Converting ALAC to AIFF

[Raym87]

Guys, I just had some interesting results when converting ALAC to AIFF in iTunes.

First I converted the ALAC to AIFF then created a new copy from the CD direct to AIFF. Guess what, on some tracks the final file sizes are different. IF ALAC is supposed to be lossless I would have thought converting them over should produce the same file size as a new rip. Or (most likely) am I missing something.

Your thoughts please.

 

[rmva]

this also happens with flac, wav, etc., don't put to much thought in it and use what ever sounds best to your ears.

 

cheers,

Ruud

 

[Julf]

Are you comparing just the raw data part of the file, or the whole file? The files contain much more than the raw music data, so some of the metadata and headers will likely be different.

 

[Raym87]

I was comparing the file sizes of a new rip (to AIFF) and one converted from ALAC (to AIFF) in iTunes. I suppose there could be additional metadata in the converted file that could account for the differences in file sizes.

I'll conduct the experiment again without making modifications to the ALAC file, things like adding artwork etc etc.

 

Experiment complete. Without making any changes to the ALAC file before before converting to AIFF, the 2 sets of files now exactly match filesize.

Thanks for the pointers chaps.

 

[Julf]

Good to hear! Thanks for reporting back!

 

[Raym87]

No worries Julf.

I'm now going to start iTunes up and convert all my files to AIFF in the knowledge that I wont screw things up...:-).

 

[mwheelerk]

I don't mean to throw water on your party but I recently (November 2011) went through the same process of converting my library from ALAC to AIFF. I began using iTunes for the conversion and ran into lots of problems with metadata, specifically embedded artwork, not transcoding/transferring properly. I am on a Mac and a change to using MAX (and since to XLD) for the transcoding solved the problem.

 

If you embed your artwork you may want to check and verify artwork is being embedded in the new files prior to converting your entire library.

 

[Raym87]

Thanks for the warning but as far as I can see everything is all OK. Out of 400+ CD's I had 1 file that didnt convert for whatever reason. Not bad at all really.

Thats it, job done, just doing backups now.

 

[mwheelerk]

I am glad to hear it went well. While I was converting using iTunes someone here mentioned the issue to me and I checked an sure enough had several dozen problems.