I own a Mac and recenty ripped all my music to ALAC. I have a lot of FLAC files which I converted to AIFF using xACT. I then converted to ALAC using iTunes. During this conversion (after roughly 100 conversions) I just noticed the ALAC bitrate is lower (100-150) than the converted AIFF.

Am I losing audio quality with the above method of converting? My Mac mini is connected to my home theater and I do not want to lose any quality. As I understand, lossless is lossless, but I'm confused as to why the lower bitrate?

Mark

Its lossless to lossless converstion. You should be fine!
The difference in bit-rate is just compression (lossless compression)

AIFF Is uncompressed (right?)

Bitrate is not quality. Bitrate is filesize divided by playtime, so if the filesize shrinks, so does the bitrate.

You have nothing to worry about.

When you compress files, they get smaller. Thats normal. 100 to 150kbps is a little odd though, I'd expect ALAC to do better then that.

Good deal! Thanks a lot guys. Much appreciated.