, same taste, less calories.

	dZ.

P.S. I imported my entire CD catalog in ALEC format, and am pretty 
happy with it.  But I know that if I had the space, I would rather use 
AIFF.