
There will be more noise from a vinyl than a CD any day, no matter how scratched the latter is. And yes, I’m talking about that crackling and bits of dust making their way past the needle. Also, in regards to quality, there are some noticeable differences in most cases: noise and distortion. I’m not going to address vinyls here because it requires its own separate tutorial. Importing Audio Without Losing Quality An external disc drive for the next-generation MacBook Pro.ĭig up all those old CDs. It explains all the numbers and math that result in a file compressed to exactly 1411 Kbps. If you want to learn more about lossless audio compression, peruse Monkey’s Audio explanation of the process. The highest bit rate both of these formats compress at is 320 Kbps stereo. That’s not an example of quality, but of compression.Īn AAC or MP3 file will be far smaller because it focuses on making space for more songs rather than playing it back at nearest-to-original quality.

Lossless, on the other hand, can have a bit rate up to 1411 Kbps. iTunes offers 256 Kbps variable bit rate (VBR) music, which is near the top of the AAC spectrum. To compare lossy to lossless, I'll use an everyday example. That means you’ll find yourself with massive 40 MB files for each song, and a 400 MB album of ten songs. The average compression rate of FLAC is 30–50%, but since it’s a lossless format, none of the original quality is lost in compression. Even lossless audio is compressed, but it loses no quality in the process. The latter uses the Free Lossless Audio Codec, or FLAC. The former is most common, often being delivered in MP3 and M4A file types that are a mere 5–8 MB in size on average. There are two types of compression: lossy and lossless. If you’re not an audiophile, you can still learn some valuable stuff about the process of playing back music in the digital era. In other words, if you can’t tolerate even the slightest unintended crackle or the lack of EQ on your home surround sound system, you may be an audiophile. Don’t worry, it’s something to be proud of!


If you aren’t already an audiophile and wonder what on earth the term means, the word is an informal term for a high-fidelity audio enthusiast. In this tutorial, I’ll show you the various ways to rip your CDs to lossless audio and play back, that audio, on your Mac. If, however, you must have high-fidelity audio on your Mac, there are some things you should know.

This is by no means optimized for playback on all machines, nor is it easy to carry on a mobile device-a single four-minute song can be ten times as large in file size as the same track in MP3 or AAC. The highest quality of digital audio, for example, is lossless, which is typically stored in an large, uncompressed format. While portable digital audio has lost quality in some areas, it makes up for it in others.
