Basics: Ripping

[jhwalker]

Don't see the advantage of recommending a losslessly compressed format (ALAC, FLAC) over an uncompressed, lossless format (AIFF).

Hard drives are so cheap nowadays that storage space should not be the issue. AIFF is supported by all platforms and virtually all music player software, while FLAC is not supported by iTunes or any Apple device. ALAC is currently not supported by HDPlayer, one of the best, if not the best, music player program available.

 

I rip all my CD's and transcode all downloaded FLACs to AIFF with XLD or MediaHuman Audio Converter, both Mac freeware programs, and tag metadata and manage my library with iTunes. I do experience metadata anomolies with AIFF, but less than .02%, a very small percentage.

 

There are various methods to correct wonky metadata. Personally, I import the questionable AIFF files into Audacity, then re-export them to iTunes. No big deal.

 

Disk space is still a big deal to me: I am currently at 2TB of (mostly) ALAC files, and just don't have space to store (or even less, back up!) twice that much