iTunes is not a format. It is a media player app. iTunes will play pretty nearly every audio file except FLAC and DSD.
David Glasser
Airshow Mastering
Boulder, CO
Sent from Weathership Tango Delta
> On May 17, 2015, at 14:08, John Haley <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> I am pretty sure that iTunes on a Mac used to grab everything and convert
> it to iTunes, which is incompatible with everything else. Maybe this is
> no longer true. I have always figured that iTunes is a format I can do
> fine without. But then I am old and grumpy.
>
> Best,
> John Haley
>
>
>
>> On Sun, May 17, 2015 at 2:23 PM, Jamie Howarth <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>> Wavs play full res native on every Mac and recent years the OS as shipped
>> plays up to 96/24 max without downsampling out the headphone jack. 192 is
>> downsampled to 96.
>> The onboard D/A on all Macs and IPhones since the 4S is a Wolfson that
>> sounds great.
>>
>> Archaic platforms do weird stuff.
>>
>> Please pardon the misspellings and occassional insane word substitution
>> I'm on an iPhone
>>
>>>> On May 14, 2015, at 7:42 AM, Tom Fine <[log in to unmask]>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> I don't know how WAV is handled on a Mac in iTunes software, or whatever
>> other players are built-in on a standard-issue Mac as sold to consumers.
>> However, in the iTunes for Windows world, WAV files are converted on the
>> fly to some proprietary Quicktime and played through the Quicktime engine,
>> definitely audible to my ears (and not for the better). I assume they are
>> default converted to something lossy, because that's how it sounds to my
>> ears. Files ripped into iTunes in ALAC (Apple's proprietary data-lossless
>> size-compressed format) sound fine. So, at least in the Windows world,
>> Apple's main sound-playback software mangles WAV files. It may not be so in
>> the Mac world, I have never tested or listened on that platform. To my
>> ears, I think iTunes for Windows is doing the same thing with CD playback
>> -- converting on the fly to something and then running it through the
>> Quicktime engine. This is why I use Foobar2000 as my playback engine for
>> all formats.
>>>
>>> -- Tom Fine
>>>
>>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jim Sam" <[log in to unmask]>
>>> To: <[log in to unmask]>
>>> Sent: Thursday, May 14, 2015 12:25 AM
>>> Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Is it time to rethink FLAC ?
>>>
>>>
>>>> WAV is technically proprietary, as it's a subset of Microsoft's RIFF.
>>>>
>>>> One of the reasons broadcast WAV became--and is--the defacto standard
>> for
>>>> audio preservation was because of its ubiquity of being read. Don't
>> get me
>>>> wrong, I love FLAC, and it's what I've standardized on at home for my
>>>> digital audio needs, but FLAC isn't universally read out in the real
>>>> world. I know of at least one DAW widely used in libraries and archives
>>>> that can read FLAC but not write it. I also don't know if ProTools can
>>>> read FLAC as I've never tried it. Anyone know that one?
>>>>
>>>> Getting back to Richard's original question, FLAC isn't the standard for
>>>> audio preservation.
>>>>
>>>> It's an interesting take of the Aussies to place more faith in FLAC than
>>>> BWF, but I wouldn't use it for preservation. Now that various metadata
>>>> standards and tools are getting out there, it's a no-brainer to me to
>> have
>>>> BWF remain the preservation standard since FLAC and XML don't play as
>>>> nicely together as BWF and XML.
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, May 13, 2015 at 6:53 AM, Matthew Snyder <[log in to unmask]
>>>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Tom Fine <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> What digital audio formats aside from FLAC are considered
>> "non-proprietary,
>>>>>> or open source"? Is WAV? How about AIFF?
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Both of those are used and have proven their utility. WAV probably has
>> the
>>>>> edge, but a preservation engineer would be a better person to ask.
>> (Matt
>>>>> Sohn, hello?) But the link that started this discussion is the first
>> time
>>>>> I've heard of a compressed format being used for preservation. If a
>> FLAC
>>>>> file is corrupted, can it be at least partially recovered, the way WAV
>> can?
>>>>>
>>>>> The Library of Congress's digital preservation website has an extensive
>>>>> list of audio file formats and their characteristics here:
>>>>>
>>>>> http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/formats/fdd/sound_fdd.shtml
>>>>>
>>>>> I thought at some point I saw a narrower listing of formats preferred
>> for
>>>>> preservation purposes, but maybe I dreamed that. Still, reading these
>> specs
>>>>> makes it pretty clear which formats are best for preservation and why.
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> Matt Snyder
>>>>> Archivist
>>>>> Special Collections Unit
>>>>> The New York Public Library
>>>>> [log in to unmask]
>>>>> Tel: 917-229-9582
>>
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