I’m thinking of converting all my CDs to a lossless format, mainly for listening to through a relatively high end system such as the Naim Uniti. However, I’m aware there are several different formats, none of which I’m particularly familiar with (.wav files aside).

That’s the best option for compatibility across systems, and potential futureproofing?

EAC & Lame

Flac format is becoming the most popular lossless file type for music.
Wav files don´t let you put tags.
Apple insist on their own lossless format (Alac), don´t bother with it.
Mediamonkey will let you convert between the lossless formats.

They´ll all sound the same if they come from the same source.

Is LAME lossless? I thought FLAC was where people normally went if they wanted to rip to lossless

Edit: I see you’ve just answered that 🙂

lots of non apple media devices these days play flac lossless format.

mp3 players, phones, av receivers amps,media players etc. most decent ones do.
you really cant say that for any other lossless format.
there are other formats that may compress slightly better or have other advantges, non of which will play on hardware devices but ok for pc use.

FLAC

Mine’s all ripped to FLAC with dbpoweramp. Job done (what a job it was though!)

What is wrong with Apple Lossless?
Or is this just a “I hate iTunes” issue?

What is wrong with Apple Lossless?

Dunno – that’s why I asked.

Compatibility with iOS devices is irrelevant as I don’t need lossless for that – however I presume as Apple lossless is proprietary, cross compatibility with other systems is an issue?

will you realllllllly tell the difference if you ripped mp3 >128?

will you realllllllly tell the difference if you ripped mp3 >128?

Yes.

Next question…

will you realllllllly tell the difference if you ripped mp3 >128?

Yes.

No-one has been able to prove they can tell a difference between a CD and 320kbps MP3s in proper blind tests though, including top professional sound engineers etc.

No-one has been able to prove they can tell a difference between a CD and 320kbps MP3s in proper blind tests though, including top professional sound engineers etc.

my thoughts exaclty hense the > symbol!

No-one has been able to prove they can tell a difference between a CD and 320kbps MP3s in proper blind tests though, including top professional sound engineers etc.

Reference? (Or is this just your overstated perception?)

my thoughts exaclty hense the > symbol!

Your > symbol was ambiguous, as it had a starting point of 128.0000000000……..1 kbps

Reference? (Or is this just your overstated perception?)

There’s been various other threads where I posted links. Out and about on my phone at the mo so I CBA finding them right now. Not meaning to derail your thread but I’ve worked as a sound engineer and have a degree in music/music production and I’ve looked into this quite a bit and I’m confident it’s true.

Take that with however big a pinch of salt you like. 🙂

Take that with however big a pinch of salt you like.

I intend to. All I know is that every time we have friends over, and argument between them almost always ensues when I have music on as the bloke quite happily canned all his wife’s CDs and LPs for 256 kbps tracks. Clearly this was a contentious move as Georgia take great delight in pointing out how good music sounds through my system from LP / CD. Jason usually just mumbles at this point….

But joking aside, I won’t be doing blind tests, I’ll be listening using my own perception. As HD space is cheap, I see no reason to deliberately omit information, even at 320 kbps. If I’m spending $4k on a HiFi, saving a few cents on HD space doesn’t make a huge amount of sense.

My non partisan suggestion:
Check what formats your playback kit supports.
Rip a selection of music to all of these formats.
Listen and decide which one you like.
Future proofing = hanging on to your CD or Vinyl originals. Digital formats are permanent work in progress.

Nah. I don’t reckon anyone can tell the difference.
My Alba music centre sounds no different to the old Bush one.
🙂

Bear in mind that essentially you are demoing a new Source.

Future proofing = hanging on to your CD or Vinyl originals. Digital formats are permanent work in progress.

The vinyl won’t be going anywhere, but I do plan to migrate the CDs to the loft. Marriage is all about compromise (so my wife tells me), and if I get a new HiFi in response for ‘making space’ by ripping my CDs, then provided I’m not losing quality, I don’t mind 🙂

Zokes, I don’t know where you live but if you’re near North Wales I’d be happy to let you listen to my Cyrus kit

But joking aside, I won’t be doing blind tests, I’ll be listening using my own perception. As HD space is cheap, I see no reason to deliberately omit information, even at 320 kbps. If I’m spending $4k on a HiFi, saving a few cents on HD space doesn’t make a huge amount of sense.

As long as you believe that lossless sounds better you’ll be golden then. 🙂

It’s a fair point about HD space not being expensive though I guess.

I ripped lots of vinyl to flac a few years back, it just wasn´t convenient to carry it all with me. At the same time I made 320kbp mp3 files to be able to stuff on the mp3 player. All the CD´s and DVD´s I owned were sold/given away. I see it as a dead format like cassette.

Nowadays, with cheaper memory and better players I just stick the flac files in the mp3 (Sansa Clip+).

No hate towards the itunes/Apple stuff but I try to steer away from proprietary formats, if you have an iphone I´m sure there´s an app for flac files.

Sony are as bad with their Atrac files.
Flac is just easier,

As long as you believe that lossless sounds better you’ll be golden then.

Many people believe much weirder things than the logic that losing information also means you must lose some quality 😉 Just take a look at the antics in Rome over the past few weeks…

Zokes, I don’t know where you live but if you’re near North Wales I’d be happy to let you listen to my Cyrus kit

And thanks for the offer, and about 4 years ago I’d have taken you up on it, but I now live in Adelaide, South Australia – a bit far to pop round for a cuppa! But, if I didn’t have the job I do here, I wouldn’t be in a position to seriously consider Naim / Cyrus – vicious circle I suppose. Thankfully, there’s a high-eng HiFi shop just opened less than 100 yards from my doorstep. It didn’t take me long to pop in for a chat!

Mine’s all ripped to FLAC with dbpoweramp. Job done (what a job it was though!)

Mine too. Took a few evenings on dbpoweramp which I can recommend. To make sure beforehand I did a some A to B comparisons between the same music on FLAC and the native wav and couldn’t tell them apart.

however I presume as Apple lossless is proprietary, cross compatibility with other systems is an issue?

Apple Lossless, also known as Apple Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC), or Apple Lossless Encoder (ALE), is an audio codec developed by Apple Inc. for lossless data compression of digital music. After initially keeping it proprietary for many years from its inception in 2004, in late 2011 Apple made the codec available open source and royalty-free. Traditionally, Apple has referred to the codec as Apple Lossless, though more recently they have begun to use the abbreviated term ALAC when referring to the codec.[1]

Apple Lossless data is stored within an MP4 container with the filename extension .m4a. This extension is also used by Apple for lossy AAC audio data in an MP4 container (same container, different audio encoding). However, Apple Lossless is not a variant of AAC (which is a lossy format), but rather a distinct lossless format that uses linear prediction similar to other lossless codecs. These other lossless codecs, such as FLAC and Shorten, are not natively supported in Apple’s iTunes software, either in desktop operating systems (Mac OS or Windows) or iOS devices, so users of iTunes software who want to use a lossless format which allows the addition of metadata (unlike WAV/AIFF or other PCM-type formats, where metadata is usually ignored) have to use ALAC.[2] All current iDevices can play ALAC–encoded files. ALAC also does not use any DRM scheme; but by the nature of the MP4 container, it is thought that DRM could be applied to ALAC much the same way it can with files in other QuickTime containers.
According to Apple, audio files compressed with its lossless codec will use up “about half the storage space” that the uncompressed data would require. Testers using a selection of music have found that compressed files are about 40% to 60% the size of the originals depending on the kind of music, which is similar to other lossless formats.[3][4] Furthermore, compared to many other formats, it is not as difficult to decode, making it practical for a limited-power device, such as iOS devices.[5]

Another thing to add is that despite them both being lossless files, ALAC always seems to take up a bit more space than a FLAC of the same track in my experience. Not really sure what else they’re putting in there, maybe their compression isn’t as good as they think.

No-one has been able to prove they can tell a difference between a CD and 320kbps MP3s in proper blind tests though, including top professional sound engineers etc.

There’s been various other threads where I posted links. Out and about on my phone at the mo so I CBA finding them right now. Not meaning to derail your thread but I’ve worked as a sound engineer and have a degree in music/music production and I’ve looked into this quite a bit and I’m confident it’s true.

On this I absolutely agree with Grum. I found an app that could play FLAC files, plus I converted some FLAC downloads to lossless, and put those on my phone, just to do a comparison with my usual 320Kb ripped files. Listening through UE TripleFi 10 Studio monitors, I really couldn’t hear any significant difference in sound quality, certainly nothing that made it worth the loss of space that having lots of music in those formats would entail.
I remember the Gadget Show once did a blind comparison using some seriously high-end audio kit, playing the same tracks on vinyl, CD, and 320Kb AAC, and the unanimous verdict was that the 320Kb tracks on the iPod sounded best!
What I do know is that there’s a far greater difference in track quality depending on how the songs were originally mastered than there is between FLAC/Lossless/320Kb AAC(MP4).