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In Reply to: Re: Apple question - AIFF/M4A? posted by MJC on March 2, 2007 at 14:12:03:
Well...asking which one is the "best" is going to give you a lot of subjective and controversial answers. And besides, you already asked that question and saw what became of it here:
http://www.audioasylum.com/forums/pcaudio/messages/18509.html
Follow Ups:
Can I convert m4a to aiff without any loss or is it better(or the same) to import from cd to aiff in the first place?
I'm going thru this process myself and am ripping to apple lossless. Lossless should be lossless but opinions may differ. I do know that you can't regain info that has already been lost so if apple lossless does lose info, you can't regain it by changing an apple lossless file to aiff. If you think that aiff is better then you should rip directly to aiff.Because apple lossless is a smaller file doesn't necessarily make it lossy/less fidelity. It could just be a better compression program getting rid of more empty information. Rip some songs that you are very familiar with into both formats and listen critically. It is all about the music and what sounds good to you.
When people talk about Apple Lossless are they talking about .m4a?As per iTunes help file, "Your choices affect the audio quality and size of the song file (the higher the quality, the larger the file size)."
So I am guessing in order of audio quality (specific to Apple iTunes):
AAC/AIFF
M4A
Let me take a stab at an explanation.Apple tags both AAC and Apple Lossless files with the extension .m4a, therefore, you cannot use the extension to determine the encoding. You have to look at the file properties in the Finder or in iTunes.
As for the fidelity of the formats, AIFF and Apple Lossless preserve exactly the same bits. You can convert a track from AIFF to Apple Lossless and back and compare the reulting files and you'll find it's a bit accurate copy.
I'm not sure why a few people claim to hear a difference in playback between the two formats. All I can guess is that the higher CPU load required for uncompressing the Apple Lossless files on the fly might cause timing issues with some people's systems, but on most systems all of the output is buffered anyway.
AAC is lossy and shouldn't be used for really hifi use, but it is a pretty good sounding option for cramming a lot of songs on an iPod. It's probably a little better sounding than the same file size mp3.
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