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FLAC to ALAC for Apple compatibility
Magic_Randy:
I appreciate all the input.
I tend to do ongoing tweaking to my files updating the tags, fixing names, etc. I think I'll just keep the ALAC files as it will be a pain to maintain two sets. As Awesome Donkey says, I can always convert back if a need comes up.
Randy
mwheelerk:
--- Quote from: dmitch77 on February 04, 2019, 10:23:10 pm ---When I get FLAC files (e.g. by buying them) and convert them to ALAC to play on Apple devices, I always keep the FLAC version. My take is, I believe that FLAC support (in many instances of hardware and software) will be around a lot longer than ALAC support (in Apple products, only, for the most part). Also, these days, disk space is so cheap that I decided to not waste time trying to conserve it.
--- End quote ---
I simply curious as to what you know or simply think that would lead you to say this.
Awesome Donkey:
Apple Lossless is open-source and is supported in many apps and on many devices, so it's not going to go anywhere.
P.S. I thought Apple supported FLAC in iOS starting with iOS 11? I don't believe macOS or iTunes supports FLAC though (not without third-party addons, if I recall correctly).
dmitch77:
--- Quote from: mwheelerk on February 05, 2019, 07:44:47 am ---I simply curious as to what you know or simply think that would lead you to say this.
--- End quote ---
Apple has a well-known history of discontinuing support for technology that it has invented. FLAC is so much more widely supported - and so completely unencumbered - than ALAC, that I believe that it - FLAC - will be the longer-lasting format. I don't want to, at some point in the future, be left holding a bunch of ALAC files and realize that the last program that could read and convert them stopped working on my new hardware last year. That will happen eventually with FLAC too, but that cutoff date is much farther in the future than it is for ALAC.
On the objective side, Apple has never given ALAC any enhancements to support high res audio. The current ALAC is the exact same implementation as when the first iPods came out 17 years ago. FLAC continues to evolve. So FLAC has much better compression ratio than ALAC for high-res audio files. Sorry, I don't have the figures at hand, but some research will certainly support this claim. (I did such research at my previous job, and I don't have access to that data.)
Awesome Donkey:
--- Quote from: dmitch77 on February 05, 2019, 01:11:23 pm ---I don't want to, at some point in the future, be left holding a bunch of ALAC files and realize that the last program that could read and convert them stopped working on my new hardware last year. That will happen eventually with FLAC too, but that cutoff date is much farther in the future than it is for ALAC.
--- End quote ---
That won't happen though, like I said ALAC is open-source. Even if Apple discontinued using it for whatever reason, ALAC decoding and encoding would live on - libavcodec/ffmpeg alone guarantees that.
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