On the Ease and Availability of Lossless Sound Files

I recently posted a comment on a post by a good friend of mine at Maria's Music. He raised an excellent point about the value of actually owning a physical CD. You should read his post here. I've already discussed on this blog the value of raw and lossless audio, but what I want to dive a little deeper into is the ease and availability of using lossless sound files.

The main reasons for the invention of the .mp3 and other lossy codecs were hard drive space conservation and faster internet downloads. Raw .wav files would take hours to download on 56k dial up connections. I remember back when the .mp3 was truly popularized with the rise of Napster in 1999. Our family owned a desktop which had a 10GB hard drive, which was considered good for that time. I now run a Macbook Pro with a 200GB hard drive, and that is considered moderately large today.

Space is no longer an issue. I recently purchased a 500GB external hard drive, which runs extremely well, for $100. I will not even come close to filling it for a very long time. A 500GB hard drive can hold approximately 1,667 CDs in lossless format; not songs, but CDs. One could hold their entire family's CD collection, and probably that of a neighbor or two on a hard drive of this size in full, lush, and clear lossless format. A somewhat outdated rule of thumb for buying storage was that if one was buying at a rate of $1 per GB, they were buying for a good price. I must admit that I purchased mine during a black Friday sale, but my father recently purchased one (and a better model at that) for $134. Storage is cheap and available, and most will not need 500GB. Most often, depending on the size of the CD collection, a 200GB HD or 350GB HD will be more than enough, selling for under $100.

The iPod classic can now hold either 80GB or 160GB of songs or other media files, depending on the model. That is enough space for (rough math) 267 CDs in Apple Lossless format on the 80GB model, or for 534 CDs in Apple Lossless format on the 160GB model. I believe that very few people personally own 534 CDs, much less even 100 CDs, and that is the space on a portable player!

Internet connection speed is no longer a problem either. Apple either has or will soon implement a service where one can pay a little extra and buy songs in lossless format. Most connections are either cable or DSL at this point, with speeds ranging, on average, from 1500k to 3000k.

One is now able to enjoy full quality media, safely secure and store it, and transfer it (legally with purchase) with great ease.

Lossless Audio

I needed to find a solution for my mammoth library of .aiffs. I came upon, "lossless audio compression," and found my answer. Lossless audio compression works essentially like a .zip file. When a file is zipped, it is compressed, and when it is unzipped, it is uncompressed. No data is ever removed. I do not know how the actual processes work, but this is the general concept.

Lossless audio compression works in the same way. It will take a raw .wav file, and compress it to half its size WITHOUT removing any data at all. The files are still large, but much, much more manageable. In addition to that, you now have full CD quality sound files in their original, unaltered form. If one would like more proof, notice the difference between listening to a CD and listening to an .mp3. Simply sit and listen. You will be able to tell a larger difference than you would have thought possible.

I read about many different methods and file formats, including Monkey's Audio (.ape files) and Free Lossless Audio Codec (.flac files), but eventually ended up going with Apple Lossless Format. This is where true audiophiles will pick nits. However, all of these files are lossless, as they say, and will give you the same full quality. Here are the reasons I chose Apple Lossless:

- iTunes, Windows Media Player, Rhapsody (to the best of my knowledge), and Real Player (to the best of my knowledge), will not play .ape, .flac, or many other lossless formats.

- Apple Lossless can be played in iTunes on Windows and Mac.

- I wanted all of my music organized in once place, and on a Mac, iTunes is best for that.

So, then began the process of finding all of my CDs and ripping them into iTunes as Apple Lossless files. As I said before, a file that is compressed in an .mp3 like way cannot be converted upwards. You can make a .wav out of an .mp3, but it will only contain as much sound data as the .mp3, but expanded. So, one will end up with a lemon of a file; a .wav that is the same quality as an .mp3, but ten times as large (or more). The data that was selected for deletion is now gone and the data that was selected for editing is now irrevocably changed. One must re-rip the files from the original CD.

I've gone through about thirty CDs as of right now. It is actually a very easy process, and the result is wonderful, lush, full quality audio.