Off Questions for techies

[Carl Edlund Anderson]

On 02 Nov 2009, at 05:02, Maxine Wesley wrote:
> I have a friend who insists on the aiff format - but at 10Mb/minute  
> you
> might want a bigger drive?

Yeah, both FLAC and WAV are very similar to uncompressed CD audio as  
best as I understand it -- mostly the same data in a slightly  
different wrapper.  Why AIFF should be preferred to FLAC mystifies  
me: there's no loss of information in FLAC format (it being,  
obviously enough, a lossless format).


> I would consider looking to FLAC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLAC) -
> sounds good and you can play  on the ipod


You can play FLAC on the iPod?  I guess so, though my understanding  
has been that one needs to install 3rd-party replacement firmware  
like Rockbox or something similar in order to play FLAC on the iPod.   
I haven't tried this for various reasons, not least that my iPod is  
quite old and small by contemporary standards, and FLACs (or Apple  
Lossless files) would fill it up quite quickly! :)

I believe it is easier to convince iTunes (in either Mac or Windows)  
to play FLACs (on OS X, for example, you can install the Fluke  
package), but I tend just to turn FLACs into AIFFs and those into  
Apple Lossless.  It doesn't take long, and it's all lossless -- so I  
can turn my Apple Lossless files back into AIFFs or FLAC whenever I  
might feel so inclined.

Cheers,
Carl

--
Carl Edlund Anderson
http://www.carlaz.com/