Playing Lossless Audio on Your iPhone Using iTunes

A lot of people think it’s impossible to to play lossless or uncompressed music files on the iPhone because iTunes won’t let you use anything but MP3’s. This is simply not true. While the iTunes store typically sells compressed MP3 tracks, your iTunes can also hold your imported CD collection as well as music from many other sites that offer lossless music files. The process is fairly simple to get your personal CD’s or purchased high-quality music files imported into your library.

Importing CD’s Into iTunes

• With iTunes open select Preferences -> Import Settings
• From here you can select WAV, AIFF or ALAC as your lossless audio import files (WAV format is highly recommended)
• Make sure you’re importing at least 44.1kHz at 16bit or higher (Automatic function should be set to this already)
• Use error correction when importing CD’s. This will ensure there is no missing data which can playback just like a scratched CD

Once you’ve made your selections you’ll click OK. From then on, all your CD’s will be imported in lossless format to your library.

Importing Your Purchased Lossless Tracks Into iTunes

• Locate your purchased lossless files on your computer (FLAC, ALAC, WAV, AIFF etc)
• Open iTunes, then drag and drop your files directly into the player. They should automatically begin importing into your library.
• When importing is complete you can double check by searching for the artist or album in your iTunes player.

This is a very simple process. Just Locate, Drag and Drop.

Checking To Ensure Your Lossless Files Imported Correctly

Making sure your files were imported in the proper format is simple. It’s good to check every once in a while as sometimes we end up changing settings but it’s really not necessary to do this with every imported track. Once you’ve got the right settings, importing lossless files is automatic.

• First locate the individual tracks in your iTunes player
• Then right-click and select Get Info
• From here you’ll see the Advanced tab where you can verify the file type

Getting Your Lossless Songs and Albums on Your iPhone

Getting your high-quality lossless tracks on your iPhone is really no different than with MP3’s. Some people use the Automatic Sync function but many people have more music than space so using the Manual Sync option is usually best. This allows you to choose which songs and albums you want to put on your iPhone depending on your mood and available space on your device. If you have 2 or more files of the same tracks you’ll need to check and see which are your high-quality lossless files and then you can delete your compressed MP3 files to avoid confusion when loading into your computer. Your lossless, uncompressed audio files will definitely take up more hard drive space but it well worth it for the sound quality because you’ll have these files for years to come no matter what type of device you play your music from.