iTunes convert to lossless?!!?

There is now an option on iTunes to convert your mp3s to lossless. Isn't that dumb or impossible or am I missing something?

 

Yeah, pretty sure it's not possible to take an already lossy file and convert to lossless! You can take a FLAC and convert to MP3 though......

I guess they mean you can technically convert it to a lossless format? But it's not like the quality will be better than the original file! haha.... silly

 

The best explanation I've heard of this is that if the artist/label offer a lossless AAC version of a title, you can download it, but it's not possible to take a lossy file and somehow convert it to lossless. I've never encountered an actual lossless file on iTunes but frankly I've only bought a couple of albums from iTunes anyway.

 

Are you talking about the iTunes app or the iTunes store? The app has always had the ability to create Apple Lossless files from any source. However, garbage-in/garbage-out. If you start with any MP3, it's never going to contain more information or sound better.

Now if the iTunes store is now offering this as a purchase option, it's about freakin time. I'm very interested in that.

 

it's the app. very strange....

 

It's not strange at all. It's perfectly logical to offer to capability of saving audio files to other formats. I use this feature a lot to save AIFF and WAV to ALAC, or save any of these formats down to MP3. It's not new. It's been there from the beginning. Trust me, you're way overthinking this.

 

it just makes no sense to save something and use more space when the mp3 or AAC file itself will not be upgraded and sound exactly the same.
Not unlike storing a can of soup in a giant pot.

 

Don't know what to tell ya pal. I didn't write the software. Could Apple have built some intelligence into iTunes so that you could cross-save or down-save but not up-save? Sure I suppose. However, I'd settle for not having to change the default import format in preferences in order to save to another format. That's just braindead user experience design.

You certainly have the right to be outraged by whatever bothers you. I just think that this, at least for me, is way down on the list, especially given that this feature has been there for something 6-7 years. It's not like it's brand new.

 

Is it perhaps an option so you can rip your own CD's to Apple Lossless?

 

Yes. And cross-save once something is already in iTunes. There are several reasonable use cases for this feature. The fact that one could misuse it to up-convert a lossy file is stupid, but not fatal IMO.

 

nope. it was actually an mp3....already down converted...strange I say

 

I use this feature all the time when I import my needledrops into iTunes. WAV --> Apple Lossless. It has a purpose, but obviously converting MP3s is not it

 

No, I know the option's there for everything, I just don't think it could be profitably used for everything.

 

ok, I know what happened. It used to say "convert to AAC" (iTunes plus) which is my default setting but recently I had to import a CD of a radio show one of the bands I'm in was on thus changing my default setting to lossless. Therefore, I thought this was something new.

as you were

 

It could be used to convert mp3 into the iTunes format, which is m4a. In that case no up or downsampling is involved, you just use a different format. If you convert AIFF or WAV to lossless m4a, you still got the option to convert it back to burn a CD or what not. But noz all files with m4a ARE lossless. Most files you buy from iTunes are basically lossy m4a's. It just is a different conversion app, just llike OGG or countless others.
You also got a feature, that allows iTunes to convert all higher res files - 320 or losslees to 256 on your iPod. That means the data stays untouched on your iTunes folder but in order to get more songs on the go you can have lossless files downsampled on your iPod. That makes quite a difference. I could store 800 songs on my 8 GB iPod Touch with that feature on. When I changed the media recently I left the files untouched and now I got only 300 songs on the very same iPod Touch.

Even if you don't get a feature, apple knows what they are doing in almost every case. The only feature I miss is keeping all artwok attached to an album, not only the cover artwork - but I put those in another folder by now OR look them up in discogs.com..

 

Converting mp3 to m4a (aac) is a bigger sin than converting mp3 to lossless. You should never convert from one lossy audio format to another. You end up with the artifacts of both compounded.

MP3 uses a set of filters and processing to do its compression. AAC uses a different set of filters and a different style of processing to do its compression. The two are not the same and have different artifacts. One way of thinking about it is mp3 throws away part of the audio data to do its compression. aac throws away a different part of the audio data to do its compression. Converting mp3 to aac means you've lost audio data twice and the result will sound worse than the original mp3 file.

 

From what I understand, converting a file from one lossy format to another is not a good thing to do because it can result in audio artifacts due to the differences in the lossy codecs, while converting a lossy file to a lossless codec won't affect the sound quality but you will end up with a larger file with no audible benefit.

[I didn't see Ham Sandwich's post before posting this.]

On converting files, MediaMonkey also has this function and I've used it to convert my FLAC files to highest-quality LAME MP3s when loading them on my iPod (it also works with other players). All I do is set up a conversion rule (such as "FLAC - Convert to 320kbps MP3) and MediaMonkey will automatically do it. The main disadvantage of auto converting is that it takes much longer to load the files on your player.

On why iTunes has an option to convert a lossy file to a lossless file, it could be that iTunes offers the ability to convert any audio file that it supports into any other format that it supports and it is left up to the user which one to choose. Since converting an audio file from one lossy codec to another is not a good option, it could be that converting to a lossless codec is an option for non-iPod players that don't support the AAC format (if they support a lossless codec).

 

Yes, the convert option will always convert to the default format you set for importing CDs. It does seem a little odd to tie those two functions together, but that's pretty low on my list of iTunes complaints

 

Where is this option exactly?

 

right click on a song and you'll see something a little over halfway down that will say "create (whatever your default) version"

 

Yes you can convert a lossy file to lossless. However you end up with a big turd on a nice hamburger bun.

 

All software I've used that allows conversions from one audio format to another has allowed for the conversion of lossy to lossless. I can't think of any software of that sort that I've used that hasn't allowed that. The fact that iTunes allows you to convert lossy to lossless isn't a big deal. What would be more surprising is if it didn't allow you to do that.

I think the software should possibly present a warning to the user that explains that converting from lossy to lossless won't improve the audio quality of the file. At the same time, there are valid reasons for doing that and the software should allow you to do that if you click through and acknowledge that you're an advanced user and know what you're doing and have a good reason for doing a conversion like that.

Video editing software should also present warnings if you use an mp3 file as a source for a high-def video that is going to be uploaded to YouTube. There ought to be a way for YouTube to add something to the description for a video to let us know if an mp3 file was used as the source for a high-def video. Video editing software should let the person using the software know that the audio would be better if they used lossless music and audio. And if they insist on using an mp3 as source for the audio then the software should publish an alert to the users Twitter and Facebook accounts telling the world that they've uploaded a high-def YouTube video that used mp3 audio files as the audio source. We need some public shaming to motivate people to learn how to do audio the right way.

 

Oh, that's just letting you convert it to lossless format. That is for a wav file or some uncompressed song. Doing that to an mp3 will give you a large crappy sounding file.

 

Cool. That explains why the feature is even available. Thanks

 

Apple could, if they wanted to, allow you to "trade" your iTunes lossy files for lossless versions. Record companies are required to deliver source files to Apple in 24/96 format. These could be down-sampled to 16/44.1 and offered through Apple Match in exchange for any songs you bought from the iTunes store.

They'd certainly charge for this, though, and AFAIK it's not a service they offer today.