Lossless

so recently, i've been converting my cd library into apple lossless quality music files. cds give you the highest quality possible, so why not make use of that? instead of having lossy mp3 formats, have your music in the same quality as that of the cd.

what's the difference? some may ask. well, don't you get irritated by the fact that some of the recorded mp3s are so soft you have to max out your volume in order the hear the track? or the grainy grainy drum tracks. it feels like salad when its blended together. however, if you rip your cds into high quality mp3s(192kbps and above), its actually quite hard to tell the difference, especially if you're using lower end sound systems. so if you're using those $20 earphones or the speakers that come with your monitor, you're just wasting your time.

so what's the difference in sound when you play it on your surround sound home theatre system? well, there are minor details in the songs which you might pick up when you didn't while you were listening to your 192. it makes the music sound fuller, more complete. after listening to lossless for about 3 weeks, i feel like something's not quite right with the song when i listen to it in 192. of course, this could be psychological. but it's called lossless for a reason right?

so what's the downside to lossless?
first of all, the disk space it requires. the selling point of mp3s was always the compact file sizes. here's a comparison. mp3s of 192kbps(constant) average about 1.38MB/minute. on the other hand, apple lossless audio files(.m4a)(it's a variable bit rate btw) averages a high 900-1000kbps. currently, the 221 songs that i have converted to lossless average about 7MB/min. That's a big jump. so unless you're using a portable music player with alot of memory space to spare, lossless isn't really for you.
furthermore, there is no common lossless filetype. itunes and wmp provide their own lossless ripping in m4a and wma respectively. but neither will play with the other. apple also has aiff, and FLAC is another option. FLAC will be fine if you use winamp, but you need to download a codec to play it on wmp, and itunes has 0compatibility for FLAC. WAV is also a lossless quality, and it can be played on most, if not all players. but it doesn't support ID3tags, which means song info has to be all in the filename. not very convenient.

i like the feeling that i'm putting my cds to good use. thus i'm going for lossless. all i need now are a pair of higher end headphones, and more disk space to store all the songs.