Flac vs. Apple Lossless

[Phillip Kerman]

I can't really tell a difference between the two but the Apple solution is
very desirable because I can tag and manage the files using iTunes.

Anyone have any considerations before I go re-ripping a bunch of music?

Thanks,
Phillip

[Mike Kozlowski]

Flac vs. Apple Lossless

On Fri, 13 Aug 2004, Phillip Kerman wrote:

> I can't really tell a difference between the two but the Apple solution is
> very desirable because I can tag and manage the files using iTunes.
> Anyone have any considerations before I go re-ripping a bunch of music?

1. Don't re-rip; you can convert FLAC to WMA Lossless, and WMA to Apple
Lossless. It's possible there are also tools to convert FLAC directly to
Apple Lossless, but there might not be because...

2. Apple Lossless is an insanely proprietary format; it's undocumented,
and the only software that appears to really work with it is iTunes
itself. If you store your music as Apple Lossless, you're sinking
yourself very, very deeply into the proprietary Apple infrastructure, and
if you ever want out, you may need to end up re-ripping everything in the
future.

Unless you really can't live without iTunes, I'd very seriously consider
staying with FLAC (which is very open) or WMA (which is well-documented
and has freely downloadable SDKs for third-party integration).

--
Mike Kozlowski

http://www.klio.org/mlk/