Apple Lossless vs iTunes Plus

I'm a MAC. 10+ years of Windows was torture enough. ;-)

I'll have to try moving my iTunes library to an external drive. I've been meaning too.

I would expect the iTunes Plus music to be sourced from either the original or a good 1st gen digital recording. One [audiophile] would expect that and it makes the most sense. But then again, we are talking about an industry who thinks MP3 is fine.

I now recall that I actually did import a CD as ALAC, WAV, and AIFF. It was brief, but I did not hear enough difference to justify more of my drive being consumed . I'll have to do some more comparisons sometime since my system has changed since.

I realized one important detail about storing iTunes on an external drive; it would require another external drive for backup.

As it is now, I need a minimum of two drives; one for SuperDuper! (bootable) backup, and one for Time Machine. I could get one large drive and partition for those two BU plans, and have another one dedicated for iTunes, but again, the need for an iTunes BU drive, and the possibility of losing both the other BU plans if the partitioned drive failed. Without a iTunes BU, you're toast if that drive fails. And right now I have a BU of it. Imagine having to rip 100's of CD's all over again. My 1 TB main drive is fine for now. Plenty of room to spare with Apple Lossless

Found a perfect solution; two LaCie 2big Triple 1TB (2-disk RAID). One for the two BU plans (JBOD) and the other for iTunes/Aperture libraries (RAID1).

Addendum:

The LaCie 2big Triple was a great RAID unit, but too noisy for the desktop, fan runs continuously, 'Auto' switch did nothing (wouldn't sleep), and the one-push-button on the front is 2big and 2bright. It was well built though. Heavy [duty] metal enclosure and drive trays. It's hard finding the perfect solution (4 drives; 2 for RAID 1 / 2 for JBOD separate access).

Looking at CalDigit VR instead. More $$ but more features/expandable/upgradable.

Blindjim,

I do find still greater diffs using FLAC vs. Apple lossless too... and this might be due to the media player or codec (s) being used. FLAC having simply more resolution and detail which offers greater presence. AIF is quite close though... and actually a near toss up.... again, I'm thinking it's the decoders and encoders being used.

I'd like to point out for the sake of clarity that you are experiencing some kind of placebo effect here. It is mathematically impossible that FLAC, Apple Lossless, and AIFF or WAV are producing difference results in sound quality.

They are all going to produce exactly the exact same bits when decoded, and they'll do so repeatedly without error. It's what makes them lossless.

It's precisely the same thing that makes an archive that's been zipped, gzipped, rar'd, or bzip2'd produce exactly the same uncompressed result when it's been expanded/inflated. The compression/decompression mechanism is lossless.