Apple's Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC) Now Open Source

[firestarter]

It seems like lots of us here rip as ALAC, then cross-compress to AAC or MP3 and use smart playlists to deploy that to our iDevices.

Since 80% of my listening is on the move, most of my play-counts and also rating changes tends to happen to the MP3 versions of my tracks while I'm out and about.

Has anyone found a script or other solution that will sync playcount/last played/rating etc across the ALAC and MP3 copies of tracks in iTunes?

 

[iChrist]

This is the way I see it, now we have two open lossless formats instead of one. And in this case ALAC provides the most generous licensing.

Only in some cases.

 

[daveathall]

There is something that people don't really understand about audio quality and the way we listen.

You already "fill in the gaps" in any sound that you hear with your brain.

digital formats with low sample rates by definition are full of holes between the samples.

That's one of the reasons why people liked SACD, because there were no holes at all. You can't hear this, but you can most certainly feel it. If you've ever been to a concert and thought that it just sounded more "alive" and real and full, that's because it is.

If you've never experienced a well-recorded SACD or DVD-Audio (or even Blu-ray Audio) album on a very good set of speakers, you've never felt the warmth and fullness that comes with it. Lossless CD quality is better than lossy, and lots of people can actually hear a difference, but when you move into high-resolution, high-sample rate audio, it's not something you hear, it's something you feel.

Great answer, I never thought of it that way, I have been to many a live concert and fully agree with you, in my younger days I also had a great HiFi system and better ears, and again, fully support your explanation. Thank you.

 

[j-traxx]

its nice but its a niche that will take time

It takes a while for something like this to catch on to the masses. only maybe .04 percent of the population can pick up a "widescreen review" and understand what they are reading and why its important. even fewer will understand the frequency response capabilities of their speakers. more people have sony receivers than have KRELL or Boothroyd Stuart Meridian discrete component systems. the whole lossless argument is moot to those that truly invest money into the experience. it'll just take time for it to catch on as the capabilities of commonly consumed audio systems come up to meet the requirements of a true "reference" listening experience. we can piss and moan forever but we just really have to wait is all.

 

[morespce54]

For those arguing the lossy vs lossless:

LAME MP3 VBR V0 vs AIFF waveforms, stereo on Audacity
Top is AIFF, bottom is LAME.
Note the flatter, rounded edges and peaks of the LAME encoding. Also note the missing smaller peaks.
Most noticeable at 15:31 mark.

The LAME has overall less music than the AIFF (obviously). Here you can see just how much is missing. Your opinion may differ, but that's quite a lot of peaks missing from the original waveform.

Now why Audacity didn't update their GUI in years i beyond me...

 

[John.B]

in this regard, i completely disagree. you only have to visit one of the many torrent websites out there and search for FLAC to see how popular the format is.

As many people are downloading the new Coldplay album in FLAC format right now as there are people looking at this forum.

Would it have helped if I'd said:

I really think some of you are vastly overestimating the real-world demand for FLAC, nobody but the Linux faithful, people who steal music, and a few audiophiles even care about it... Maybe 0.0001% of the population.

Especially given that there is some amount of overlap between the groups?

As for power usage, I had one of the few native FLAC-playing mp3 players a few years ago (rio karma), and we got our best battery life when listening to lossless FLAC files. Significantly better than MP3.

The comparison should be FLAC vs. ALAC, not FLAC vs. MP3 (esp. not VBR MP3).

 

[Eric0531]

MP3s are not "still quite good". LAME encoding has improved, but it still sucks compared to lossless.

I would bet that < 2% of people can differentiate between a lossless file and a LAME V0 encoded MP3. I know *I* can't, based on double-blind testing (but I'm 52 so I've lost some of the high-end hearing by this point). And for a portable device, I'll take the smaller file size and lesser battery hit of a LAME V0 MP3 file over ALAC.

Having said that I still only buy and archive my music in lossless, and ALAC is my format of choice.

 

[JAT]

Punch and definition are just words that mean nothing in this stuff. Using Lame with a setting V0 pretty much going to be 100% transparent. You must do a blind listening test (ABX) otherwise your results are irrelevant.

If you are of the firm scientific belief that ABX is the only way humans hear, then "transparency" is also just a word that means nothing. You should probably pick a side.

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I would bet that < 2% of people can differentiate between a lossless file and a LAME V0 encoded MP3. I know *I* can't, based on double-blind testing (but I'm 52 so I've lost some of the high-end hearing by this point). And for a portable device, I'll take the smaller file size and lesser battery hit of a LAME V0 MP3 file over ALAC.

Having said that I still only buy and archive my music in lossless, and ALAC is my format of choice.

That's pretty much me, although probably haven't lost quite as much high end as most. I just switched from my ALAC to 256k aac for mobile. Even with solid quality headphones (they aren't white earbuds), there isn't reason to have the large files for that usage. I can listen to the original at home when wanted.

 

[tkermit]

If you are of the firm scientific belief that ABX is the only way humans hear

Humans also "hear" by looking at the nameplate and having expectations about what they're supposed to be hearing. That's why you absolutely need double-blind/ABX testing in the first place if you're interested in whether there's a perceivable difference in the sound.

 

[bigwig]

This may be a dumb question but what is the difference between ALAC and DTS-HD Master audio which is found on Blu Rays?

ALAC is typically 16-bit/44KHz (though I believe it supports more), while most DTS-HD tracks on Blu-Ray are 16/48. DTS-HD supports up to 24/192 in stereo and 24/96 in multitrack, so it would make a great replacement for DVD-A and SACD, both of which are functionally dead formats, though I have yet to see any albums released on Blu-Ray.

 

[pmz]

Amazing. News.

 

[swagi]

to answer your first question:

why should i pay for lossy format? i want to buy original/or best available quality and then i'll decide how i want to compress it for whatever portable device.

space issue - are you serious?

vinyl as only physical media - for analogue recordings (old music was recorded like this) please don't destroy analogue master tapes with digital conversion for new recordings which are digital only no need for a vinyl

if you own on vinyl for example Pink Floyd (original old releases from 70s) and also CDs (I have several versions of 'remasters') every single remaster sounds like **** in comparison with vinyl.

Absolutely quoted for truth.

Vinyl always sends some shivers down my spine - people argue, that the "warmth" argument is ********, but for some odd reason I fall for it.

And that's why I will only start buying on iTunes, Amazon or the like when lossless is offered. OTOH I really like the artistry of booklet - so I will remain the physical media guy.

 

[tkermit]

ALAC is typically 16-bit/44KHz (though I believe it supports more),

It does indeed.

Apple Lossless supports the following features. [...]

1. Bit depths 16, 20, 24 and 32 bits.
2. Any arbitrary integer sample rate from 1 to 384,000 Hz. In theory rates up to 4,294,967,295 (2^32 - 1) Hz could be supported.
3. From one to eight channels are supported.

 

[Ruahrc]

ALAC is typically 16-bit/44KHz (though I believe it supports more), while most DTS-HD tracks on Blu-Ray are 16/48. DTS-HD supports up to 24/192 in stereo and 24/96 in multitrack, so it would make a great replacement for DVD-A and SACD, both of which are functionally dead formats, though I have yet to see any albums released on Blu-Ray.

I thought most DTS-MA tracks were 24/96 multichannel for blu-rays?

One nice feature of DTS-MA is that it has a hybrid/lossy mode, where a lossy standard DTS track is embedded in the MA stream. So fi your decoder does not handle the lossless stream, it can still read off the DTS lossy track and play it back. ALAC is a lossless only audio format I believe (no hybrid mode or even lossy compression for ALAC files)

My receiver is before the days of HD, and as such doesn't have support for DTS-MA.

 

[steveh]

Good news for widespread support, but one wonders why Apple didn't just go with FLAC in the first place.

ALAC requires less computational effort to decode, for starters.

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You would hope that Apple would then move all files from iTunes Match to ALAC and not 256kps..

Storage space, mostly. ALAC is about half the size of uncompressed audio, 256K AAC is much smaller, and for most purposes more than good enough.

 

[umbilical]

The nice thing is that since FLAC and ALAC are lossless, you can convert between them and lose nothing.

So if you have your music in FLAC format, it's trivial to convert to ALAC to play on your iPhone. You can even delete the FLAC files to save space, and have lost nothing.

The best utility for this is Max http://sbooth.org/Max/ which is free and open source. It can even multithread the conversion so it's quite fast on machines with lots of cores.

XLD is much better, try it

 

[JAT]

Humans also "hear" by looking at the nameplate and having expectations about what they're supposed to be hearing. That's why you absolutely need double-blind/ABX testing in the first place if you're interested in whether there's a perceivable difference in the sound.

Pretty sure I didn't comment on my beliefs about sound. And now....I still haven't!

But it almost sounds like you want to talk about psychology. So: Is audio perception solely created by sound waves that can be measured?

 

[Mr Dobey]

Apple Lossless iTunes Store

If the Apple Store went ALAC there would be no need for pirating FLAC *cough*

 

[umbilical]

great AUDIOPHILE'S news! I always use ALAC... BUT!!!!!
for some hardcore audiophiles exist a difference between AIFF vs ALAC, aiff sound a little better, but for some others is a waste of size and sound same...

is a great debate, wav vs aiff - flac vs alac

who knows... check your ears and your sound system

I never found a technical response from a big companies about that, apple talk about that differences?

 

[ABernardoJr]

I look forward to the day that hi def sound is as important to the world as hi def picture. Well that might never happen, but I mean when sound gets somewhat close in importance. Unfortunately we have companies like Bose and monster that pass off overpriced, underwhelming products as top of the line, which fools consumers into thinking they've got great sound. Now I know monster has better products with its turbines (pro, copper, gold, etc) but hardly anyone knows of those like they know of beats by dre.

At least this is a step forward!

 

[JAT]

ALAC is typically 16-bit/44KHz (though I believe it supports more), while most DTS-HD tracks on Blu-Ray are 16/48. DTS-HD supports up to 24/192 in stereo and 24/96 in multitrack, so it would make a great replacement for DVD-A and SACD, both of which are functionally dead formats, though I have yet to see any albums released on Blu-Ray.

Yes, it's basically the exact same audio potential, just different media.

Try small studios like the ones that actually created SACDs and DVD-As, they are beginning to switch to BD. All I can find from mainstream studios are concert BDs, and usually the audio is a basic DTS or DD codec, not the high-rez versions.

 

[hkenneth]

I don't have problems with ALAC. I also converted a lot of music to ALAC. But I like FLAC too. Why can't Apple support both of them in iTunes.

I don't care which one is better or potentially better. For me, they are equally good. I just want the compatibility, which, Apple always lack.

 

[MacintoshMan]

Nice step forward apple! Glad all my devices will now be aloud to play my lossless files.

 

[umbilical]

by the way, I like rip my cds to FULL uncompress .wav in 1 single file, with XLD

so i get 3 files:

album.wav
album.log
album.cue

i feel that I have a full 1:1 copy

but the bad is that iTunes dont read the .cue so is not possible see the tracks, i shame... I can rip in tracks but like I say, is like a make a full image of DVD in .iso in the .iso you cant see the chapters or scenes of the DVD right? so is the same point for music.

i want itunes read .cue !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

vlc does but vlc is not than great itunes for music, gui organization etc...

 

[subsonix]

is a great debate, wav vs aiff - flac vs alac

aif vs wav is nonsense both are uncompressed lpcm formats and variations of the riff file format. The only difference what so ever is:

a.) the header

b.) the byte order

To argue that lossless formats have a sound is like arguing that ZIP files make data disappear.