Apple lossless question

hi, does apple lossless just pertain to CDs that are imported?
Would I be wasteing my time tring to burn cd quaulity music, by purchasing an iTunes plus album and burning wav? Is 256 the best I'll get from iTunes "today"? Not tring to sound wordy, but thanks in advance.

hi, does apple lossless just pertain to CDs that are imported?
Apple Lossless can be used for music imported from CDs or converted from AIFF.
Would I be wasteing my time tring to burn cd quaulity music, by purchasing an iTunes plus album and burning wav? Is 256 the best I'll get from iTunes "today"?
You cannot purchase audio content from iTunes with a bitrate over 256Kbps at this time.
(34821)

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Apple Lossless file type question....

I rip CD's with my preferences set to Apple Lossless. I import from the iTunes store, also supposedly Apple Lossless. However, the music files are labelled as AAC or protected AAC (get info>file type)
Why is this?
Fabian

I thought that all content from the iTunes store was Apple Lossless files (either 128 or 256 for +).
It isn't. It's AAC content at those bitrates. Apple doesn't sell Apple Lossless songs.
Shouldn't the file type come up as Apple Lossless rather than AAC?
See above.
Isn't AAC a lossy file type, different from Apple Lossless?
AAC is lossy.
(40753)

Head Spinning on Creating a Apple Lossless and AAC libraries

I am contemplating archiving all my CDs to an Applelossless library using iTunes. Before doing so, I have some questions. We are in a WIN XP environment.
1) How do I convert an Apple Lossless album to AAC format with all the album info in tack to a separate iTunes library?
2) How do I give multiple WIN XP users access to this single AAC library via iTunes to load their iPod or buy music for this single AAC library?
3) If I add CDs to the Apple Lossless library using iTunes, is there a way to keep the AAC library automatically in sync?
Is there a better approach I should consider?
Thanks for the help experts!

To set up another library in the same Windows user account hold down the shift key when starting iTunes. In one library have your lossless files. In the other library have the AAC files. In the second library import the lossless files with settings set to convert to AAC. To allow multiple users access to the same file store the library where they both have access. Each library is independent, changes in one are not made in the other automatically. You will have to add to one in lossless, go to other library then import the files there.
Better approach. Maybe. I think it is a waste of space to use Apple lossless. My hearing can't tell from AAC 192k from CD. So I just use AAC at 192k or 160k. Even lower for audiobooks.

Apple Lossless vs. AAC 256k - and best way to change

I originally imported all my 1500 cds as Apple lossless files figuring that would give me the best audio quality for playing back through my AppleTV. But I have realized that sometimes my bandwidth is not enough (when other are downloading from their computers in the house) and the playback stutters. I also want to be able to fit more songs on my iphone.
So now I am thinking about re-encoding using AAC 256khz - I do not think I can really hear much difference.
Firstly what are your opinion on the relative quality of AAV vs. Apple Lossless files....
and secondly is it best to re-encode by ripping all my cds again (please say no) or can I just select all the lossless files in itunes and have it convert them all to AAC - and if that is the best way how do it do it....?
Many thanks for your help...

Well, I have the same question. So last night I compared the original CD vs. Apple Lossless vs. AAC 256kbit/s.
And to be honest: I cant really hear a difference between AL & AAC@256.
When I knew which version I was hearing I felt that AL is a bit more clear in the highrange. But when I closed my eyes and asked my girlfriend to randomly pic a quality, I only guessed right in 6 out of 10 trys. So I guess I cant tell the difference.
My heaphones are Audio Technica: http://www.audio-technica.com/cms/headphones/e69d047fa2f50ad9/index.html
The tested music was electronic/trance & pop/rock.
In case I later start hearing classic music or jazz, I might do this test again.
Kind regards,
Jan
Message was edited by: Jan Riggert

Control Button not working for Apple Lossless Music

I have a brand new black iPod shuffle and the control button in the middle has been problematic, at best, with my Apple Lossless music that I had on my PC.
When I push the control button, I get nothing. Only the female voice telling me what that track name is. I've attempted different "button pushing" methods such as once, twice, three times, as well as durations, 250 ms, 500 ms, 1 second. Nothing seems to work, I don't have any 128 kbps (garbage in my opinion) to try it out on.
Suggestions?

Thanks for the response, couple of questions...
1. Do you have the "Manual Music Manage" or similar button checked on your 3G shuffle?
2. Did you put the lossless CD tracks in a playlist, or just "heap" them in a giant list (like I have, I don't do playlists)?
3. Did you use iTunes (8.1.x) to do the ripping, or an older version. These lossless tracks are quite old, I don't even think that I had v8 when I originally did them.
Message was edited by: NKS Guy

AirPlay lossless question

I have my Mac Mini's iTunes library loaded with Apple Lossless albums (ripped from CD).
The Mac mini is a 2011 model.
I have a Pioneer X-SMC3-K, which supports AirPlay.
My question is, am I getting ALAC quality from the Pioneer when streaming over AirPlay from the Mac Mini, even though the Pioneer doesn't natively support ALAC?

Assuming Pioneer is using the same implementation across all its products (I have a VXS-1121 receiver), yes. It can send ALAC up to 16/44 over Airplay.

AAC vs. Apple Lossless, Library Setup

I'm just starting out with setting up my iTunes Library on a new hard drive (20GB), which I'm pretty much going to devote to music. Under the Preferences > Advanced Tab > Importing, we have the choice of encoding, and I'm not sure which would be better, AAC or Apple Lossless (?)
I'm planning to import around 400 CDs, and I've got another internal hard drive (120GB), to which I could go. This brings up, another question. When I set the place for my iTunes library, should I put in one spot, say on this newer, bigger hard drive, or could I split it across two different drives? If I wanted to move the library, after it's filled, how much of a problem is that?

M,
The AAC format uses about 1MB per minute of song (5MB for a 5 minute song), where the Apple Lossless Encoder requires about 5MB per minute of song (25MB for the same 5 minute song). The AAC format is quite sufficient for ipod and computer speaker use. You may want to consider the larger Apple Lossless or even AIFF for music intended for playback on elaborate home stereo and theater use, but the AIFF format is the largest (about 10MB per minute of song, or 50MB for a 5 minute song). Be aware that Apple Lossless encoded songs will only play on iTunes, quicktime apps and certain ipod models (not all). What that means is that if you burn a CD in Apple Lossless, it will not play on your home CD player. The only way to use Apple Lossless on your home CD player will be through an airport express.
I regret I do not know the answer to your second question regarding splitting a library over two hard drives.
Hope this helped.
Terry

Apple Lossless drains my iPod's power!

After doing the battery tests on my Ipod, I've realised that while I can get the full 20 hour battery life from it, if I import songs using Apple Lossless, the battery life is reduced to just 12.5 hours. Does anyone know the reason for this? Does Apple Lossless consume more power? Will anyone from Apple actually answer my question?

Apple lossless files are much larger in comparison to files compressed at say 128kbps or 160kbps.
As such, the iPod's cache has to load more frequently and this inolves spinning up the hard drive more than usual.
Hence the reduced battery playback time.
Typically, any file larger than about 9MB will start to have a noticeable effect on the battery.

Apple Lossless as a Movie

Hi all,
I have recently bought an iPod 5G (not arrived yet), so I'm editing all my audio files, and I've noticed that Apple Lossless files (with .m4a file extension) are listed as Movie files. How to fix this problem? Will I have the same problem on my iPod?

If I understood right your question (I'm Italian), there's the info of the file from Windows Explorer:
http://prntscr.com/3qsow8
http://prntscr.com/3qsnhg
And this is the iTunes window:
http://prntscr.com/3qsoji
Those files were originally FLAC, but I read on the internet that iPod doesn't read this file extension so I have converted the files (with a software called "Super") to Apple Loseless (hopefully the quality will be almost the same)

Apple Lossless & automatic mono/stereo detection?

Apple lossless is supposed to have auto detection when it comes to mono or stereo. Unlike AAC, there is no option to choose. However, when I rip older mono music in lossless and look at a file summary of the track by entering command i, it is indicating stereo. Is this problem? I would think that a mono file that has been changed to stereo would be larger than necessary and have more noise.

Just as a footnote to your original question :
There are two slightly different uses of the word 'mono' - one for analogue, the other for digital.
In the analogue world, recording engineers use a single track to create a mono recording, then mix it to two identical tracks so it comes out of both speakers
In the digital world, mono means using only a single channel so that files are only half the size - a player (e.g. minidisc) would then output the single track to both channels
As your old mono CDs are in effect 2-track mono (as a mono vinyl album would be also), Apple Lossless simply detects this and thinks of it as 'stereo', not being sophisticated or clever enough to analyse both channels and see they are the same. It would need that information to be encoded into the CD's digital footprint, and I don't believe that it is.

Moving to Apple lossless, impact on playlists

I am considering a move to Apple Lossless (instead of mp3). My concern is that I have a lot of playlists that specifically address the mp3 file names. This brings me to my questions: (1) Is there any way to swap the Apple Lossless format files for the mp3 ones (identical song), leaving all playlists with updated file addresses? (2) If not, is there a way to search playlists to see where a particular song is located? I could then manually replace each song before deleting the mp3). (3) Any other suggestions on how I can make this swap between mp3 and Apple lossless files?

There are two types of playlist that iTunes uses.
Ones where you drag tacks manually in to them
Ones where you define rules so that tracks are automatically added to them - so called 'smart playlists'.
For the former, if you re-import your tracks in a different format (in this case Apple Lossless) you would have to drag them again to the playlist and remove the old MP3 ones from the playlist. The later is easy as you can sort by 'kind' and select all the MP3 tracks in one go and remove them from the playlist.
For the 'smart' playlist, you can check the rules and they may already pickup the desired tracks, or you can edit the rules. For example your rule might say something like -
for this playlist add all tracks of Genre 'Country and Western'
you could add an additional rule to this to make
for this playlist add all tracks of Genre 'Country and Western'
and that are of kind 'Apple Lossless'

Streaming Apple Lossless Music via Aiport Express

I'd like to rip my cd collection to my desktop and then stream it to another room via the Airport Express. I'd like to store the music in Apple Lossless. My question is does the streamed music get compressed lower than Apple Lossless in order to stream to the Airport Express that will be attatched to my stereo?

Jazzman (that's funny since I am a professional Jazz
musician...:-)),
since I use iTunes and AirPort Express I have
upgraded my stereo system way up. I'm using a DENON
AV Receiver and Klipsch Reference RF-7 loudspeakers.
The AAC 128 kb/s file sound is awesome!! As a
by-product of the psycho-acoustic compression the
sound is warmer and wider than the original; a little
like vinyl albums (if you have a good turntable). I
have made a lot of blindfold tests among friends
playing iTunes over AE with optical cable connected,
an average CD player and a very good DVD player (just
using it as an audio player). iTunes always sounded
best - with AAC 128 kb/s streaming!
I would even go so far and recommend the compression,
since it gives you a more natural sound than the
original. I know it sounds odd, but that's the way it
is. AAC compression is invented by Dolby
Laboratories, one of the most renowned professional
studio suppliers.
Best regards
Roman
Roman, I'm old enough to remember the great sound of LP's on an AR turntable using Shure III cartridge and Koss Pro4a headphones driven by a Pioneer Integrated Amp. I have to give it a try again with the ACC 128 as opposed to lossless.
I'll add one more thing the iPod does sound great with a headphone amplifier driving Sennheiser 600/650's. I'm using a Emmeline SR-71, and a Headroom Headcase Bag by Headroom. No, I don't work for these companies. I just thought those seeking the ultimate in mobile sound might be interested.
Thanks for your help!

Synching and re-encoding Apple Lossless tracks

Hi,
I'm a brand new apple customer and first time poster - bought my first ipod recently - 80gb version. Anyhow, am brand new to ipod and itunes. To kick off my relationship I ripped about 200 of my favourite CDs using apple lossless. Now, it's all wonderful and being a bit of an audiophile(i'm not really that smug!), it sounds pretty good. So, I'm surprised to find that it really chews batterly life. Three hours or so is all I can get. This brings me onto my question;
Is it possible to resize a track when synching. I ask because in the past I've used Windows Media Player with a Sony Ericsson Walkman phone and I could resize and re-encode tracks as I transfered. I've searched all that I could and there's nothing glaring at me to suggest that I can or cannot so I'm a little unsure. Perhaps I'm missing something.
Anyhow, hope someone can advise....
Thanks
VR

Is it possible to resize a track when synching.
Only with the iPod Shuffle.
And you are correct in resizing the songs will most likely cure the problem.
The iPod has a buffer of ~32MB, which is about 8 songs in AAC 128 kbps. With Apple lossles, it's about 1 song.
If a song is longer than the buffer, the HD will spin continuously until it will all fit into the buffer. Or spin when it needs to load more data. In your case, it will likely spin up for every song.

Will new ATV stream apple lossless?

I put all my CDs in itunes in the Apple Lossless format which synced to my old AppleTV because I wanted my music in the highest quality. The specs say the new ATV supports Apple Lossless, but my question is: does that mean it will stream in that high quality format or support it? Are they synonymous? I like the idea of digitizing my music and having assess to any musical tracks but don't want to sacrifice the music quality.

I am in a similar situation as the original poster--I have my entire library in apple lossless. Part of this library was created in apple lossless from CDS directly in iTunes, but some of it was converted to apple lossless from a previous FLAC library. I read a different thread from 2008 that apple lossless files that were created using a conversion may not stream on ATV, even though they work on iPod, iTunes, etc. Is this still the case with the new ATV? If not, I'm off to buy one tomorrow!
As an aside, I wonder will consumers ever be able to download music from the iTunes store in lossless format? I am still buying CDs and ripping because this is not available....
Thanks for the help!

Apple Lossless streaming on Apple TV

When streaming Apple Lossless files on on Apple TV, what is the maximum bitrate? I realize Apple TV can stream AAC and MP3 files at 320 kbps, but what about Apple Lossless file that can often provide up to 1,000 kbps? Does Apple TV support such high bitrates? (I know the sampling is always 16 bit / 48 kHz).

Hello. For some reason, your reply to my May 2 post, has disappeared, though I still have it in email. I've reposted in below.
First, let me thank you for taking the time to answer my questions. I'm confident that you've zeroed in on a solution. The clarity of your response is greatly appreciated.
Your points about compressed/lossy formats make sense. This explains the lower bitrates for those formats.
You also asked about the original source of my alac (Apple Lossless) files. As you may have guessed, the original files are typical itunes downloads, which I understand are usually MP3s at 256 kbps.
I had assumed that running them through the itunes converter would transform them into proper (16/44.1) lossless files with the associated bitrates ranging around 1,000 kbps -- with a much richer sound.
At first glance, it would appear that I was wrong. Merely upsampling the music has created larger files but without the added clarity, depth and soundstage. That's how I read your previous post. Again, correct me if I am wrong about this.
However, there is a twist.
As I mentioned, when I play these alac files through Apple TV -- through homesharing on my computer -- they sound no better than the 256k files. However, when I play the same files through the foobar2000 media streaming software, they sound much better and show the proper bitrates at around 1,000 kbps.
On this last question, my ears may be playing tricks on me, but I don't think so. I'm playing the files through a good system: an audiolab 8200CDQ pre-amp and 8200p power amp.
So, this has me stumped.
One last question: what is the point of having a program that upconverts MP3/AAC files to lossless if there is no improvement in sound quality. Why would you have a bigger file that sounds just as bad as the small one?
Regards
Here is your May 3 post, which has disappeared from the websit.
May 3
No problem. Sorry for the long reply.
I see what you mean about my equation. All 16/48 stereo signals would equate to 1536kbps. If you changed the sample rate to 44.1 (what CDs use) or something else, then the bitrate would change.
Now thats for uncompressed formats like WAV, AIFF, and PCM. And in the case of Airplay, the stream getting sent to the AppleTV is always uncompressed, no matter the the original format (aac, mp3, apple lossless, etc).
AAC files (and mp3, wma) are known as compressed formats: some fancy math equations are used to reduce the file size w/o your brain noticing the missing bits, so that initial stream (1536 kbps for instance) gets reduced to 320 kbps or lower in order to fit more songs on your device. the way this happens is really crazy but if you want to learn about it theres a magazine that did a good article. WARNING, its really technical!: http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/apr12/articles/lost-in-translation.htm
you seem to be able to hear the difference between compressed and uncompressed formats. many people do but many dont. It all depends on your hearing, sound equipment, etc. I was wondering if the reason your not hearing a difference btwn apple lossless and aac might be because of where the lossleess files came from. did you rip them from CD's or convert them from another format? If they didn't come from CD's, WAV, or AIFF files, you probably won't hear a difference, because you can't "upconvert" from something like AAC to Apple Lossless and get higher sound quality. If they came from CDs, then maybe the AAC versions are just really good quality to begin with and so you are having a hard time telling. That article has some examples of the same music in different formats, so you can test your ears and see if you notice a difference.
bE

Apple lossless question

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