WAV background noise
Reply #40 –
ALAC + MP3 sounds sensible.
The reason people choose Lossless encodes over WAV is:
a) because they are approx. half the size
b) they are identical in terms of sound quality
c) you can reconstruct (decode them and produce) a WAV file that is bit for bit identical to the source WAV file
d) they can be tagged - and this is a big deal, because if you properly tag your lossless archive you only ever have to tag your files once, since when you transcode from lossless to a lossy format like MP3 the tags should be transferred from the tagged lossless to the lossy (e.g. MP3) output (that's certainly the case with foobar2000, don't know about MAC alternatives, sorry).
That saves a lot of extra tagging. WAV files can't hold ID3 or APE tags or Vorbis Comments (the 3 main tagging formats).
[EDIT]
I should add that I don't agree with skizman that "mp3 at it's highest bit rate 320 or that Apple AAC at highest bit rate" is a good solution.
1) 320 kbps is unnecessary, overkill and wasteful.
2) At moderate to high bitrates AAC loses its advantage (AAC is better < 128 kbps).
3) MP3 is the most compatible audio format.
4) I'd recommend VBR LAME 3.98b8 MP3 at anywhere between -V4 and -V0 (highest). If you can hear any difference between these settings and the WAV I'd be surprised. Best thing to do is try it out.
[/EDIT]
C.