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CD (wav) to apple lossless to CD (wav) again lose quality

U

umbilical

macrumors 65816
Original poster
if I have a original CD and import to apple lossless and later I want burn in a CDR or convert to wav dont loose quality? I think not beacuse apple lossless is like a zip... format for music right? like convert .flac to .wav is like a unpack

thanks
 
No, the clue is in the word "lossless"...

The waveform is unchanged by the conversion process, so provided your converter is an accurate WAV encoder (and CD's are actually .aiff files) there should be no discernable loss in quality.
 
WinterMute said:
No, the clue is in the word "lossless"...

The waveform is unchanged by the conversion process, so provided your converter is an accurate WAV encoder (and CD's are actually .aiff files) there should be no discernable loss in quality.
Click to expand...
CDs are not actually .aiff files, or WAV files for that matter. They're 16-bit PCM data sampled at 44,100 Hz, but as more of a bit stream than any kind of file format.

As far as I've been led to believe, the interesting thing about an audio CD is that the data is more dense than a data CD, so audio CDs depend on CD players' error correction to play correctly.
 
There's nothing more to add to the other responses, but I'd recommend you not to use iTunes for your ripping, but XLD on OS X and if you're on Windows EAC!
Both apps are free and much more powerful in terms of error correction!
Furthermore, you could for example keep the CUE files, which make it much easier to recreate the timing of the original CD.

Also, don't worry when converting from one to another lossless audio format, because there never happens a quality loss!
 
Fallinangel said:
There's nothing more to add to the other responses, but I'd recommend you not to use iTunes for your ripping, but XLD on OS X and if you're on Windows EAC!
Both apps are free and much more powerful in terms of error correction!
Furthermore, you could for example keep the CUE files, which make it much easier to recreate the timing of the original CD.

Also, don't worry when converting from one to another lossless audio format, because there never happens a quality loss!
Click to expand...

I currently use EAC but I am wondering why not to use itunes?
 
umbilical said:
if I have a original CD and import to apple lossless and later I want burn in a CDR or convert to wav dont loose quality? I think not beacuse apple lossless is like a zip... format for music right? like convert .flac to .wav is like a unpack

thanks
Click to expand...

These file formats are lossless: Wav, Aiff, flac, and Apple lossless
Compressed files are: mp3 and AAC

So if you ever convert a song to mp3 or AAC and then want to burn a CD, quality will be lost. As long as you stick with Aiff, Wav, Apple lossless or flac, you'll be fine.
 
rhett7660 said:
I currently use EAC but I am wondering why not to use itunes?
Click to expand...

iTunes works well enough in terms of sound quality but it lacks the ability to keep information about the length of the gaps between tracks and I'm not sure about how well it does at recovering data errors on scratched discs. But you may not care about these issues
 
ChrisA said:
iTunes works well enough in terms of sound quality but it lacks the ability to keep information about the length of the gaps between tracks and I'm not sure about how well it does at recovering data errors on scratched discs. But you may not care about these issues
Click to expand...

Gotcha..... Well there is a reason I use EAC 😀.

Thanks, haven't used iTunes but I was wondering.
 
WinterMute said:
No, the clue is in the word "lossless"...

The waveform is unchanged by the conversion process, so provided your converter is an accurate WAV encoder (and CD's are actually .aiff files) there should be no discernable loss in quality.
Click to expand...

In theory, but remember there will always be variations whenever you read or write a CD from what you actually want it to be, hence why CD transports incorporate error correction to try and compensate.

So no, your CD after being copied will not be a bit-for-bit exact duplicate of the source disk as pressed from the factory. Will you notice the difference? That is debatable. If you're concerned about accuracy use software like EAC, and read and write at reduced speeds instead of your drives maximum write speed.
 
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