Hello,
I have a situation I am trying to resolve. First the background. I use a Squeezebox as my digital source. Music server program is iTunes. Since we have some iPods, we are going to stick with the Apple server program. Since music is also sent to a high quality 2 channel stereo system, I chose to load the library in WAV format.

This is wher ethe issues start. There are several discs that can be seen in iTunes, but does not get recognized by the Slimserver program. Worked off an on at this problem, but could never resolve it. Tagging programs show that a tag does not exist, but was unable to find one for it. The discs that were recognized had tags that were identified.

As a desperate measure I convereted some of these songs into AIFF. Wham Bam, Slimserver finds it. So this is a solution of sorts.

Here is where the questions start. I understand that AIFF is a noncompressed format, and therefore should have the same sound quality as WAV right? Are there any issues with AIFF that I should be aware of?

I did download a FLAC plugin Xiph. It installed on the computer, but I never could get it to run correctly. At least I never got a change on the improting tab of itunes to signify FLAC was now available. Any thoughts on what steps I missed?

Ok lets face facts. I am a computer idiot. I can do the basics, but I am not a keyboard jockey. All I want to do is get the iTunes and Slimserver programs correctly interfaced so I can get all my music to the audio system.

Your thoughts and observations are greatly appreciated.

Regards
Mister Pig

AIFF is 100% lossless just like WAV, FLAC, WavPack, Apple lossless, etc. Converting from WAV to AIFF would be the same as ripping the audio CD straight to AIFF. The reason why tags weren't showing up is because iTunes does not rip CDs to the WAV format with ID tag support. All of the WAV tags are written to your library xml (I think that is the file extension) file. You can copy a WAV file out of iTunes, delete it from iTunes, and copy it back in. The tag ID information will not be there.

AIFF was co-developed by Apple and is largely used with Apple computers. AIFF is to Apple as WAV is to Windows. From a basic standpoint, both formats (WAV and AIFF) will suit your needs just fine. There isn't anything you need to worry about when using AIFF. There are many programs that can read AIFF files so you won't be locking yourself out of future compatibility. AIFF files also take up the same amount of space (about 10MB for 1 minute worth of audio) as WAV.

I believe that the FLAC plug-in that you downloaded should give iTunes the ability to read FLAC files, it won't give iTunes to the ability to encode them. I think that you will always have AIFF, WAV, mp3, and AAC as audio encoding options but will never have FLAC or OGG. As I said, I think the plug-ins only allow for FLAC/OGG decoding. I don't even know if that plug-in will allow iTunes to convert FLAC to other formats. I remember reading in a couple of forums that people were having issues with the OGG/FLAC plug-in for iTunes. This was on OS X though and not Windows, I don't know which OS you are using.

Either way, I would stick with using AIFF if you wanted lossless. It will provide the same quality as WAV and you shouldn't have any issues. Just keep in mind that it might be overkill for your listening needs but it is always nice to have a lossless archive of your music.

There's some confusion here. AIFF and WAV are not losslessly compressed formats: they are uncompressed.

Yes.



It gives you bigger files than you need. It's a huge waste of space. I'd advise using a lossless format such as FLAC instead.



It takes a bit of fiddling around to get it to work. There's was walk-through here:

http://earpick.wordpress.com/2007/06/11/ho...-itunes-on-mac/

But it seems to have been replaced with a script that does the same thing:

http://earpick.cubicfruit.com/

I haven't used it.



If you want to use iTunes the easiest format to use is going to be Apple Lossless. You're probably best to stick with that. You could certainly stream that from iTunes to an Airport Express. I prefer FLAC myself, because of its cross-platform reach, and because I use it for archiving rather than listening. But if you're an iTunes user and you don't want a lot of fuss, Apple Lossless is probably the way to go. And, since it's a lossless format, you can always transcode it to FLAC without losing sound quality if you need to in the future.

No, there isn't any confusion. I WAV and AIFF are lossless from a sound quality standpoint. They are not like other lossless formats when it comes to compression but they are when it comes to sound quality. I wasn't coming from the compression side of things, I was coming from the quality. Both WAV and AIFF are uncompressed though as, in my previous post, I pointed out that they each have a file size of about 10MB for 1 minute of audio (it might be exactly 10MB for 1 minute of audio, I would have to check that).

I do agree with you that Apple lossless (ALAC) would probably be a better route as it takes up less space than AIFF and is easily integrated into iTunes. I myself have my CDs archived in the ALAC format and I can easily convert those files to iTunes AAC, Nero AAC, Lame mp3, FLAC, WavPack, and other various formats. ALAC compatibility with 3rd party programs has really come a long way (no thanks to Apple).

So AIFF it is.

One question though. I have been doing a bit of reading about Media Monekey. It looks like it should give me IPOD support and the ability to rip in FLAC. Any thoughts?

Regards
Mister Pig

You're using a PC but have chosen AIFF over WAV?

Strange.

Some IPODs work with other software for syncing, but some of the newer "classic" models do not work with software other than ITUNES. So the answer depends. With regard to your other issue: You're not getting tags on the WAV files because, with some exceptions, most software doesn't support WAV tags. FLAC works nicely (native) with Squeezebox (and does have tags!). I maintain a FLAC library that I can play with a squeezebox, etc. and a mirror image MP3 library that I import into ITUNES in order to sync with my IPODs. For me there is no value in playing lossless files on my IPOD. LAME mp3 files at V-2 are even overkill for me. But I do want to archive my CDs with lossless (thus the FLAC files) and since I have them, I use the FLAC files for the home stereo system.

Ah I had hoped to maintain only one library. I can see the merit of using iTunes only to load music to the portable music players. So it would be worth my time to consider building a second library and encoding it with FLAC for the SB3. Sure.

Regards
Mister Pig