Jim Bailey;215496 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.

Actually to compare apples to apples (no pun intended) compare Apple
Lossless, not AIFF, to FLAC.

AIFF is an entirely uncompressed raw format, like WAV except that it
supports tags.  It will be lossless but uncompressed, so the files will
be large and streams will take a lot of bandwidth.

Apple Lossless is compressed but lossless, so the same streams take
less hard drive space and less bandwidth, yet no sonic information is
discarded.  Note on the Squeezebox, Apple Lossless will be transcoded
to WAV, so you will only be saving hard drive space, not bandwidth. 
AIFF will not be transcoded, so no space or bandwidth savings at all,
but your server won't be transcoding.

As to whether to choose Apple Lossless or FLAC, see what Pat says.


-- 
Mark Lanctot

'Sean Adams' Response-O-Matic checklist, patent pending!'
(http://forums.slimdevices.com/showpost.php?p=200910&postcount=2)
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