Apple Lossless Encoder - Audiophile Quality?

I use Applelossless - it works as far as I can tell.

FWIW, at a seminar at The Home Entertainment Show in NY last year, I believe John Atkinson, Stereophile's editor, said Apple lossless is the way to go.

It's the standard if you are using a Macintosh. Numerous threads will confirm that it can be converted back to WAV or AIFF with exactly the same number of bits.

As for why not use AIFF. AIFF and WAV are old standards. They were never designed to work with metadata - what is called tagging - meaning all the information that iTunes will automatically go get for you everytime you rip a CD.

Apple Lossless handles this information perfectly affording exactly the kind of flexibility that you are looking for. WAV and AIFF do not. Again a million threads on the subject.

I'm with the lossless crowd. I just re-ripped from AAC to lossless with hope of never having to do it again.

Believe what the experts say about it being true lossless compression. Those who say not to compress are really coming from the "better safe than sorry" school.

The power and flexibility of itunes is hard to beat, even in a pc environment.

AIFF supports metadata.