AIFF vs. M4A? Which should I save files as?

Roon Software Discussion
1

I am ripping vinyl and my CDs at 24/96 to my hard drive for ROON playback. I am using a Mytek Liberty DAC. Which file format will give me the best sound quality? Thanks,
Dave

2

Aiff is lossless, m4a is lossy. So I’d say aiff.

3

Is this correct? If so why as there nothing to be gained over ripping to their native rate (16/44k1)?

4

Vinyl as well.
Though if you are doing CDs at 24 in aiff the file sizes will be enormous…I’d do flac personally.

5

I don’t think my iTunes will recognize the FLAC, correct? I also listen outside of my home setup via Apple Music that I store in the cloud

6

Use ALAC then.

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7

While common, not strictly true. Both AAC (lossy) and ALAC (lossless) use the m4a container.

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8

So no advantage to storing CDs rips at above 16/44?

9

No they use an mp4 container as m4a doesn’t officially exist if we are getting pedantic.:slightly_smiling_face:

10

Well that’s a bit of a philosophical question. There are those who upsample everything to as high a sample rate as they can.
However, in your case I would rip at 44/16 as the upsamples may get better algorithms as time goes by that you can take advantage of in future.

11

I can see that it would make sense for vinyl but I was under the impression that ripping a CD at 24/96 just pads the data rather than actually upsampling. I’m happy to be corrected - this is not something I know a huge amount about.

12

I have absolutely no idea if it upsamples or pads as you say. I would imagine it depends on the software you use?

13

Don’t rip higher than the native rate it’s absolutely pointless and not lossless. Rip ALAC or AIFF files for maximum quality. Apple Music doesn’t support anything higher than 44.1 as far as I know so you’ll knobble it for that surely if you rip higher.

14

I don’t like .M4A because I can’t tell if it’s lossless just by looking at the extension. My personal choice would be to use FLAC, but you can’t play those in iTunes (or Apple Music), if that’s a problem…

15

Use FLAC the latest version of stuff from Apple should support it.

CDs are 16/44 by nature so get a bit perfect rip and you have 16/44 (all the bits on the CD in a file)

Vinyl is analog so use at least 24/96 or 24/192 for them.

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16

The newest apple OS understands and can play FLACs but I don’t think the music app (iTunes with fresh lipstick) can deal with FLAC files. This is unbelievable, but true.

I use ALAC as my lowest common denominator that iTunes and Roon can both see. I do have some higher bit rate ALAC files in my iTunes library, but they get decimated when playing over airplay. Roon is happy to stream them at full bit rate though.

17

iTunes supports AIFF , so without any doubt, go for AIFF
Dirk

18

Correct!! Just makes a much larger file with absolutely no difference in sound

1 Like
19

Unless … You believe it does… Which I don’t but countless others do.

20

If you are a Mac user, rip to ALAC 16bit / 44.1 kHz. If you are not a Mac user, then rip to FLAC at 16bit/44.1kHz. ALAC and FLAC are both lossless and interchangeable without loss. They are both compressed so they will take up less space than ripping to AIFF. Ripping to AIFF will not give you better sound quality, so you would just be wasting space.