WAV vs. AIFF

Thanks James. I have always done everything in Apple Lossless but have read the arguements of uncompressed formats, like WAV and AIFF vs. Lossless, a battle that probably will not end.

At this point, storage is not an issue, I have plenty, so I was considering using an uncompressed format and never thinking about it again.

I use iTunes and copy the music to a 160g iPod.

I know how you feel Jpod! That is interesting about AIFF.

FWIW, I have copied the same song to my iPod 3 times the following ways:

AIFF with Error Correction on
Apple LossLess with EC on
WAV (no EC because it was already on my iPod that way)

I will try and do as you say, come to my own conclusions.

It "may" be bits are bits, but what goes along with them bits gets screwed up. :)

I have been told that Apple Lossless sounds just like uncompressed files (even one of the so-called golden stereophile guys claimed this a few years back). I believe the people making the claim believe that, it may be the limitation of their system or their ears, but I can definitely hear the difference.

I certainly don't claim to be an expert and have no problem being corrected, but Apple Lossless isn't a compressed file, from what I understand. The music is simply stored another way that takes less space. If this being so, the only reason I could see a difference in sound, if there is, is the way one's gear converts it vs. other formats because all the same info is there.

It absolutely is compressed (think about it, if it were not, it would be the same size as the original) BUT..every bit which is removed is replaced when it is played back unlike lossy compression inwhich files never return to the original state and are forever molested.

Agreed. My bad in not stating myself better. There is compression where data is stripped and gone forever, which I believe is most peoples view of compression, and then there is "compression" whereby the data is stored in a manner that takes less space to store yet all the information is still fully there, such as Apple Lossless.

So why might there be a difference in sound? The most obvious reason would be the increased processing which needs to be performed on the file in order to restore it to the original uncompressed format.

It is subtle but...

This is where I believe some "may" get differing results from another and all the debates. Where not every system performs this processing the same, some gear may process the Apple Lossless back better than others. (This is purely speculation on my part.)

I suggest you perform a head to head test and determine for yourself.

I have and heard no difference. This is what causes all the debates. Those that hear a difference speculate that those who don't have a system that can't resolve it and those that don't hear any differnce specualte why others believe they do.

There is a lot to digital and after all these years there are still things being learned.

Here is something I took from the B&W site:

What is lossless?
Lossless audio files have not been subject to data compression such as mp3, which reduces file sizes by omitting significant quantities of information about the recorded sound. As such the sound quality is identical to that of a commercial CD.

What is Apple Lossless Compression?
Apple Lossless Compression (ALC) reduces the file size of music without skipping any sound information. When the audio is played back from ALC format it is re-encoded to WAV, which is the file format that CDs store music as.

I am convinced and have been for about 10 years now that we can hear things which we have not yet quantified, therefor no construct exists to model or measure these properties.

Whether right or wrong, I have always felt the same way on that.

...when the concomitant digital picture is put back together from a lossless compress, it looks just like the original file...but in my experience there is something ineffable which is lost during the 'rebuild' process.

Here we "may" see it slightly different. I do believe all the 1's and 0's can be brought back with absolutely no difference. What exactly could be different, if anything, I simply do not know. Again, as we both agree, if there is a difference it could be of different levels depending on the gear used. In other words, in some setups there is absolutely no difference in others there may be, hence the difference in opinions. (Again, just speculation.) It would be interesting to experiment with some different setups in your system and see if you could still tell a difference.

The more difficult pursuit is to preserve the clock information.

This is an interesting (and excellent) statement and also something one of the magazines touched on awhile back, I think Stereophile, who did a great article on this, I wish I could remember the issue.

Tell me if I am right, any clock data that isn't right, is what has been labeled "jitter"?

Also, I still go back to what I was trying to stress before and that is these subjective differences can be system dependant, hence why one hears a difference and another doesn't.