Lossless audio codecs.

[luciusad2004]

Hey guys, Ive been thinking about ripping all of my cd's to my laptop in a lossless audio format and i was wondering if anyone here had any experience with it.

At the moment I'm thinking of running FLAC.

I'm running OS X so ill have to download a media player and i was thinking of using VLC.

The only other option i can think of is apple lossless but that is just a lossless version of apple's DRM wrapped AAC. The main advantage of apple lossless however is that i can play it through iTunes and on my iPod.

Anyone have any advice on this?
Are there any other good Lossless codecs out there that you guys would recomend.

[nil8]

I've used FLAC. The only thing I have to say about lossless is that you're going to be taking up massive amounts of space. A good FLAC rip for a cd is around 400 mb.

High bitrate codecs will work just as well for stereo sound/headphones and with something like morgan streaming switcher, you can convert an audio stream to 5.1 or 7.1 for your home setup.

A 224 kbps mp3 convert of a cd is only around 80 megs and you will not notice the difference between flac and 224 mp3 in headphones.

[luciusad2004]

If thats the case i might reconsider. I don't really have an amazing stereo setup so if it isn't going to make much of a difference in sound quality i might as well not bother. My space is limited, but i don't really have alot of music. And if i did run in to space issues id probably just end up ripping my favorites. I'm in no way an audiofile so i probably wont even hear the difference. Maybe ill do a little experiment tomorrow and see if i will get any benefit out of lossless.

[Luke122]

Hmm.. I would disagree. I can hear a diff between a 256 and 320kbps mp3, and FLAC. For me, no contest. Lossless takes more space, but sounds better. YMMV.

:)