[Mike Nomad]

^ Absolutely. I've gone on about why some people hear differences where they shouldn't, and why some do. Briefly:

/ The difference due to the playback equipment used by the person experiencing the notable difference. In other words, there isn't a difference between the formatted data, rather, there is a difference in how well a piece of kit decodes one format vs. another. This concept/arrangement can be applied across the many parts in a signal chain, all the way up to the encoding point.

A very real limitation with my experience is the context for my testing of ALAC: All I ever tried it with is what ever version of iTunes was current at the time. The whole point for me going with ALAC was to have a lossless format accessible via iTunes. It sounded horrible compared to the FLAC playback through some other product.

/ The lack of difference due to the hearing of the person(s) experiencing no notable difference. Everyone does not hear (perceive) the same thing the same way. Which is one reason why there are so many different speaker types, configurations, and manufacturers in business. This idea can also be extended, as above, to many parts of the signal chain.

I (heart) audio.

[dB Cooper]

That's what I thought. I was all ready to go w/ALAC, because: I had heard mp4/m4a audio files back in the late-90s, and thought they sounded great; I wanted to use iTunes as fully as possible, to keep things less complicated. I was really surprised to hear a difference between ALAC and FLAC.

Have to disagree with that article. ALAC is an mp4/m4a derivative, and not something Apple created from whole cloth.

The reason Apple won't support FLAC is because Apple wants to make money, and Music Biz Clowns want control. When wanted to get iTunes started, the clowns driving the Music Biz Clown Car equated anything open source with "stealing." They wouldn't have given Apple access to the content they needed to make iTunes a going concern, unless they could show there was a means of "controlling" the content. Remember DRM?

I doubt the premise too, but as for the profit motive hypothesis, Apple made the Apple Lossless codec open source three years ago.

[Mike Nomad]

I doubt the premise too, but as for the profit motive hypothesis, Apple made the Apple Lossless codec open source three years ago.

Sorry, I am not being clear.

At the time, when iTunes got started, their was a conflating of what all the "music stealers" typically used, with the capability (or act) of the "stealing" itself.

The Masters of Content would not have given Apple access unless Apple could show that they could induce DRM to "protect" a given Master's property.

So, Apple showed that they had a space-saving, lossless format (ha, mp3 users!) that could handle DRM being slathered on (see, Mr. Music Clown, we _do_ care!).

It doesn't really matter if ALAC is open source or not. Except for the part where Mr. Music Clown doesn't like getting charged for something to bring his content to market.

[JerryM]

FLAC.

[dB Cooper]

Sorry, I am not being clear.

At the time, when iTunes got started, their was a conflating of what all the "music stealers" typically used, with the capability (or act) of the "stealing" itself.

The Masters of Content would not have given Apple access unless Apple could show that they could induce DRM to "protect" a given Master's property.

So, Apple showed that they had a space-saving, lossless format (ha, mp3 users!) that could handle DRM being slathered on (see, Mr. Music Clown, we _do_ care!).

It doesn't really matter if ALAC is open source or not. Except for the part where Mr. Music Clown doesn't like getting charged for something to bring his content to market.

Maybe when they started out, but music offered on the iTunes store has been completely DRM-free since 2009. Someone who is going to steal content can obtain it in (or convert it to) virtually any format they want, including formats iTunes does support, like ALAC. So FLAC itself is not the issue. It seems to me that selling lossless files (which Apple does not do in any format) (Is that what the Mr. Music Clown part means?) is a different question than providing support for playback and metadata from a given format (in this case, FLAC).

BTW, AAC is not an "Apple" format per se; it was jointly developed by Fraunhöfer (originator of mp3), Sony, Nokia, and Dolby Labs, and is codified within the MPEG-4 standards. iTunes just prominently adopted it.

[Mike Nomad]

Maybe when they started out, but music offered on the iTunes store has been completely DRM-free since 2009. Someone who is going to steal content can obtain it in (or convert it to) virtually any format they want, including formats iTunes does support, like ALAC. So FLAC itself is not the issue. It seems to me that selling lossless files (which Apple does not do in any format) (Is that what the Mr. Music Clown part means?) is a different question than providing support for playback and metadata from a given format (in this case, FLAC).

BTW, AAC is not an "Apple" format per se; it was jointly developed by Fraunhöfer (originator of mp3), Sony, Nokia, and Dolby Labs, and is codified within the MPEG-4 standards. iTunes just prominently adopted it.

Well hush my puppy... Since iTunes gets none of my money, I wasn't paying close enough attention. I thought that with their tiered pricing, the top tier was lossless. Now that your post has prompted me to check, I see that it is still sub-redbook quality.

Yes, I am talking about the beginnings, and for a particular reason. The "Industry" (AKA my Clown reference) had to have DRM or they wouldn't play ball. Another thing they wanted was no lossless option. Because nothing protects intellectual property like an inferior copy.

Yes, Apple has been selling DRM-free for a while. That's known as the Clowns losing. To move to a lossless format would be More Losing, and real switching costs incurred by all parties involved.

Since I have hardware store shopping to do, I will successfully avoid getting spun up about how Apple handles Blu-ray...

Like JerryM posted (in what is probably the most pithy comment ever posted on AC):

FLAC.

(edited because my jabber looks more confusing than usual)

[jarcher]

The whole point for me going with ALAC was to have a lossless format accessible via iTunes. It sounded horrible compared to the FLAC playback through some other product.

I think there's the problem.  All file formats, including ALAC, sound pretty bad via stock Itunes.  If you used a good player to play FLAC, it's going to sound better than ALAC via Itunes.  Many "mac audiophiles" including myself use either a better player on top of Itunes (Amara / Audiovarna / PureMusic Etc), or some other player software. 

So - think your negative ALAC experience maybe the player vs the format.......

[bladesmith]

I've been listening to recordings in flac vs alac. For the last couple of days. No offense to anyone, but I can't tell the difference between the two.

The recordings are of the same song/artist/album. Can't hear any difference.

(I do hear differences in SQ from artist to artist. Some artist have lower or higher quality sound/recordings. )

Good luck

[dB Cooper]

I've been listening to recordings in flac vs alac. For the last couple of days. No offense to anyone, but I can't tell the difference between the two.

The recordings are of the same song/artist/album. Can't hear any difference.
Good luck

Me neither. My hearing must suck. Or maybe that if it really is lossless, both reconstruct into the same bit stream?

[srb]

I've been listening to recordings in flac vs alac. For the last couple of days. No offense to anyone, but I can't tell the difference between the two.

Nor do I.

I also don't hear any difference between WAV and AIFF (which makes even more sense than the FLAC/ALAC comparison) as these two formats are exactly the same uncompressed linear PCM file format, only differing in the file header.

I've tested this on other really good systems with additional sets of ears other than mine.  Yet some people on this and other forums claim to hear a difference, so it appears that there will never be a consensus on this subject.

Using a good player like JRiver which plays all of the formats, I just add the same song in different formats to the Playing queue with Repeat enabled and selecting Next on the remote alternates between them instantaneously.  If you select Next enough times rapidly in succession, you quickly lose sense of which one is playing and it becomes a very valid comparison without predisposed bias.

Steve

[BenEde]

you quickly lose sense of which one is playing and it becomes a very valid comparison without predisposed bias.

Steve

In the study I referred to earlier, we listened via a smorgasbord of amazing gear donated by very curious/interested participants: B&W 804 speakers, Pass Labs X250.5 amp, Modwright 36.5 preamp, a PS Audio Perfectwave II DAC with some fancy USB/SPDIF converter I can't remember, and nice cables to match. 

I mean, basically it ruined me on my own system for life...haha.

Out of the 11 of us, there were 3 ladies (more than representing the average female ratio in audio ), a few local enthusiasts who helped with gear donations, two university-aged people and one teenager (to see if young ears made a noticeable difference), a couple people who work in local hi-fi stores, a local recording engineer, and a couple interested average joes who know just enough to be dangerous (like me).

The audio files were identical 60-second clips of various passages, taken from redbook or hi-res material that I understand was at least partially sourced from recommendations on this site somewhere, played via JRiver.  They did exactly as you noted above: created separate playlists for each of the passages they were testing, played each clip back to us 4 times each in alternating order, while telling us which file was which; and then told us they were randomizing the playlist for 8 listens to each song (so 16 listens total for a head-to-head comparison), and we had to guess which was which.  In the meantime we wore little blindfolds so we couldn't guess based on visual cues - the tester was looking at the laptop and recording the correct file being played of course, and our answers.

0/11 correct within some measurement of standard deviation on FLAC vs. ALAC.  That's my only comment on this particular argument.