since Alan Davey has been brought up

[Carl Edlund Anderson]

On 27 Aug 2013, at 09:10 , Jonathan Smith <smithjm77x7 at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> 
> I am not well up on Apple formats.I recently bought my first iTunes album
> (!). The format is 4Ma. is that lossless? It sounds pretty good.

M4A. This is AAC audio (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Audio_Coding) in a MPEG-4 wrapper.

What you get from iTunes is not lossless; it's 256kbps AAC audio (packaged as .m4a).  This is pretty good, probably better than MP3 at the same bit-rate, but still lossy.

Apple also has it's own lossless format, ALAC, which is also typically wrapped in MPEG-4. So the iTunes audio files and the ALAC files you can create end up with the same filename extension; you have to dig a little deeper -- or look at the file size! -- to figure out which are lossy or lossless.

I presume Apple has ALAC in place so that they can sell DRM'd lossless files whenever they deem the market is ready for it -- but they are selling 256kbps lossy AAC audio at the moment.

> You can only really hear the  difference with headphones or a stereo
> I could not afford with the HD formats. There are more issues than just the
> file  quality  as you said.

Yeah, absolutely.  I mean, I have iTMS stuff that I play in my phone's stock earbuds and in the car, and it sounds fine.  I convert my ripped-from-CD ALAC files to 256kbps AAC for the phone, and it sounds fine too. But I prefer to buy lossless from Bandcamp or CDBaby if it is at all possible! :)

I have, for example, the new Blue Coupe from CDBaby. :)

Cheers,
Carl

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