http://www.mp3-box.org/apple-lossless-vs-mp3/
Lossy vs Lossless Audio/ iTunes importing/encoding?
Which is the best format to put my music in (using iTunes) and what is the best bitrate for that format?? Also what is the difference between Lossy and Lossless encoding??
1. ACC
2. AIFF
3. Apple Lossless
4. MP3
5. WAV
Thanks
Which format is best is most likely going to depend on 2 things:
1-Where do you want to play it?
2-How much room do you have?
MP3′s are the most widely supported while Apple Lossless only works on IPods and Quicktime though more will soon come in to play. AIFF is also an Apple codec and is to a Mac what the WAV is to Window$ PC’s.
WAV will play on some cell phones but is native to the PC and is one the oldest form of digital music, but that’s about the end of it’s support.
ACC is another Apple endeavor that may very well replace the MP3. But not yet.
ACC is, IMHO, better but lets face it-MP3′s play on just about anything.
Bitrate-Simple! The higher the better. Though ACC may is supposedly CD quality at 128kbps which is cassette quality in MP3′s.
Lossy- Your codec (COmpressor/DECompressor) takes a audio track thats, say, 6mbs and shrinks it to 3mbs. To shrink the song from the CD (.CDA format) to MP3 format, the codec removes info (there’s the loss). Most of the info is frequencies that are out of normal human hearing, but there is a loss. The higher the bitrate the larger the file because the codec samples the file at smaller intervals.
This only touches the tip of the iceberg. Really. Try afterdawn.com and doom9.org for for in-depth turorials and user forums. It’s all free.
Good luck and I hope this helps!
Apple Lossless vs. mp3