[X4U] importing audio CD as AIFF

[DZ-Jay]

On Apr 30, 2005, at 03:24, Kirk McElhearn wrote:

>
> On Apr 30, 2005, at 2:08 AM, revDAVE wrote:
>
>>> That's what I use, but being new to Macs, I gotta ask... can anybody
>>> think of a downside to using Apple Lossless?  From what I understand,
>>> it is just a compressed form of AIFF, and being lossless, it is able 
>>> to
>>> be decompressed to its original bit-stream.
>>>
>>
>>
>> Personally ... I would bet that many pro musicians and engineers would
>> highly doubt that it is able to be decompressed to its 'original'
>> bit-stream.
>
> You lose! Lossless compression for music works the same way as, say, 
> zip compression for other types of files. When you decompress a file, 
> you don't lose any letters, words or digits, do you?

But that's only because when you zip a computer file, you have access 
to its raw data via the filesystem, and you are encoding and 
compressing the original information bit by bit.  Audio CDs are not 
read directly by applications, not many commercial applications anyway; 
there are layers of abstraction in between, just to lengthen the gap 
between the digital information stored in the disc and the consumption 
of the user of it.  For many reasons, mostly political, mere mortals 
like us are not supposed to have direct access to the source material, 
at least not easy access that can lead to wholesale duplication, and 
hence piracy, by any tom, dick, or harry.

	dZ.