How should I encode the music for preserving the sound quality and be able to play it on iTunes and iOS

audioid3-tagitunesmediaplayer

I have several CDs and other FLAC collections (classical music but not only). I want to add them to my iTunes library but I am looking for some recommendations regarding how I should encode them in order to keep the best sound quality and without running out of disk space.

I found Max conversion tool for converting them but there are too many formats and configurations to choose from.

Also I do want to use a format that is able to use keep tags, like MP3.

The winning response should contain a numbered list of formats compatible with iTunes and iOS, ordered descending by the sound quality:

  1. Apple Looseless
  2. format X, (extension), bitrate, vbr
  3. format Y, (extension), bitrate, …
  4. …

Please specify the format name clearly, preferably including the codec, like "MPEG-4 AAC", "Apple Looseless", "MPEG-4 HE-ACC", "LAME MP3", "AAC ADTS", "MPEG-4 Audio versus Apple MPEG-4 Audio",

Best Answer

You can use X Lossless Decoder(XLD) too:

X Lossless Decoder(XLD) is a tool for Mac OS X that is able to decode/convert/play various 'lossless' audio files. The supported audio files can be split into some tracks with cue sheet when decoding. It works on Mac OS X 10.4 and later.

because it's lossless it keeps the best sound quality.

Apple recommends using the following formats for your iTunes:

  • Audio files (AAC, MP3) with appropriate file extensions (.m4a, .mp3). For best results during playback, Apple recommends converting MP3 files greater than 32 megabytes (MB) to AAC format. For AAC audio files, Apple recommends the following specifications:
  • Audio Format: Baseline Low-Complexity Profile with AAC-LC (Music)
  • Data Rate: Up to 160 Kbps
  • Channels: Stereo in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov formats
  • Output Sample Rate: 48 kHz
  • Encoding Quality: Better
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