AIFF or FLAC?

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I believe the only caveat to using Pure Music in front of iTunes to play FLAC files is that once you load the FLACs into iTunes via Pure Music, you mustn't move the folder location.

It seems there are more benefits to using Pure Music in front of iTunes anyway, one of which is upsampling. As Catastrofe said, with the PM/iTunes combination, iTunes becomes just the library catalogue system, with no involvement in the actual playing of the file ; Pure Music handles that.

Again as Catastrofe says, if you'd prefer not to use Pure Music or Audirvana+ (and if you want metadata), stick with AIFF. Storage is cheap.

I use a Mac and Apple Lossless because it integrates with Itunes.

Early on with Itunes I heard a difference between lossless and AIFF but on Audirvana I cant via casual listening. I suspect the reason is Audirvana decompresses into memory prior to playback so whatever was making AIFF sound better is a non issue.

Thanks
Bill

AIFF is not compressed. I figure the less the computer has to do (I use Audirvana) like decompress to play the better. Even if I can't hear a difference.

Programs like dbPoweramp will let you select the degree to which FLAC files are compressed and there is also a setting to not compress your FLAC files at all.

I would just try both options on whatever you are going to be using to see if you can tell a difference in sound before going through all the work of ripping or changing format. Whether or not there is a difference in sound seems to be very subjective based on one's software and hardware.