Library & files
Lossless
Lossless means the encoding discards nothing: decode the file and the original samples come back bit for bit. WAV, AIFF, FLAC and ALAC are lossless; MP3 and AAC are not.
In practice
Buy lossless and convert down when you need to — you cannot get back what a lossy encoder threw away.
The workable arrangement is one lossless library at home and a generated export for the gig, which keeps the drive small without ever putting you in the position of re-encoding. FLAC or ALAC rather than WAV for the library, since both are lossless and considerably smaller. And if a track only ever existed as a lossy file, buying it again in lossless does nothing for the copy you already ruined by converting.
Bit for bit
What comes back
FLAC, ALAC, WAV, AIFF
The lossless formats
One master
What to keep
Where these come from: Format properties and library practice, not catalog figures — nothing in our catalog records how a file was encoded. For what we can measure, see the format that makes it affordable.
Why it matters
The argument for lossless is not mainly about what you can hear on the night. It is that a lossless file is a master you can generate anything from — a stick copy, a different format, a stem separation, a remaster — while a lossy file is already a decision somebody else made and cannot be undone.
It matters more the more you process. Time-stretching, key shifting and stem separation all magnify encoding artefacts, so the file you feed into that work should be the best one you have rather than the smallest.
Frequently asked
Can you hear the difference between lossless and 320 kbps?+
Rarely, and less often than the argument suggests. The reason to keep lossless is that it survives conversion and processing intact, not that a floor will notice.
Which formats are lossless?+
WAV and AIFF uncompressed, FLAC and ALAC compressed. All four return the original samples exactly; the compressed pair just take less space doing it.
Should DJs buy lossless?+
If you convert, process or archive, yes — it is the version everything else can be generated from. If you buy a track, put it on a stick and play it, 320 kbps is genuinely fine.
Related terms
Lossy compression
Lossy compression shrinks a file by discarding audio a listener is unlikely to notice. What it removes is gone permanently, and encoding an already-lossy file removes more on top.
FLAC
FLAC is a lossless compressed format: it shrinks a file without discarding any audio, so decoding returns the original samples exactly. It typically lands around 60% the size of the WAV it came from.
WAV and AIFF
WAV and AIFF are uncompressed audio containers — the raw samples, no encoding. They sound identical to each other and differ mainly in how they store tags and which software wrote them.
Bit rate
Bit rate is how much data one second of audio uses, in kilobits per second. It decides the file size, and on a lossy format it decides how much of the original recording survives the encoding.
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