What audio format do you put on your iPods?

This page summarizes the projects mentioned and recommended in the original post on /r/ipod

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  • flac

    Free Lossless Audio Codec

    FLAC continues to be actively maintained and updated. Which, actually thanks for asking your question because in checking sources I noticed FLAC was just updated not two weeks ago. I thik the last time I updated my encoder libraries was after MP3 lost patent protection and dropped licensing a few years ago, so this is fortuitous timing! Anyways, FLAC continues to be meaningfully updated (homepage @ xiph and the changelog @ github).

  • qaac

    CLI QuickTime AAC/ALAC encoder

    Take a look at qaac, a CLI front end for Apple's AAC encoder. Here's a walkthrough for using it under Linux.

  • WorkOS

    The modern identity platform for B2B SaaS. The APIs are flexible and easy-to-use, supporting authentication, user identity, and complex enterprise features like SSO and SCIM provisioning.

  • alac

    The Apple Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC) is a lossless audio codec developed by Apple and deployed on all of its platforms and devices.

    ALAC, on the other hand, well... I don't know. I struggled to find an official changelog so who knows? Maybe it was updated recently to include Apple's version of spatial-audio-whatever, but I don't know if that's in the encoder or some other piece of software. Either way, spatial-audio-whatever isn't applicable to iPods and I wouldn't regard it as being part of an encoder's core functionality. ALAC's repository at github shows the last meaningful change was ten years ago. Useful documentation has never been a thing Apple has done, so... meh.

NOTE: The number of mentions on this list indicates mentions on common posts plus user suggested alternatives. Hence, a higher number means a more popular project.

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