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Topic: Apple Lossless vs FLAC: The better? (Read 133807 times) previous topic - next topic
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Apple Lossless vs FLAC: The better?

Hi to all,

a simple question:

- FLAC vs Apple Lossles what is the best? They are 100 % lossless format?

If I want to convert my actual FLAC collection into Apple Lossless without quality loss, is possibile? The tag remains?

Is better FLAC or Apple Lossles for audio backup?

Thanks

Apple Lossless vs FLAC: The better?

Reply #1 –
They are both lossless audio formats, they wouldn't be called lossless if they weren't.  You can convert between the two without loss of quality while preserving the track tags.  It is up to you to determine which format is superior.  There are some technical merits that FLAC has over ALAC.  However, ALAC works natively with Apple hardware and software while third part support is growing.  I went with ALAC simply because I have a bunch of iDevices and I wanted to manage my lossless files in iTunes.  Others go with FLAC for their own reasons.

Apple Lossless vs FLAC: The better?

Reply #2 –
The same, I have iPod and Mac and i'm evaulating ALAC

Apple Lossless vs FLAC: The better?

Reply #3 –
They're almost the same because they're both lossless, and transcoding FLAC to ALAC and vice-versa will not result in any loss of quality, hence, the word. I don't know about the tags, but audio quality remains the same. For backups, I'd rather use FLAC but for iPod users, it's recommended to use ALAC because it's made specifically for Apple products
sin(α) = v sound/v object = Mach No.

Apple Lossless vs FLAC: The better?

Reply #4 –
More or less, what the others have said:

- If you *HAVE* to use ALAC, then be it (you found no better way to spend your money).
- If you don't have to use ALAC, FLAC has great support everywhere else out of the Apple ecosystem.

Apple Lossless vs FLAC: The better?

Reply #5 –
Why do people recommend FLAC over ALAC ? I haven't come across any software that doesn't support ALAC and it plays in iTunes unlike FLAC. Lossless makes no sense on portable devices.

Apple Lossless vs FLAC: The better?

Reply #6 –
Quote from: Billytheonion on
Why do people recommend FLAC over ALAC ? I haven't come across any software that doesn't support ALAC and it plays in iTunes unlike FLAC. Lossless makes no sense on portable devices.


1.) It's open source.

2.) It's supported natively on more hardware devices.

3.) There are plenty of people who don't use iTunes, and even downright despise it (like me).  I use Floola for Windows to copy music to my iPod.
 

Apple Lossless vs FLAC: The better?

Reply #7 –
1.) Most people haven't a clue what open Source is/means.

2.) Far more people own devices that can play ALAC and not FLAC.

3.) This has nothing to do if one uses iTunes or not.

Apple Lossless vs FLAC: The better?

Reply #8 –
Quote from: Billytheonion on
Why do people recommend FLAC over ALAC ? I haven't come across any software that doesn't support ALAC and it plays in iTunes unlike FLAC. Lossless makes no sense on portable devices.


Well, then, it looks like ALAC is right for the space you occupy (itunes).  I have no hardware or software that plays ALAC and not FLAC (other than itunes, which gets fired up once in a blue moon), and lots that play  FLAC but not ALAC.

Apple Lossless vs FLAC: The better?

Reply #9 –
Quote from: Billytheonion on
1.) Most people haven't a clue what open Source is/means.

Even if they don't know what open source means, the developers do and the result is more things can play it.

Quote
2.) Far more people own devices that can play ALAC and not FLAC.


Yes, there are more Ipods out there than anything else.  There are more choices of things that play FLAC but not ALAC in both hardware and software.

Quote
3.) This has nothing to do if one uses iTunes or not.


That's the only software I know of that plays ALAC but not FLAC, and Ipod the only hardware.  So yes, it has a lot to do with using itunes.

Apple Lossless vs FLAC: The better?

Reply #10 –
It's so much easier to find people who have software and devices that can play ALAC and not FLAC.

People use what they like i just can't see any reasons how FLAC would benefit the majority of people over ALAC

Apple Lossless vs FLAC: The better?

Reply #11 –
Quote from: Billytheonion on
It's so much easier to find people who have software and devices that can play ALAC and not FLAC.

People use what they like i just can't see any reasons how FLAC would benefit the majority of people over ALAC


You go ahead and be happy in your own little ALAC world.

The rest of us will be happy using FLAC and other lossless codecs.

Apple Lossless vs FLAC: The better?

Reply #12 –
Quote from: Billytheonion on
It's so much easier to find people who have software and devices that can play ALAC and not FLAC.

You may have a look at our recent ripping/encoding poll:
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....;hl=poll%202011

And i like that most lossless music stores use flac and not ALAC.

Besides that it sucks that the software that can encode ALAC has to use a re-engineered code cause apple doesn´t give us users any software outside iTunes to do so.



Is troll-adiposity coming from feederism?
With 24bit music you can listen to silence much louder!

Apple Lossless vs FLAC: The better?

Reply #13 –
Quote from: Billytheonion on
2.) Far more people own devices that can play ALAC and not FLAC.

Tell that to all the people who have been streaming lossless to devices connected to their stereos two years before Apple was selling a competing product.

Apple Lossless vs FLAC: The better?

Reply #14 –
I remember trying to stream audio using netcat over 802.11B to an EPIA board connected to my stereo. It basically worked but was really also a hassle for day-to-day use. The first really setup & forget solution has been released by Apple about 7 years ago. It had digital and analog outputs and could be controlled right from iTunes, basically a flawless product. What came 2 years before that?

Apple Lossless vs FLAC: The better?

Reply #15 –
Quote from: googlebot on
I remember trying to stream audio using netcat over 802.11B to an EPIA board connected to my stereo. It basically worked but was really also a hassle for day-to-day use. The first really setup & forget solution has been released by Apple about 7 years ago. It had digital and analog outputs and could be controlled right from iTunes, basically a flawless product. What came 2 years before that?

Audiotron!

Apple Lossless vs FLAC: The better?

Reply #16 –
Quote from: googlebot on
The first really setup & forget solution has been released by Apple about 7 years ago. It had digital and analog outputs and could be controlled right from iTunes, basically a flawless product. What came 2 years before that?


jreceiver  supported FLAC from 2002.  Squeezebox had something lossless from 2003.  They also could use lossless as the transpose target if your lossy format wasn't supported by the receiving end.  They could be controlled either from the receiving box, IR remote,  or a browser page (which could be on the server or something more portable)

ALAC was released 2004.  I never had airport, so don't know if you had to have your server in the same room to conveniently control it.

Apple Lossless vs FLAC: The better?

Reply #17 –
Quote from: Wombat on
You may have a look at our recent ripping/encoding poll:
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....;hl=poll%202011


Obviously, an internet poll proves nothing. An internet poll conducted within this very special community proves, if I can say so, even less about the lossless codec usage in the general popualtion.
Ceterum censeo, there should be an "%is_stop_after_current%".

Apple Lossless vs FLAC: The better?

Reply #18 –
Quote from: pawelq on
Obviously, an internet poll proves nothing. An internet poll conducted within this very special community proves, if I can say so, even less about the lossless codec usage in the general popualtion.


A poll in this community mostly gives you a concentration of people who do use lossless. 

In the general digital music playing population you would (I think) find the majority of  users have something (an Ipod and/or Itunes) capable of playing ALAC, but they either don't know what it is or have not decided to use it for any purpose.

If Apple had been either first with a lossless compression or first selling losslessly compressed music then ALAC would likely be the dominant format.  As it is, they were kind of late to the game and came out with something not much different than what was already available.

Apple Lossless vs FLAC: The better?

Reply #20 –
The advantages to ALAC are that it's widely supported in the Apple ecosystem and has more standardized metadata.

The advantages to FLAC are that it compresses slightly better on average, has very robust error protection, has integrated ReplayGain support and is widely supported in the open source ecosystem.

Which to use depends on which factors one's more interested in.

Apple Lossless vs FLAC: The better?

Reply #21 –
FLAC hardly has robust error protection; in fact, it barely has any at all (not that ALAC is any better and might very well be worse)

Nice site, Soap.

EDIT: Noting the reply below, yes, "protection" was absolutely the wrong choice of word.

Apple Lossless vs FLAC: The better?

Reply #22 –
Perhaps error detection would've been a better choice of words.  FLAC offers a frame header CRC, whole frame CRC and whole stream hash, which is good enough to detect single bit errors or file truncation and can be batch verified.  ALAC offers no frame or stream verification of any kind, so the best one can hope for is that the premature end of the mdat atom might be detected, or that the decoder might trigger an error of some sort if you're lucky.

Apple Lossless vs FLAC: The better?

Reply #23 –
Quote from: DonP on
Quote from: pawelq on
Obviously, an internet poll proves nothing. An internet poll conducted within this very special community proves, if I can say so, even less about the lossless codec usage in the general popualtion.


A poll in this community mostly gives you a concentration of people who do use lossless. 


To make the results of the poll applicable to the world out there, you would have to prove that there is no overrepresentation of FLAC (or ALAC) users here, compared to the general population of lossless users.

Quote from: DonP on
If Apple had been either first with a lossless compression or first selling losslessly compressed music then ALAC would likely be the dominant format. As it is, they were kind of late to the game and came out with something not much different than what was already available.


Don't underestimate Apple. They were not first with mp3 players, tablets, smartphones.
Ceterum censeo, there should be an "%is_stop_after_current%".

Apple Lossless vs FLAC: The better?

Reply #24 –
Quote from: pawelq on
Don't underestimate Apple. They were not first with mp3 players, tablets, smartphones.


Whether or not you took the bait on ipod, ipad, or iphone, it's clear there was bait.  ALAC has no stylistic difference from the others.  At least as visible to one outside the Apple world, they made no effort to market ALAC beyond putting it out as the one that goes with their other stuff.  One wonders why they even bothered, as opposed to just adopting FLAC (unless ALAC includes DRM)