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Post by GreenKiwi on Feb 15, 2013 17:56:26 GMT -5
@boom, I'm curious why you want a format that is "non-compressed" and one that is "WITHOUT embedded metadata"?
If i were trying to use iTunes, I'd convert to ALAC... it's lossless, so it will have the exact same bits coming out, and metadata in the files makes lots of sense.
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Post by arthurz on Feb 15, 2013 17:57:19 GMT -5
Somewhat true about the Mac media player support for FLAC. ALAC would be the logical choice. You can batch-convert from one to the other at will, so I wouldn't worry about betting on one format for life.
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Post by Boomzilla on Feb 15, 2013 18:21:10 GMT -5
So far as I see, ALAC is only adding another layer of compression that has to be decoded before the file can play. Yes, you save a bit of space, but at the expense of more clock cycles dedicated to uncompressing on playback.
With hard drive space so cheap, I see no reason to compress at all. Formats come, formats go, but an uncompressed file should need fewer conversions along the way (and consequently fewer opportunities for data corruption to occur).
I'm not interested in converting anything at all unless I have to. Apparently some AIFF files make iTunes itself lossy. For the time being, I'd prefer to ditch iTunes and see if another media player can keep the AIFFs in line.
It the problem turns out to be the AIFF format itself (and it may), then, and only then am I in the market for conversion. If AIFF (an Apple product) turns out to be defective, then ALAC (also known as ALE - another Apple format) is not high on my list of contenders.
WAV looks to me like the preferred option at this time with FLAC a very distant second. Further research may overturn this - or not.
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Post by paradigmE on Feb 15, 2013 18:22:58 GMT -5
Side topic on the metadata front - IF you arent aware - with a library that is only WAV files you can simply convert one of the wavs to a MP3 within the album folder - uncheck it so it wont ever be played, and then you can add the embedded COVER ART to that MP3 file to fix anything that isnt handled automaticlly.
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Post by arthurz on Feb 15, 2013 18:35:29 GMT -5
So far as I see, ALAC is only adding another layer of compression that has to be decoded before the file can play. Yes, you save a bit of space, but at the expense of more clock cycles dedicated to uncompressing on playback. It's not just a little bit – you get a 2x reduction in size and thus any disk I/O and network transfers (including not blowing your disk caches on extra data). Unless you're using a truly ancient machine, the CPU overhead of decompression is incredibly minimal – small single-digit percentage of CPU. I'm willing to bet your CPU is sitting mostly idle during music playback. On the other hand, if you're playing music on a machine that's a part of a loaded Hadoop cluster, I withdraw my suggestion entirely... With hard drive space so cheap, I see no reason to compress at all. Formats come, formats go, but an uncompressed file should need fewer conversions along the way (and consequently fewer opportunities for data corruption to occur). Again, you can do a batch conversion at any time, so as long as data isn't lost, this argument doesn't hold. It the problem turns out to be the AIFF format itself (and it may), then, and only then am I in the market for conversion. If AIFF (an Apple product) turns out to be defective, then ALAC (also known as ALE - another Apple format) is not high on my list of contenders. It's a file format. It cannot possibly logically cause any problems. A particular piece of software using that format might cause problems, but not the format. |
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Post by Boomzilla on Feb 15, 2013 18:38:14 GMT -5
Hi arthurz -
I can't argue with your logic. I can say that the AIFF format DOES cause problems with my iTunes. This isn't just my conclusion, but that of Jennifer at the Apple genius bar as well. Could we both be wrong? Sure. But we could also be right (and the evidence is pointing to us being so).
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Post by arthurz on Feb 15, 2013 18:44:22 GMT -5
Sorry, sure, I guess you probably meant iTunes' implementation of AIFF, which would be theoretically possible, but I'm still suspicious. The Apple person was probably out of guesses and didn't want to look completely helpless, so she latched onto the one outlier she saw, which is AIFF, and blamed the problems on that.
Here's the reasoning. In a system like iTunes, it is extremely likely that library management and playback are separate components. The one area of intersection would be metadata retrieval, but that happens only when you add a file to the library. From that point on, the metadata lives in the database, and file format handlers would be invoked only for playback. No writes to the files take place (as opposed to database writes to update the play count, rating, etc., but these are independent of the file format).
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Post by paradigmE on Feb 15, 2013 19:39:58 GMT -5
AIFF is a file format that has more variations than just about any other audio format. You can have variations on AIFF's with up to 32 channels of data in them is one example. I'm not going to get sucked into this but I FEEL the clue is on the AIFF wiki page given what apple did to their implementation of AIFF by getting around other issues by treating AIFF files as the COMPRESSED-c version of AIFF regardless of if its a NON compressed data stream. "With the development of the Mac OS X operating system, Apple created a new type of AIFF which is, in effect, an alternative little-endian byte order format.[3][4] Because the AIFF architecture has no provision for alternative byte order, Apple used the existing AIFF-C compression architecture, and created a "pseudo-compressed" codec called sowt (twos spelled backwards). The only difference between a standard AIFF file and an AIFF-C/sowt file is the byte order; there is no compression involved at all.[5] Apple uses this new little-endian AIFF type as its standard on Mac OS X. When a file is imported to or exported from iTunes in "AIFF" format, it is actually AIFF-C/sowt that is being used. When audio from an audio CD is imported by dragging to the Mac OS X Desktop, the resulting file is also an AIFF-C/sowt. In all cases, Apple refers to the files simply as "AIFF", and uses the ".aiff" extension." That my friends is what I believe is the source of MY AIFF issues and ITunes - your mileage may vary. Plus the interaction of my AIFF's that are also a little different to start with given the CD24 Alesis 24/96 file format AIFF wiki page link en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_Interchange_File_FormatOne more thing - If Itunes created all your AIFF's you wont have a problem I bet. If you used another program to convert non native AIFFs into AIFFs you may or may not run into these issues like Ive run into with my Cd24-pusedo AIFF's. |
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KeithL
Administrator 
Posts: 9,955
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Post by KeithL on Feb 15, 2013 20:10:40 GMT -5
This may be stating the obvious but..... If you switch to some more....errr.... open format like FLAC or WAV, then you'll have a wide choice of programs that support it - rather than being locked in to Apple  |
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KeithL
Administrator
Posts: 9,955
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Post by KeithL on Feb 15, 2013 20:11:41 GMT -5
I do also seem to recall that iTunes DOES support plain old WAV files - which are totally universal (and you can get a plugin that will let it support FLAC files as well - so you CAN keep using iTunes)....
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Post by GreenKiwi on Feb 15, 2013 20:26:31 GMT -5
BitPerfect will play flac files in iTunes. The problem is there doesn't seem to be a way to get flac files into iTunes.
You can't put metadata into wave files, can you? I always worry about that, all your data is now only in your players database and if that gets corrupted, you don't have a fallback.
I'd second the other comments regarding processing power needed to decode these files. It's not much, heck it can be done comfortably by embedded devices and the raspberry pi, so a computer will have no problems. And while disk space is cheap, the savings are non trivial. 55-60% of original file size.
I wonder if there is some bug with iTunes and aiff files, particularly with metadata. I'm guessing that there are far fewer people using aiff with iTunes than alac, mp3 or mp4.
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Post by Boomzilla on Feb 15, 2013 20:43:00 GMT -5
...iTunes works great for me... Mr. Yohn - I apologize. You are right and I am wrong. The vast majority of iTunes users have little or no trouble with their installations. I am the (unfortunately for me) exception. Since the only constant in my history of iTunes problems has been my media, and since that media has been ripped to ALE and converted to AIFF (both by iTunes and non-iTunes software), it seems that only a mass conversion/unification of my media will solve my problems. I think that this may be true using either the iTunes database or any other player's database. Because I know that you have both a large iTunes library and a trouble-free one, might you be willing to share the type(s) of file formats that are used on your media? Thanks - Boomzilla |
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Post by GreenKiwi on Feb 15, 2013 22:26:24 GMT -5
I have 22k alac and 2-3k mp3/AAC
The only time I had problems was when I tried to clean up my library with "Tune Up". It crapped all over my library and took huge amounts of time in the process.
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Post by GreenKiwi on Feb 15, 2013 22:27:47 GMT -5
Boom, someone mentioned that you might have a synology nas? If so, which one and what version of their software is it running?
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Post by jmasterj on Feb 16, 2013 1:04:03 GMT -5
I'm not as advanced as you guys. You are all high teck. This intire conversation is above my pay grade. I am so confused. I just take a CD out of the case and put it in the player go figure.
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Post by arthurz on Feb 16, 2013 1:11:12 GMT -5
Jmasterj, that's WAY too simple. Everyone enjoys a little pain every now and then.
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Erwin.BE
Emo VIPs 
It's the room, stupid!
Posts: 2,262
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Post by Erwin.BE on Feb 16, 2013 3:01:29 GMT -5
First, you will not like to hear that I have 5,000+ albums in Apple Lossless an AIFF with perfectly embedded metadata in iTunes. Just bought a new 4TB external HD since the 3TB I have is getting very stacked...
But if I didn't want to use iTunes (anymore), I'd probably convert everything to uncompressed FLAC (you can do that) and use a C.A.P.S v3 Lagoon or Carbon. Preferably with a NAS since that way the storage capacity is limitless.
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Post by Boomzilla on Feb 16, 2013 3:53:17 GMT -5
Boom, someone mentioned that you might have a synology nas? If so, which one and what version of their software is it running? My RAID is a MediaSonic. |
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Post by Boomzilla on Feb 16, 2013 3:55:01 GMT -5
First, you will not like to hear that I have 5,000+ albums in Apple Lossless an AIFF with perfectly embedded metadata in iTunes. Just bought a new 4TB external HD since the 3TB I have is getting very stacked... Thanks, erwin - Actually, I am very happy to hear it. Did you rip all your music via iTunes? |
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on Feb 16, 2013 9:23:52 GMT -5
I have a lot of "legacy" mp3s. I used to rip to FLAC, which is an excellent choice. Because I have a lot of inflexible Apple devices now, I've converted all my FLAC to lossless Apple. I make sure all my embedded metadata is complete and correct.
Given the speed of modern devices, and the cheapness of storage, your only choice should be lossless....
Sincerely
/b
/b
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