Why do apple lossless file sizes vary ??

[mansr]

Are you saying you ripped the same CD several times and resultant file sizes differ wildly? That would be weird indeed.

[mansr]

It's perfectly normal for compression ratios to vary between files. Pure tones (and silence) compress extremely well whereas noise is incompressible. Most music (other than Cage's 4:33) falls somewhere in between.

 

If the differently sized files you have are of the same music, something is odd. Otherwise some variation is to be expected.

[mansr]

35 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

Yes, the exact same track.  Sorry if that wasn't clear.

So you compressed the same track several times with the same settings and got compressed sizes varying by a factor 3? That shouldn't happen. Either you're not describing what you actually did, or your software is horribly broken. I suspect the former.

[mansr]

5 hours ago, Ralf11 said:

Could the Lossless compression algorithm work differently on Windows than on a Mac?

Minor differences are possible, but nothing of the magnitude you're seeing.

[mansr]

5 hours ago, Ralf11 said:

OK, on the laptop I found 2 versions/files with different sizes (not 3x, just a few percent).  They both have the same Date modified and Date added...

The times are the same (to the nearest minute).

 

That's a 25% difference so it's still quite a lot. If you want to get to the bottom of this, your best option is probably to share the files with a few people and see what they find.