Dumb file size question.


I just downloaded my first album from HD Tracks and was a bit shocked at the file size. I downloaded it at 96/24 in ALAC format. It is 1.26 GB! When I rip my CDs in ALAC format they are around 300 MB. What's up here? Is the HD Tracks file just uncompressed? Will iTunes compress it? Sorry for the stupidity just wasn't expecting to have to store and deal with files that large.
n80

Showing 1 response by erik_squires

The ratio of data is about 3.3.
(96 * 24 ) / (44  * 16) ~= 3.3
3.3 * 300 = 990

So 1.2 Gigs is actually a little on the high side. ALAC and FLAC are compressed, but with FLAC the compression is user selectable (somewhat).
It might be worth seeing if you can improve upon that.

Keep in mind that while FLAC (and maybe ALAC) let you select compression effort, but being both lossless, there's a limit to how compressed a file can be.

Best,
E