Converting CD's to Itunes - Best quality

Halcyon · 23-10-2011, 11:01

Hello,

I'm in the process of re-doing my entire Cd collection and converting it over to ITunes.
Now the plan was to take them straight in as WAV's at the highest quality as disk space is not an issue but ITunes doesnt seem to support album artwork for Wav's. It won't even store it in a folder and fish out the artwork.

So, am I right that Apple Lossless is the next best thing?

I'm looking for the ultimate best quality, even if it is hard to hear the difference.

Thanks.

halcyon.

**Stuart** · 23-10-2011, 12:26

Apple's lossless is as good as uncompressed WAVs.. It achieves the compression by compressing the data in much the same way as Zipping it would, rather than removing frequencies we would normally have trouble hearing (which is what lossy compression does).

Halcyon · 23-10-2011, 14:07

Thanks Stuart. I was also reading that Aiff might be slightly better then Apple Lossless.

Uncle Peter · 23-10-2011, 14:32

Realistically there would be no audible difference between aiff and Apple lossless. By default we use aiff as the format for audio recording in Logic studio.

Having said that, mastering engineers these days are already using every trick in the book to coax the last fraction of a db of loudness out of recordings. Once they reach your music player it's a case of how compressed do you want your distortion artifacts?

Losing something from something that already sounds crap is no loss

Matth · 23-10-2011, 22:35

Lossless is lossless, there are differences in how effective the compression is (and never hugely effective). Just like using ZIP, RAR or 7Z for data changes the space required, but not what you get back.

techguyone · 24-10-2011, 09:31

just go 320 kbps mp3 (thats supposed to be CD quality) and unless you've got the ears of a bat or mega mega expensive equipment, you'll never know.

**Stuart** · 24-10-2011, 11:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by techguyone

just go 320 kbps mp3 (thats supposed to be CD quality) and unless you've got the ears of a bat or mega mega expensive equipment, you'll never know.

AFAIK, Halcyon does have very good audio equipment. Don't know about his hearing.

320kbps MP3 is nowhere near CD quality. It's good enough for normal use, and you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference with most Pop or Rock songs, but give it anything with a larger frequency range (such as Classical music) and you'll be more likely to hear the difference.

My advice if quality is important? Go Uncompressed, or use a lossless codec and just buy extra storage if it's needed.

danielf · 24-10-2011, 11:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by techguyone

just go 320 kbps mp3 (thats supposed to be CD quality) and unless you've got the ears of a bat or mega mega expensive equipment, you'll never know.

I've re-ripped all my CDs from 320 kbps MP3 to 320 kbps AAC and the difference is very clear. MP3 sounds a lot tinnier, and is nowhere near as pleasant to listen to as AAC.

Halcyon · 24-10-2011, 18:22

Hi,

Thought I'd give you an update on this....

As you are all saying, going one of the formats that is almost identical with no or very little compression is the way to go.

However the approach I ended up taking is that I can pass on the album art tagging and instead look at keeping full backups of my CD's.
Some are from the early 90's and showing their age and I thought in the event I lose my CD's, atleast I'll have an identical copy....... So I've gone with Wav.
Easy to quickly convert over from the CD's and then I can have it all sitting on a big Hard drive. Drive space isn't the issue here.

I know the differences in quality are hard to hear but once I get this setup to my Hifi again I hope to have a sweet little system with the best quality.

I will get a few bats in at the weekend to test things out.

danielf · 24-10-2011, 18:30

Sounds like a plan. Artwork is nice, but you can do without it (or download at a later point). Also, having the WAVs means you have the best possible quality can always covert to another format that is compatible with artwork.

Uncle Peter · 24-10-2011, 18:31

Try these:

Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon

Steely Dan - Aja or the remastered hits album

These recordings have an exceptional dynamic range and they're good candidates for testing the various encoding formats against your ears.

Halcyon · 24-10-2011, 18:34

Will give those a listen as will be interesting to see.

Thanks.

budwieser · 24-10-2011, 22:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by Uncle Peter

Try these:

Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon

Steely Dan - Aja or the remastered hits album

These recordings have an exceptional dynamic range and they're good candidates for testing the various encoding formats against your ears.

Both albums are Fantastic.

Hom3r · 24-10-2011, 22:33

Can you Tag Wav formats?

Halcyon · 25-10-2011, 17:30

No you can't. ITunes will give the tracks names and keep them in album order and properly sorted but I believe this is by storing the details in a xml file.

You can't tag album artwork to wavs.