Hi there

I would like to find out if any Sony or, more likely, third-party tool exists that will enable playback (and ideally ripping but not as important as can use PC for this) of Apple Lossless audio files on my PS3.

Why?
Because I intend on buying an iPod (yes I have never owned one yet have been listening to compressed music since 1994 on the second generation Sony MiniDisc player).

I have tried various formats and players over the past 14 years and at one point had all my music in Sony's ATRAC format on several hundred Minidiscs (I think I might have been single-handedly propping up Minidisc sales such that it would have died a death much sooner than it did had I stopped buying the Pro versions) through to WMA VBR on devices as unsuited as a Blackberry Curve. I was also one of the first people to own and use Hitachi's 4GB Mircodrive (imported from US on the day it went on sale) in a HP iPAQ to store and playback 4GB worth of WMA Lossless music.

I kept opting for WMA over PM3 as MP3 doesn't provide the Kbit/s encoding range that arguably ones ears can hear the difference between when comparing 320Kbit/s and anything up to 1024Kbit/s, however since Apple do not (and will never) support WMA I am effectively coerced into changing formats if I want to achieve the same "lossless" qualities of WMA VBR/lossless and use an iPod.

Why an iPod (and not a iRiver or Archos or Zen or even Zune)?

Because iPod are better supported in the accessories field, such as my Yammy amp (rx-v1700) has a iPod dock, and mobile phone integration is easier, but most importantly the iPod Classic is now available in 160GB version, which is the size I need to store 400-500 albums in "lossless" format. It is also small enough to warrant carrying it around. I have effectively been putting-off purchasing an iPod until they were sufficiently large enough, storage capacity wise, yet small enough (and light enough) to be truly portable. The 160GB Classic meets those two criteria.

I have an Archos 404 30GB, which is great but it is just too little storage and comparatively too bulky to be truly portable. It also doesn’t cope with WMA lossless or any other lossless format (e.g. FLAC or Apple lossless), which is why the iPod is a suitable replacement/supplement.

The other main consideration is this is Sonos. I plan to purchase a Sonos bundle and since they support Apple lossless (and FLAC but not WMA lossless) then it makes sense to go with Apple lossless as the codec for my perfect audio source.

One final point for consideration is the fact that I house all my ripped music on a NAS Buffalo Link Station Live to be exact) so that I can a) back-it-up easily, and b) stream the files anywhere and to multiple destinations at one time, e.g. PS3 and Sonos system.

So why do I desire Apple lossless playback on my PS3 if I have a Sonos and iPod dock for my amp?

Well, this is partly me just being picky, but partly me wanting flexibility of destination for playback, especially in light of the new “PlayTV” stuff coming soon, whereby my PS3 may become the replacement for my Windows MCE HiFi PC and Sky HD box.

Basically, if I am using my PS3 for watching a Blue-ray DVD or playing back TV, I don’t want to have to then switch my amp over to Sonos and then find the Sonos remote, instead I would rather simply use the Blue-ray PS3 DVD remote to select the album/track I want and press play! Lazy, but why shouldn’t I be able to do this?

So, does anyone know of the ability to stream/playback from external source (e.g. NAS) Apple lossless audio format on a PS3 without having to install Yellow dog Linux (or any other OS)?

Any help much appreciated.

Thanks

MadMaxMel :)

You only can if you transcode it in realtime while streaming it from a PC.

This is the single biggest reason I do not think I will ever need more than the 20G of hard drive space my PS3 came with. If it could play Apple lossless, I would be able to easily transfer my music collection to it and use as a music server.

You should, I believe, be able to download a 30 day trial of TwonkyVision and use that to stream Apple Lossless to the PS3. I'm planning to get a PS3 soon and use it for this same purpose, so I'm hoping it works or I'll have to find a way to convert everything to FLAC or something else.

Are there any tools to transcode Apple lossless to a standard format? If so, there should be no quality impact at all, unlike transcoding compressed streams. Also, since it's only a data re-packing process with no computation, it should go very fast.

Play it back on a PC and record the output?

This is why iPod fails.

Linux & VLC ??


i have no idea how well it would work/integrate, but to my knowledge VLC supports the ALAC codec.

So is apple lossless better than something thats ripped from a CD a 320kbps?

So is apple lossless better than something thats ripped from a CD a 320kbps?

Entirely dependent on your ears and your sound system.

Lots of people wouldn't notice, but I do.