cmay119 Posted October 30, 2005 Share Posted October 30, 2005 Hi all, I'm trying to figure out what the best lossless audio format is, and knowing that there is quite a few Audiophiles here I thought this would be the best place to ask. I've been ripping a lot of songs from my CD's and putting them on my computer as 16-bit 44.1kHz .WAV files. Is .WAV the best lossless audio format? Or is there better? Thanks for any input. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
toddvj Posted October 30, 2005 Share Posted October 30, 2005 Well WAV would be the Ultimate "lossless" format, since there is no compression at all, but that isn't what's generally known as lossless. As far as which format is best, I don't use any lossless formats myself, because they take up too much space, but my opinion is that if they are truly lossless, then one format shouldn't be any better than the other, if they are lossless, they are lossless, right? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cmay119 Posted October 31, 2005 Author Share Posted October 31, 2005 I'm sorry, I thought .WAV was also compressed it just didn't lose audio quality. My mistake, is there any formats that do compress but keep it sounding just as good as a .WAV file? Thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
theryugobuddy Posted October 31, 2005 Share Posted October 31, 2005 Good question-- And if you use Windows Media Player, whats the best format and speed to maximize sound yet save space? I just got a Mac Mini--what format works best for Apple? MP3? I always go lossless-- but is it just hype? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Duke Spinner Posted October 31, 2005 Share Posted October 31, 2005 F L A C Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tenorman Posted October 31, 2005 Share Posted October 31, 2005 .wav files will work but they are big and have no tag support. The two main lossless formats these days seems to be flac and apple lossless. Both are about half the size of .wav files and support tagging. As to which one to use I would base that more on what software player you are using. If you use iTunes the easiest solution is apple lossless however I don't believe there are any players besides iTunes that will play apple lossless files. Flac has a lot more options for players but takes some work to get them to play in iTunes. A good place for more information on various audio formats is the forums at www.hydrogenaudio.org Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cmay119 Posted October 31, 2005 Author Share Posted October 31, 2005 Thanks for the replies guys. One more n00b question then for ya, what exactly is tagging? and why would I want that? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
skonopa Posted November 2, 2005 Share Posted November 2, 2005 Thanks for the replies guys. One more n00b question then for ya, what exactly is tagging? and why would I want that? "Tagging" is where song title, artist, album, track #, etc is embedded in the digital audio file (usually part of a file header). This is the information that you usually see displayed on the little window on your portable MP3 player, or the display of your software MP3 player, (i.e., WinAmp, Windows Media Player, etc). Programs, such as iTunes, or any other program you may used to organize your music library uses this information to help sort music by Genre, Band, etc, as well as making searching for a particular song or album easier. Thus, it is very useful to have your music tagged correctly. Most decent ripping software will be able to pull that information from an internet database such as Gracenote CDDB or FreeCDDB and fill it in automatically when it creates the digital audio file. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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