Apple Lossless use

[Morod]

Hey again,
I've been hearing a lot of good things about Apple Lossless for audio work. How do I access it? I download some songs from the iTunes Store, and occasionally burn a CD of my songlists to play in the car. With either of these tasks, is Apple Lossless an option to use? Could anyone tell me where to find out more about this? Thanks!
Morod
PS... I tried a search on this site and there were 425 hits. I checked the first 50 and none had what I was looking for.

 

[zachsilvey]

Apple Lossless is a compression codec that preserves the full audio quality while reducing file size. It can be acesessed in the ripping menu of iTunes. Keep in mind that if you download a song from iTunes Music Store it is compressed so if you burn it and rerip it, it will still be at the same quality. Also Lossless files are much larger, about 30 megs a song.

 

[PlaceofDis]

Apple Lossless is a compression codec that preserves the full audio quality while reducing file size. It can be acesessed in the ripping menu of iTunes. Keep in mind that if you download a song from iTunes Music Store it is compressed so if you burn it and rerip it, it will still be at the same quality. Also Lossless files are much larger, about 30 megs a song.

you'll actually lose a bit of quality burning and then re-ripping.

but yes its a codec for ripping your songs.

 

[ChrisA]

Hey again,
I've been hearing a lot of good things about Apple Lossless for audio work. How do I access it? I download some songs from the iTunes Store, and occasionally burn a CD of my songlists to play in the car. With either of these tasks, is Apple Lossless an option to use?

No, Apple lossless is not going to help you at all.

What it is usfull for is if you have a CD rip the tracks and need to compress the files to save space. You could use AAC or MP3 or Apple Lossless.

They call it "lossless" because unlike AAC or MP3 nothing is lost in the compression process. So, if you start with AAC you have already lost information and sound quality converting the format will not get this back.

 

[ChrisA]

you'll actually lose a bit of quality burning and then re-ripping.

If you were to re-rip it to MP3 or AAC, then yes you loose quality in the process but if you rip to lossless the result your ears hear is bit for bit identical to what you had when you started except of course the files size is now "way huge".