mmcguff;139283 Wrote: > One thing that I think a lot of people aren't really aware of is that, > while aiff and wav files are functionally similar (i.e., uncompressed > formats and I believe they are actually just minor variants of each > other), iTunes treats them differently in one VERY important way. If > you rip directly into iTunes, it will tag both formats and allow you to > add/modify tags for other files not ripped into iTunes. However, for > wav files, that information is stored in the iTunes database file, not > in the sound file itself. For aiff files, this information is stored > in the actual audio file (even under Windows). > > So, if you rip to wav's and rearrange (or move) your audio library in > some other program (or move the library from one computer to another), > iTunes will "lose" most of those tags. If you always use iTunes to > manage/move files (and keep your iTunes database backed up), then this > probably won't be that big a deal. However, with aiff files all the > tagging info is stored in the file, so it doesn't matter if you have to > do some library maintenance outside of iTunes; when you rescan, it's all > still there. Other programs (including Slimserver) can read those tags > as well (though I'm not sure that other programs would be able to > modify those tags). I discovered this when I first started ripping a > couple of years ago, but don't see it mentioned in many of these > discussions. Since I was still experimenting with different storage > strategies (internal vs. external vs. network drives), this became an > important issue for me. This was before ALAC came out, so I'm not sure > if I were starting all over today whether I would still go aiff, but I > suspect I would. > > If you use an iPod, FLAC files won't work, so that would require an > extra transcoding step to use those files on an iPod. > > ALAC would work, but last I checked, the Squeezebox doesn't support FF > or RWD within ALAC files (aiff files are fine). > > WAV really has no advantages I can see over aiff and the (to me) very > important disadvantage I mentioned. > > I have considered moving to FLAC anyway, but iTunes doesn't support it > and there really don't seem to be all that many other alternatives on a > Mac (I use both Mac's and Windows, so the dual-platform nature of iTunes > is a real advantage).
Apart from the FF/Rwd issue (does that affect FLAC as well?) I cannot see any disadvantage to using ALAC over AIFF. ALAC is supported by all the major hardware devices (SqueezeBox, Sonos ZonePlayer, Roku SoundBridge via FireFly, and of course iPod!). It is possible to use it in WinAmp and I even have it working in WMP 10 and Media Center 2005! ALAC uses the MPEG4 container format and therefore the same tag format as AAC. This means it has good tag support by applications, unlike AIFF which while iTunes supports AIFF fully most other applications (e.g. WMP) do not, as you said WAV is useless in terms of tagging. ALAC, AIFF, WAV, and FLAC should all be the same audio quality. -- jelockwood ------------------------------------------------------------------------ jelockwood's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=5947 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=27729 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
