Tír Na HiFi

whats the consensus on the best iTunes rip settings....

not getting into flac and jriver etc....

still want iTunes on mac as player, but is aiff or apple lossless better?

jb

I use apple lossless with error correction turned on and like the result.
Playback is on a headless 2011 mini with 8 gigs of ram and a 2 terabyte external firewire drive and is dedicated to music serving using Audirvana + into a JKDAC32.

Some say that on slower machines, they can hear a degradation in sound quality as the lossless file requires decompression, thus placing an additional overhead on the CPU. I myself cannot hear a difference but my setup may be well up to the task.

As apple lossless (ALAC) is now an open format , several retailers, such as qobuz and hyperion, supply high res files in Apple lossless format.

You could run a test and see if you can hear a difference on your system but bit for bit the the AIFF file and a decompressed ALAC are identical (big discussion on this flares up regularly at Computer Audiophile).

Mark

cheers Mark!

p.s. I'll have to get my hands on a USB dac before I can really comment, but as ALAC files are smaller, I'd say thats the way I'll be heading!

next up.... rDac vs. DAC.iT vs. VDAC

jaybee wrote:p.s. I'll have to get my hands on a USB dac before I can really comment, but as ALAC files are smaller, I'd say thats the way I'll be heading!

next up.... rDac vs. DAC.iT vs. VDAC

If if fits with your system, do consider the JKDAC32.
I'm absolutely delighted with it - very clear, smooth and sweet at a decent price and works famously with the Mac and Audirvana.
https://sites.google.com/site/hifacemods/home-1

I'd love to be buying Irish, but I'm looking for a "traditional" dac with ca capability..!!

Over the last few years I've become a bit less hairshirt on this issue. For favoured recordings it's Apple lossless and for everything else it's AAC at 320. But then I don't really get the chance to listen very critically anymore anyway!