Which format would you choose if flac and wav aren’t available? Which one sounds the best?
Unluckily some albums seem to be available only in m4a (iTunes store) and mp3 (7digital).
I’m curious to hear your point of view / experience. Thank you very much in advance!
I tend to use mp3 in that case, as it is far more portable across iTunes and Windows apps.
So I use mp3 for the iPhone (storage is expensive) and Flac for my main music in NAS/Car etc
ALAC for me.
The beauty of Qobuz has always been multiple format options for download of most purchases - used to download both FLAC and ALAC regularly of purchased items.
I’m sure mp3 is handy and more portable, however which one sounds better in your opinion @GadgetMan ?
@Alley_Cat I’m not expert about all the formats, is ALAC used by iTunes? Unluckily I can’t find some albums on Qobuz, otherwise it wouldn’t be a problem choosing, I would easily go for WAV or FLAC.
I have never had difficulty in finding music in FLAC or at least one or other of the other PCM formats (ALAC, AIFF, WAV) to convert to FLAC.
I always go for 24bit if available and the highest sample rate.
I store in FLAC and stream with Asset to transcode (play as) WAV
DSD I stream as is
2nd option is CD and rip to FLAC
I covert FLAC to MP3 to play in kitchen and car over Bluetooth from MP3 player.
Totally depends on what you are playing it on. Clearly Flac/Wav is much better, but if you are playing via the iPhone speaker or a Kitchen small radio/streamer, then mp3 is perfectly good, especially if using max bit rate. I typically have a Flac and an mp3 version of all my music.
ALAC is used by iTunes, but not all players will play it, especially if you are windows based.
I would say m4a and mp3 would have minimal differences if at the same bit rate
What are the tracks you can’t find elsewhere in FLAC or WAV.
Try Tidal store ( not the streaming site). They have an exhaustive catalog on FLAC.
There are a small number of albums and singles which are absolutely not available in WAV or FLAC. For me these are predominantly on Tidal but not exclusively so. See below for some Tidal examples. If a tine can find them as FLAC or Hi-Res then, er, good luck. I also have at least one MP3 from Qobuz (Tyrone Taylor) which coincidentally has just been removed.
If m4a (ALAC) then this would be the one. You could convert it to FLAC if required. mp3 or AAC - I wouldn’t bother.
You can get the Wah! album on Qobuz in FLAC format.
Ooh, so you can now. Thank you. Favourited.
Or, you can choose whichever format is available and subsequently convert it to your preferred format…….
OK, there may be a quality issue, but it can be done, needs must and all that.
ATB, J
@Mike-B not a problem converting a file, however not every album is available in WAV or FLAC. If you have to choose between m4a and mp3, quality is lower in the first place and converting these formats won’t improve things unluckily. I mainly use WAV, mp3 is only for car or mobile.
Thanks @GadgetMan, @Dipper and @Osiris, so both formats are ok-ish in the end.
@mikehughescq it seems I’m not alone then!
@frenchrooster didn’t you know that Tidal store has been closed since 2022? For instance one song that I’d like to have is Queen Mary by Francine Thirteen, it has a tremendous bass IMO, so it’s quite useful to test a Hi-Fi system. I didn’t see it available anywhere except on iTunes. Other songs can be found both on iTunes and 7 Digital but not in WAV or FLAC (and they are not available on Qobuz).
iTunes purchases use the lossy AAC codec at 256 kbps, they used to be 128 kbps originally. When they had DRM the files had a .m4p extension, the DRM free purchases are lossy and in files with an .m4a extension. AAC was touted as being better than equivalent bit rate or maybe even 320 kbps MP3.
To confuse matters Apple Lossless Audio Codec also generally has a .m4a file extension. It was originally proprietary but that changed.
The main reason I liked ALAC was because it was a native format on MACs whereas FLAC used to use 3rd party software to create the files and they wouldn’t play in iTunes (Music as it is now on Macs).
I think that with Apple Music hi-res it probably downloads lossless ALAC files but as with other services they will have DRM.
You use to be able to purchase from Tidal so I assume this option is still available - it used to be more limited than Qobuz format/quality wise, has this changed?
A lossless conversion won’t be any worse either though if that’s the best digital quality you can purchase for certain things.
I’m up for a challenge, give me an example.
Probably the main reason I used ALAC a lot was because I used iTunes in the past as a local ‘server’ for AppleTVs - iTunes couldn’t handle FLAC so I tended to rip CDs or buy lossless music in ALAC format as it worked for iTunes. I access stuff from iTunes/Music less these days but there was a time when a standard def movie rented on iTunes took 10-12 hours to download so I embarked on transcoding lots of DVDs to a format I could stream locally more instantly.
I sometimes look back and wonder how much time was wasted ripping CDs/DVDs etc for the convenience of not swapping physical media! Streaming audio and video services have rendered most of this pointless apart from certain titles you can’t stream.
I assume you’ve purchased from but maybe don’t have a Qobuz streaming subscription.
If you use the Qobuz desktop app to download purchases, from memory the only option is FLAC in the folder where these items are stored.
Originally Qobuz purchases were downloaded via a web page link then they produced a downloader app.
A major benefit of the web page (as you may know) was the ability to select the download format and quality up to what you purchased - so if you wanted to you could download CD quality FLAC as well as the 192 kHz 24 bit version you purchased and several qualities in between or alternative formats. Saved you having to convert say you wanted to have smaller files for the car or MP3s for the car/portable audio player. I always wondered if these were files of different provenance or simply processed on demand from the best quality option.
The downloader app has now matured and offers options to save to a selected audio format. It actually downloads a lossless file (FLAC from memory again) but then processes that file to produce ALAC/AAC/MP3/WAV/AIFF if that’s your desired file format.
The biggest benefit of downloading via the web page is high quality cover art - the other methods don’t get you this AFAICT. Most aren’t this big but 3,000 x 3,000 pixel artwork downloads are available in some cases and can look stunning compared to artwork from most sources.
