lossless codec vs wav/aiff?

I keep seeing people bringing up archiving their music in lossless formats, saying that space is cheap now days so you might as well go lossless. but if space is really that cheap why not archive in uncompressed "wav/aiff" aren't these uncompressed formats more likely to survive the test of time than the decoders for lossless audio files? I guess I'm having trouble seeing the advantages of using a lossless codec other than for saving a bit of space, but I could be missing something.

 

A problem with WAV and AIFF is that they do not have good tagging support. There are some media players that can read or write tags in WAV or AIFF files, but many many that cannot. And many that will potentially end up erasing the tags that are there because they don't know how to deal with them.

The compressed lossless formats like FLAC or ALAC have known and standard tagging support. Programs that can read or reprocess FLAC or ALAC expect tags to be a part of the file and know how to deal with them.

Plus tags are very important in allowing you to manage and organize a large music library of files. Managing a library of WAV files is like living in the 80s with an Apple ][. We've advanced far beyond managing music files like that.

 

As has been discussed many times, WAVs cannot store a lot of metadata, nor can you embed JPG image files into them. Apple Lossless and FLAC are a lot more suited for that.

Hard drive space can be cheap, but you can always cram 40% more stuff onto a drive if it's lossless files instead of WAVs.

 

Personally, I don't think it matters. Lossless is lossless. You can always decode them back to wav or vice versa. I use flac and wav. With JRiver my one and only music playing platform, it does fine with tagging wav files, and as Ham Sandwich said as long as you stay in that universe, that tagging is good. I like good tagging for organization in JRiver, but really I don't rely on any of these programs. Good file organization on a hard drive goes a long ways and is fool proof. But then it's the music I'm most concerned with, the art, notes, extras, are just that, extra stuff. I can live without it and not give a hoot. Each to their own preferences.
I also should mention I have quite a collection of SACD/DSD going on the hard drive. Now this will eat up space. Which I'm more than happy to oblige.
I should also note, that it's hard to argue with the thought that if lossless is lossless then why not save space and gain all the attributes of tagging, thus flac.

 

I have only used iTunes and JRiver for Mac with AIFF files without problems with metadata and tagging. Is it Windows based media players that have the tagging issues with AIFF?

 

Mac is able to tag AIFF. But I'm not sure of the limitations it may have on tagging (I don't know that much about Macs). Windows doesn't tag AIFF. And Windows doesn't tag WAV (other than some very basic and limited tags).

JRiver Media Center for Windows is able to read and write tags in AIFF and WAV files. But very very very few other Windows programs will be able to read them.

 

So far I have not come across any limitations for myself but I wouldn't consider my tagging efforts complicated. Other than the basic Artist, Title, Genre, Year type things the Comments is the only field I modify/add myself (beyond basic corrections in the other fields for spelling, punctuation etc). I do Audio Analysis through JRiver for Mac and display the resultant data in that tool. It seems to me that many complaints around tagging surround the apparent more complex needs of Classical music of which I have few titles.

 

If you're doing the tagging in JRiver you'll be fine. Full tagging support. Full use of tags. And even the ability to create your own custom tags.