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ALAC (Apple Lossless) is now open source. Will this change anything?

S

scootermaster

Platinum Member
So I was about to embark on a CD-ripping project of reasonable (but perhaps not epic) proportions (around 350+ CDs).

I was planning on ripping to ALAC for use with my MBP, iTunes and iPhone4. I was gonna use EAC, if I can get it to handle metadata and album art appropriately, or dbPoweramp, if I can't.

I'm just wondering if I should hold off with the announcement of open source ALAC. Just wondering if they'll change those two programs to include/handle/otherwise deal with the Apple reference encoders or if this matters at all. I know they'll both handle ALAC now, but there's been reports of certain ALAC files not working well with Apple sharing etc, etc, and since this project is a one time shot, I figure I might as well wait if something is going to change.

Thoughts?
 
Probably not. It makes sense if you are in the Apple ecosystem like I am but for 98% of this forum... It won't.
 
I ripped my 1,000+ CDs to FLAC and then used dbPowerAmp to transcode them all to MP3 for use with my ipod 120 GB.

You could rip to FLAC now, transcode to MP3 for now then re-transcode to ALAC once there is a Apple code based plugin for dbPowerAmp.

FLAC to ALAC is lossless to lossless so it will give you the exact same quality as a fresh rip.

Or you could rip to the reverse-engineered ALAC now and hope there is some kind of fixup tool later to read that then re-write as "real" ALAC

Or you could use iTunes for the ripping for true ALAC, but it doesn't give you the error report you get with EAC that warns you about which tracks might be damaged.
 
I dunno... I wish my hearing was good enough to tell the difference between flac and mp3. Sadly age and going to concerts have taken it's toll.
 
I used to do everything to Apple lossless, and then would convert them to MP3 in a second folder. Seemed to work very well, though I have given up since then and do everything as AAC VBR 256kbps. The files are much smaller and seem to work with all of my devices from iPod Touch to Android phone and Xbox 360. My ears can't tell a difference in most listening situations. If I listen on my home stereo, I will load up the cd in my trust Pioneer Elite cd player.
 
Thanks for the responses guys.

I shoulda been a little more specific I guess. First off, I'm ripping to lossless, regardless. Secondly, I have an MBP and an iPhone, and use iTunes. So that means ALAC. The question is merely whether or not it's worth "waiting" for EAC/dbPoweramp (or others) to officially support the Apple reference encoders, or if it's not going to change much. I'm not ready to start ripping right now, so I guess it doesn't matter too much, but I'm going to want to get going on this soon.

I guess if I go with EAC, I could download the reference implementation myself and figure out the command line interface and just set it up. Hopefully it won't be too hard.
 
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