WAV vs. AIFF

I am convinced and have been for about 10 years now that we can hear things which we have not yet quantified, therefor no construct exists to model or measure these properties.

Whether right or wrong, I have always felt the same way on that.

...when the concomitant digital picture is put back together from a lossless compress, it looks just like the original file...but in my experience there is something ineffable which is lost during the 'rebuild' process.

Here we "may" see it slightly different. I do believe all the 1's and 0's can be brought back with absolutely no difference. What exactly could be different, if anything, I simply do not know. Again, as we both agree, if there is a difference it could be of different levels depending on the gear used. In other words, in some setups there is absolutely no difference in others there may be, hence the difference in opinions. (Again, just speculation.) It would be interesting to experiment with some different setups in your system and see if you could still tell a difference.

"Brianmgrarcom Wrote":
"Here we "may" see it slightly different. I do believe all the 1's and 0's can be brought back with absolutely no difference."
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Remember that although all the bits are replaced this is being done on the fly, hence processing is taking place. It is not reconstructing the signal and then playing it back all at once. Now I have experimented by taking a m4a file and converting it to a AIFF file and I have to say that does sound better than playing it directly as a m4a file. This is what led me to the belief that it is the processing that may be affecting the final outcome.

In my experience, FLAC is the one that sounds just like Wav/AIFF. Apple Lossless has "a sound" that I can detect. I think FLAC is the best lossless format but, of course, iTunes doesn't recognize it. AIFF is the best overall choice because it has tags for metadata.

This Post is starting to make me laugh....

Everyone should have someone help them do a true double blind test. It should be a real eye opener.

WAV and AIFF are just raw data files and should perform the same. WAV can hold tags but there is no agreed standard. AIFF has got a standard for storing tags.

Audiofun is right. The argument that FLAC and ALAC are bit perfect is like saying I am a great pianist because I can play all the notes on the keyboard - it isn't enough. The bits need to be delivered with very low levels of distortion of the waveform that represents those bits to avoid jitter problems, and one of the ways to improve that with computer audio is to reduce the number of tasks being performed concurrently by the PC - like unpacking files. The difference in sound between AIFF and ALAC does however differ depending on the Mac used and how it is set up.