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Re: A question about Apple Lossless
Apple Lossless, or ALAC, is Apples equivalent to FLAC i.e. they are both lossless compressed formats. AIFF and WAV are lossless uncompressed formats. MP3 and AAC are lossy compressed formats. Theoretically ALAC is identical to AIFF, as FLAC is to WAV, the only difference being the amount of disc space they occupy. Metadata, or ID3 tags, are retained as part of the file structure for all formats I've mentioned except for WAV as far as the ripping process is concerned. Burning these formats to a disc does not automatically include the metadata unless the burning software is specifically told to do so.
To answer your original question, converting lossy formats to lossless formats will not get you any enhanced quality for playback. The information that was removed during the lossy conversion is gone and cannot be retrieved.
Also, in iTunes, the right-click conversion (or Advanced -> Convert Selection to......) is dictated by your import settings (Preferences -> Advanced -> Import.......). If you change these settings to, for example, AIFF, then the right click conversion (as well as the Advanced -> Convert......) will convert to AIFF as well.
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