ALAC help?
 

Hey guys, I recently got a 160 GB ipod Classic. I've been re-ripping my entire collection in Apple Lossless (ALAC) since I figured I might as well since I have the space.

I seem to have a problem with several albums where the last song on the album has a few crackles/glitches in them. (a couple examples being Nine Inch Nail's "The Fragile", The Verve's "Urban Hymns" and Scott Weiland's "12 Bar Blues") I know the CDs are in perfect condition so what do you guys think the problem is?

Should I have just stuck with 320 Kbps MP3s?

bump anyone know anything?

The format shouldn't matter, if anything a higher quality format should eliminate the majority of those issues. Or did they rip without issue as mp3s? What app are you using to rip the tunes?

Normally it's crud or teeny tiny scratches on the disc itself, but you claim they're in perfect shape... do they happen to be discs that feature some sort of digital multimedia content that so many albums in the late 90s tried featuring (and normally botched)?

Something you could try is just ripping the problem tunes individually and see if you can tweak a setting so that the application does extra quality checks at the cost of speed. Also don't run or do anything else on the computer while you're ripping the tunes - I've had crackles happen in the past because of loading webpages while ripping tracks, especially with problematic discs.

Apple Lossless might run down your iPod's battery quicker due to the extra encoder processing required. This seems to be a bigger problem with the iPod Nano but it did seem to run down the battery on my iPod Classic fairly quick as well.

Really there is no need to go above 320kbps as the difference in sound quality isn't really that noticeable, especially with a pair of mid-quality earphones or headphones.

The iPod has been really been all that capable of outputting lossless sound quality, really. I agree. Go back to MP3.