New Apple Lossless encoder??

I have used the Lossless and the regular WAV. The Lossless actually take about 2/3 of the space of the original. It does remove "redundant" information from the original, but it is far better than MP3. I bought two external hard drives, one is used for my 60G I-pod Photo using the Lossless encoder. The other one is used for my office system using the WAV encoder. Please be advised that you can only use the Lossess or the uncompresed (WAV or AIFF)with the cds that you import, if you buy music from I-Tunes you can only use the ACC encoder. I suggest that you record the same song twice, one with the Lossless and one with AIFF or WAV, listen to them for a while, then decide before you start importing you cd collection.

I believe John Atkinson did an objective test on this as well, where he actually looked at the bits that were encoded and then decoded using the lossless compression and comparing it to the original data file. He found that it did retain all information as advertised.

I have a two 3rd generation 40gb iPods (one is used by my wife) and both exhibit a problem with some Apple lossless files. I also play my iTunes library (100gb) through my main system with a Wavelength USB Brick with great results. Apple Lossless being a VBR codec, the bit rate varies from less than 500kbps to greater than 800kbps. Files where the bit rate is >600kbps will pause, skip, or freeze both iPods frequently. Smaller bitrate files play without a problem. Reading posts on the iPod Lounge indicates others have had this problem. Has anyone had this problem with the 4th generation or the 60gb photo iPods? Otherwise I am extremely pleased with Apple Lossless.