Apple Lossless, also known as ALAC, is a lossless audio codec Apple developed some time ago for digital music. The codec compresses music files anywhere from 40-60 percent of their original size with no discernible loss in audio quality or fidelity. "A decoded ALAC stream is bit-for-bit identical to the original uncompressed audio file," according to its description. iTunes on the Mac and virtually all of Apple's portable devices support the codec, and it's been my personal format of choice when ripping songs from
