Is there a way to have uncompressed audio and still have iTunes recognize them?

I'm not understanding the problem. Lossless format is compressed, but it does not impact sound quality. Apple Lossless (ALAC), FLAC, WAV, and AIFF are all lossless. No quality in sound is lost. You are fine and ALAC will stream via Airplay without a loss in quality as well.

Destroysall.

iTunes, AirPlay and express all recognise and work well with apple lossless. You're all set!
Is something not working?

Destroysall said:

I'm not understanding the problem. Lossless format is compressed, but it does not impact sound quality. Apple Lossless (ALAC), FLAC, WAV, and AIFF are all lossless. No quality in sound is lost. You are fine and ALAC will stream via Airplay without a loss in quality as well.

Destroysall.

Click to expand...

Just to expand and make more clear. ALAC and FLAC are compressed but lossless (like a zip file). WAV and AIFF are uncompressed and lossless. For understanding MP3 and ACC are compressed and lossy (not CD quality).

ALAC (FLAC is not supported in iTunes) is the best bet since you get full CD quality at about 50% of the file size and can be converted to any other format (lossy AAC/MP3 or lossless WAV/AIFF/FLAC). iTunes, Airpot, Apple TV and all iDevices (sans Shuffle) support ALAC.

AIFF and WAV can be used in iTunes but you lose metadata and doesn't (I think) stream to Airport.

since i've never tried, i'll ask.

are 24-bit 96k or 192k files supported in iTunes?

spoonie1972 said:

since i've never tried, i'll ask.

are 24-bit 96k or 192k files supported in iTunes?

Click to expand...

iTunes, yes; iPods don't.

http://www.audioquest.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/CAD-WhitePaper-220dpi.pdf

Imola Ghost said:

Considering that hard drive storage is not a problem I'd like to find a way to rip/encode all of my compact discs to the hard drive without compressing them BUT still be able to stream, install & play in iTunes, airplay to Apple TV's or Airport Express.

I have them all in Apple Lossless but since I have TONS of storage space and I care about the audio quality what are my options?

Click to expand...

Apple Lossless is lossless. You won't get any more quality from a WAV or AIFF encode of the same file.

Imola Ghost said:

Considering that hard drive storage is not a problem I'd like to find a way to rip/encode all of my compact discs to the hard drive without compressing them BUT still be able to stream, install & play in iTunes, airplay to Apple TV's or Airport Express.

I have them all in Apple Lossless but since I have TONS of storage space and I care about the audio quality what are my options?

Click to expand...

So what is the point? Lossless is bit per bit identical to uncompressed except it takes less space.

But there is one more this. There is less disk I/O. I mean it requires less resources to read the lossless files from the disk so your computer can do other stuff. It's not just about space on the drive, it is about getting those bits up and down the cable, If iTubes puts 1/2 as many bits down the cable then other software has some bandwidth available.

If empty disk space is a problem, go shoot some video that will fill it up.