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iPod Apple Lossless in iTunes, AAC on iPod

T

Tom Foolery

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 16, 2007
244
0
Toronto, Canada
I have a really nice sound system, and before the week is up i will have a 500GB drive installed on my MBP. As I am somewhat of an audiophile i want to get the best sound quality. since space is no longer and issue I want to rerip all my cd's into apple lossless codec.

Unfortunatly my 16GB iPod touch doesn't have the luxury of space that my MBP does. is it possible to use apple lossless in iTunes and regular AAC on my iPod with the same files. Maybe there is a workaround that could encode into AAC upon transfer to the iPod
 
The iPod touch has problems with lossless files anyway. I put some on my 32GB 2G and the tracks kept stuttering, I believe it cannot process the information quick enough, with the track jumping every 5-10 secs.
 
Mystic Eddy said:
The iPod touch has problems with lossless files anyway. I put some on my 32GB 2G and the tracks kept stuttering, I believe it cannot process the information quick enough, with the track jumping every 5-10 secs.
Click to expand...

Mine is fine with lossless...
 
Tom Foolery said:
do those scripts automate everything or do i have to manually manage songs
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They automate everything. I suggest you give them a try on a few songs... it's not going to delete or break anything. There aren't really that many practical alternatives.

I use a couple of Doug's scripts for other things. Had a lossless library for a while (before this script existed) but it became too large to manage so I downsampled everything to 320AAC which still sounds pretty good. I've got all the CDs, so one day, I might get round to going back to lossless. Never found lossless that essential on the iPod even with Shure e4cs, 320AAC is fine...
 
I've been listening to some apple lossless and aac 320kbps and hard as i tried i could not hear a difference. I like to keep my iPod in sync with iTunes and the script requires some work.

just out of curiosity how much space would 7GB of aac 128kbps take up if it was in apple lossless
 
Tom Foolery said:
just out of curiosity how much space would 7GB of aac 128kbps take up if it was in apple lossless
Click to expand...


Hmm. I don't know... I've never let a 128AAC file near my library. :D

Just glancing over at a playlist in iTunes, I can see that 60 albums takes up 7.3Gb in 320 AAC.

As a rule of thumb, single albums in lossless/FLAC tend to average about 370Mb or so when all added up and averaged out over a few dozen or more, so maybe that would help with your sums.
 
I am an audiophile too. I have a 500gb HD on my MB and a 160gb iPod. I rip the CDs to AIFF, yes I can hear the difference between Apple Lossless (compressed) & AIFF (uncompressed) through my JM Lab Utopia speakers, Apogee Mini DAC & Cary 805 Anniversary 300b tube mono block amps. However, I wonder if I really want ALC on the iPod. I can't hear the difference between AAC & ALC on it.

I use two iTunes libraries. One for iPod (ALC) and one for Hi-Fi (AIFF). My problem is that I have to rip the CD twice. If it is possiable, I like to use a script that will auto convert and move the ALC files to the iPod library.

Oh, I scan the artwork to 1200dpi for the BEST look in Front Row. Yes I am crazy about perfection. :)

Your thoughts on this?
 
DjAmTraX said:
I rip the CDs to AIFF, yes I can hear the difference between Apple Lossless (compressed) & AIFF (uncompressed) through my JM Lab Utopia speakers, Apogee Mini DAC & Cary 805 Anniversary 300b tube mono block amps.
Click to expand...

Since Apple Lossless, just like Flac, reconstructs a bit-identical waveform to an AIFF file, I find that extremely unlikely.

Edit: And there's no point in scanning printed artwork at 1200ppi, you're just wasting space. The roughness of a printed dot on paper is picked up fine at 600-900ppi and then you just end up with a bunch of moirés anyway. There's overkill and then there's the best you can get out of a scan.
 
Blue Velvet said:
Since Apple Lossless, just like Flac, reconstructs a bit-identical waveform to an AIFF file, I find that extremely unlikely.

Edit: And there's no point in scanning printed artwork at 1200ppi, you're just wasting space. The roughness of a printed dot on paper is picked up fine at 600-900ppi and then you just end up with a bunch of moirés anyway. There's overkill and then there's the best you can get out of a scan.
Click to expand...

When I tried a lower resolution (auto mode), it looks fuzzy when shown through Front Row on a 50" LCD TV. I will try 600-900. Thanks for the tip.

As far as AIFF & ALC, what I noticed was the space around the music. I know, it sounds like Hi-Fi Voo Doo, but it's there and I just can't live with less than original CD sound from my MacBook.
 
DjAmTraX said:
As far as AIFF & ALC, what I noticed was the space around the music. I know, it sounds like Hi-Fi Voo Doo, but it's there and I just can't live with less than original CD sound from my MacBook.
Click to expand...

Apple Lossless and Flac are original CD sound. You're imagining things, I'm afraid to say.
 
Tom Foolery said:
just out of curiosity how much space would 7GB of aac 128kbps take up if it was in apple lossless
Click to expand...

It totally depends on how complicated the iTunes encoder thinks the song is. I've gotten Apple Lossless songs as low as 700kbps, others in the 1100kbps range. So with that as a guide, I would expect at least a 10x increase in library size from 128kbps.

Personally, I don't think my ears can tell the difference beyond ~256kbps AAC... and I take good care of my ears :).
 
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