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First Look: Apple Lossless Audio

Where there is a lot of layering in a song, I think its worth it. Or where the production quality of the original is so pristine, AAC just doesn't cut it. Two good examples are Radiohead's Amnesiac and Beck's Mellow Gold. Amnesiac has never sounded tolerable in either mp3 or AAC format, at any bit rate. But in lossless, it is, well, lossless. Good as the original. I imagine this is due to the number of discrete tracks involved in many of the songs, but I can't say for sure. With Mellow Gold, the high quality of the production of the original just makes compression more noticeable. Compare this with some old Rolling Stones songs. I couldn't really tell much of a difference between lossless and AAC. By the way, these songs are being played on a G5, out through an M-Audio Delta 44 card, to a Mackie Analog Mixer, to an Alesis 100 Amp, to a pair of Audix Studio monitors. Not the best professional home studio gear, but not too bad either.

heynessone@yahoo.com

The real question for anyone making decisions about audio codec is 'where are you listening to this music?'
If you are walking around town with your ipod, driving in your car, sitting on an airplane, or otherwise generally in transit I don't believe that you will be able to discern the difference between AAC and AIFF. Most folks are listening on headphones that wouldn't allow you to hear the details that exist in a well recorded and mixed full-code audio stream. Certainly the included ipod headphones don't. It is true that Itunes (and downloadable audio formats for that matter) is starting to take it's place as a primary listening format in some circles. IF you are one of the smaller percentage that is listening on high quality equipment in your home then you could potentially hear the difference with the lossless format -- although if you are listening to current 'pop radio' hits only, they have taken any dynamic guesswork out if it for you and it will most likely sound exactly the same on just about any system.

If you are grabbing the pod and running off to the gym. . forget it. Just enjoy the portability.

hh - nyc

Yes, I think that's a good point. But that's all the more reason to appreciate Apple giving us increasing options. For pro audio performance situations and listening to the occasional track in lossless (I carry around Sennheiser noise-reducing headphones that give a little more detail than the iPod buds), Lossless is terrific.

For the vast majority of recording/passable lossy format combinations, nobody is able (even with the best equipment) in double-blind testing to reliably tell which is the high-bitrate lossy encoded version and which is the lossless version. That isn't to say that there isn't a difference or that absolutely none of the extra information preserved is audible to any listeners, but still, for one-time listening purposes, if the compression rate matters at all, you're generally better off to use a lossy format.

The primary advantage of a lossless codec - just like a lossless graphics format- is that it can be edited or reencoded without creating noticeable artifacts. If you are saving a photographic image for people to view on a bandwidth-sensitive web page, you will probably want to save it as a lossy jpeg- but you had better keep the much larger png, raw, or tiff lossless version of it around in case you ever want to edit it, resize it, save it as a different lossy format (jpeg2000?) which can achieve better compression, etc. Otherwise you will find that both the compressibility and image quality decline sharply. One oversimplifing and probably slightly misleading explanation: Any tiny difference for or in the lossy compressor will change which data it attempts to preserve and which it discards, and in a lossy file there's no way to tell what information is from the original image or recording and what is an artifact of the compression scheme. Likewise, for putting on your portable player, good lossy codecs such as AAC or Vorbis are your best bets- but you want to keep a lossless copy around in case you ever want to edit it, re-encode it, or whatever else.

I read the claim that few could hear the difference with the ACC and source, but within 40 seconds comparing them on my Digidesign MBox > Tannoy PBM5 monitors the difference was obvious. I should note I'm 45 and I'm betting that for folks half my age it's night and day for anyone with a serious interest in music and decent speakers.

I sit ripping to lossless now, listening on B&W 800s. These are great speakers and they're going in a big new room addition. It's looking like Lossless costs 33c per CD (x2 for backup) at current firewire drive prices...

Anyone suggest a DAC? Yes there are high end folks who worry about artifacts like transport jitter who would pupu the idea of iTunes into even a high end DAC, say via SPDIF. I'd be curious as to what folks are using. The MBox on its own sounds pretty bad in a/b tests to my old Sony 707ESD CD player.

That would make you one of the few then, wouldn't it. Hooray!

I think the point is, if you're concerned about audio quality enough to be proud of the equipment you're using to play it back, then lossless is a no-brainer. Why would you even discuss AAC?

But for the *vast majority* ... AAC sounds great. At the office, in the car, on the train, or just in the background at home while you're shaving in the morning, AAC sounds just fine, and the capacity of an iPod is maximized. For a little garnish, maybe AAC at a higher bitrate is worth it. For those Sennheiser earbuds.

But for the hardcore audiophiles whose reputations are at stake, AAC is of course a terrible idea, and iTunes hasn't even been an option until the availability of lossless compression. In fact, for the hardcore audiophiles with a reputation and an unlimited budget, all of this is moot; the multi-terabyte RAID array is happily serving up uncompressed audio on a proprietary jukebox solution that makes no compromises in error correction or signal integrity.

But for the *vast majority* ... AAC is great.

"Duran Duran's "Planet Earth" (4:03) is 40.9 MB - 1411 kbps in AIFF, and 29.2 MB - 1005 kbps imported in Apple Lossless audio."

"Apple Lossless provides full uncompressed CD quality audio in about half the space of the original file"

ok, about half of 40.9mb (AIFF, WAV, SDII) is not 29.2mb (Apple Lossless), it seems to be more like 3/4 the size, not half ...are you really saving much disk space? Does Toast, Jam or any other CD burning s/w recognize AppLos files?

I use an ProTools HD system with Genelecs and Adams spkrs and MOST material sonds pretty good at AAC (and it's 1/10 the file size). Of coarse none of these sounds as good as the original 24bit 88.2k files.

~Stink~

Ok, I work as an sound technician in Iceland, and at home I have Genelec monitors and play music through Digidesign Mbox interface. Until Apple Lossless came to be, I encoded all my music as AIFF, and I have a lot of original material in 24-bit format, so I was using a lot of space for my 2500 song collection. Now I encode everything using Apple Lossless, and I can say that the extra disk space I gain is definatly worth using the Apple Lossless codec I can hear the difference even using my iPod, but I use Sennheiser headphones, so I don´t know about how the difference is with the iPods headphones.. I would say for DJ´s who use mac´s to play the music this is a godsend, because mp3 and AAC files played through an expensive sound system at loud levels just doesn´t sound too good
Bottom line: A truly lossless encoder, and even the ten megabytes you save on each song count when you have many songs:) Great invention, and one of the best things about iTunes

So, What are you saying is the Apple lossless is a good codec. Well I have a question. I have an iPod and all my music are in Apple Lossless. Now I use the iPod more in my car using interface cables connect to my Pioneer Radio, so I can hear the music on the car's speakers. The problem is the iPod skip songs once in a while because the Apple Lossless is a big format. What I would like to know is the AAC on the higher quality will sound good or at least closed to a CD quality?