

If you’re not an audiophile, you can still learn some valuable stuff about the process of playing back music in the digital era. In other words, if you can’t tolerate even the slightest unintended crackle or the lack of EQ on your home surround sound system, you may be an audiophile. Don’t worry, it’s something to be proud of! If you aren’t already an audiophile and wonder what on earth the term means, the word is an informal term for a high-fidelity audio enthusiast.

In this tutorial, I’ll show you the various ways to rip your CDs to lossless audio and play back, that audio, on your Mac.

If, however, you must have high-fidelity audio on your Mac, there are some things you should know. This is by no means optimized for playback on all machines, nor is it easy to carry on a mobile device-a single four-minute song can be ten times as large in file size as the same track in MP3 or AAC. The highest quality of digital audio, for example, is lossless, which is typically stored in an large, uncompressed format. While portable digital audio has lost quality in some areas, it makes up for it in others.
