I’m re-downloading all my CDs into iTunes. This is on a Mac Pro, and I play my music either directly from iTunes, or from an iPod. Memory and disk space are not problems.
According to the “Help Center”:
*“If you want to burn high-quality audio CDs with the songs you’re importing without losing quality, choose Apple Lossless or AIFF. (Keep in mind that songs imported using this format use much more disc space.)”
*So what’s the difference between Apple Lossless and AIFF for maximum quality? It looks like, with AIFF I can customize the sample rate and sample size, but Apple Lossless is not customizable. Does this mean that Apple Lossless already has maximum quality, and I should be using that?
AIFF is a format that saves every sample discretely, similar to a BMP picture. WAV is another one. The two are, minor differences in the file header aside, absolutely identical. So you are literally storing every sample like it appears on the CD. (You definitely wouldn’t want to rip a CD with 48 kHz or 24 Bit.) Now, Apple Lossless takes those samples and compresses them losslessly, like a zip file. You save about half the space without sacrificing any quality. However, not every program will be able to read Apple Lossless. If you need to, though, you can always convert it back to WAV or AIFF or whatever, without losing any information.
IMHO, even with lossy compression (MP3 or AAC), you won’t be able to tell any difference above 192 kBit/s, though - that’s about 1/6th of the original file size. So, take from that what you will - but Apple Lossless is definitely the best compromise between absolute best fidelity and saving space.