WAV vs. AIFF

Between WAV and AIFF I think it's more a matter of which platform you wish to use - WAV for Windows or AIFF for MacOS. When I had a media server I built for Windows, I used WAV. Now that I use a Mac I'm using AIFF. Both support lossless compression, so that's all I worry about really.

The alternative to not being tied down to a specific computer platform is to go with FLAC, but I have not used that format.

For digital audio formats some things to consider is compression (bad, very bad for good sound) vs file size and sound quality. A format that supports lossless compression will give you the best balance between these 3 variables.

When it comes to tagging and meta data, I really don't pay attention to these things, so I can't give you more info there.

Thanks James. I have always done everything in Apple Lossless but have read the arguements of uncompressed formats, like WAV and AIFF vs. Lossless, a battle that probably will not end.

At this point, storage is not an issue, I have plenty, so I was considering using an uncompressed format and never thinking about it again.

I use iTunes and copy the music to a 160g iPod.

FWIW as storage is so cheap, I would go with AIFF if you use Apple (as I do too!)

You can always compress them into Apple Lossless ro whatever you wish later on.