FLAC Vs ALAC

I prefer FLAC:

• it’s open source (not bullshit APSL)
• it’s much more widely accepted than ALAC
  • not necessarily for players, with ffmpeg now; but for long term storage
• compression rates are fairly similar (both very good)
• and I don’t know anybody who mainly uses ALAC.

The reasons to use ALAC would be:

• native support with Core Audio
  • FLAC doesn’t, although there is http://sourceforge.net/projects/coreaudio-flac/
• iTunes support
  • even supported in Core Audio, it won’t be in iTunes
  • although 3rd party support exists:
    • http://www.xiph.org/quicktime/download.html
    • http://code.google.com/p/flukeformac/
• and if you’re an Apple fanboy. <action="raise">hand</action> :)

Interesting reading

• http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=74877
• http://www.pcworld.com/article/169606/play_wma_ogg_and_flac_files_in_itunes.html
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_audio_codecs
• http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Choosing_the_best_codec
• http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Lossless_comparison#Comparison_Table