Jim Bailey wrote: > Why is FLAC preferred to AIFF? Is it becuase FLAC files are smaller but > still lossless? Or are there other reasons to use FLAC? I ask only > because iTunes will encode to AIFF but not FLAC (which makes the former > more convenient than the latter, albeit at the cost of some [a lot?] > disk space.
Its religion, or if you prefer, philosophy. Actually, your subject tosses in topics that are substantially differnt. MP3, Ogg, and others are lossy, they throw away music to make the file smaller. All lossless codings are the same quality. That is the definition of lossless. And none are significantly more effective at compressing, results vary, and probably vary more than anyone cares. Some files are smaller with AIFF, some with MLP, some with FLAC, etc. The difference is that FLAC is free. The source code is free. The license if free. Apple and Microsoft can change their terms and license at any time, and could charge money for them, include DRM, etc. Having FLAC in widespread use is both a political statement and a strong incentive to Apple and Microsoft not to get stupid. FLAC will always be free, the ones owned by big companies may or may not be free in the future. FLAC is better because SqueezeBox handle it natively. This saves network bandwidth. I'm sure there is FAQ somewhere on this. -- Pat http://www.pfarrell.com/music/slimserver/slimsoftware.html _______________________________________________ ripping mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/ripping
