Apple Lossless (like other lossless) is somewhat zipped wav/aiff, so when you play, program is unzipping and playing at the same time, thus it DOES sound different compared WAV/AIFF. I have compared WAV to APPLE LOSSLESS and WAV was better. I have yet to to do more work, with more songs, to figure out the format to stick with. The pain with a WAV is that no place for metadata like cover art, but AIFF (AIFF is somewhat WAV+Apple+metadata) has that, so I will probably stick with that, if I find no significant changes to the sound compared to wav. No Apple lossless for me...
Also I am not happy with a Apple tv steeo, even fed to hi-end dac Audio note. But my dac has no Toslink, so i had to use battery powered coaxial - toslink converter... right now I am raising funds for the Monarchy Audio DIP and crossing my fingers that this will be it. My Marantz universal player ($1599 in 2003) eats appleTV+2-3k$ AN dac for breakfast...
Also I am not happy with a Apple tv steeo, even fed to hi-end dac Audio note. But my dac has no Toslink, so i had to use battery powered coaxial - toslink converter... right now I am raising funds for the Monarchy Audio DIP and crossing my fingers that this will be it. My Marantz universal player ($1599 in 2003) eats appleTV+2-3k$ AN dac for breakfast...