M4A always Apple Lossless?

K

koswo

macrumors member

Original poster

Oct 7, 2004

67

0

Belgium

• Mar 31, 2008

• #1

Hi, I understand that Apple Lossless audio files have extension M4A. Now my question is, are all files with extension M4A Apple Lossless encoded or are there also lossy files among them?

Thanks for clearing that out

 

Shotglass

macrumors 65816

Feb 4, 2006

1,175

0

• Mar 31, 2008

• #2

.m4a is for the MP4 container. Apple Lossless is a codec. The MP4 container could also carry a lossy codec like AAC.

 

Killyp

macrumors 68040

Jun 14, 2006

3,859

7

• Apr 1, 2008

• #3

Most of the songs in my iTunes library are 256kbps AAC with the .m4a extension...

 

cubbie5150

macrumors 6502a

Mar 4, 2007

744

254

• Apr 2, 2008

• #4

ALAC ftw!!! Seriously, I love the sound quality of lossless like ALAC, but on some of my music, I encode to 320kbps VBR aac....I honestly can't tell the difference on some CD's I rip. I typically (using Max) rip to both aac & ALAC, then sample a few tracks to see if there's an audible difference, if not, I keep the aac & trash the ALAC to save space (I keep all my music on my MBP HD, which is only 120GB, so I'll save space whenever I can)

 

K

kepner

macrumors 6502

Sep 7, 2003

366

2

• Apr 2, 2008

• #5

koswo said:

Hi, I understand that Apple Lossless audio files have extension M4A. Now my question is, are all files with extension M4A Apple Lossless encoded or are there also lossy files among them?

Click to expand...

M4A is not unique to the Apple Lossless format. There are also lossy files with the M4A extension.