It is not Apple Lossless that we want, but any at least a lossless format!

It does not reduce quality - at all - form the original and takes half the space on the hard drive.

The thing about Apple Lossless is that it is available in iTunes, which has become the predominant tool for managing our music library.

p.

Tournedos - I do not understand how Apple makes money from their lossless format? iTunes is free, the conversion program included is free. You pay for your computer, but you can use iTunes non non-Apple computers, and the worldwide majority of iTunes users do not use Apple computers.

WAV or AIFF is full-file, while FLAC, Apple lossless and other lossless formats reduce the size of the originating file, without losing any information. Whether you want to use Apple lossless is another matter. Many suppliers of high-resolution files provide these in FLAC, WAV, etc - and then leave it up to the users whether they wish to convert the files to another format, for instance one of Apple's, or any of the hundreds of others available, for free or purchase.

I am not aware that Apple has licensed Apple Lossless yet... so it probably has no price.

As for a lock in, well, because you can convert your songs from it to any other format without any loss, it does not lock you into it.

I will do a search if Apple licenses it.

p.

Well I did a search...

Regardless of format, the industry - B&O included - are very familiar to paying for licenses for audio and video codecs. Take the Beosystem 3 for example. B&O will likely have had to pay numerous third-parties software licenses that make the capability accessible and free to the user - like AAC for example.

H.264 and AAC are great examples of this; numerous players now support this because the manufacturers pay a license and builds it into the cost of the product. 

The key thing to really worry about with the BS5 is the lack of integration as a result of no access to the Fairplay rights management technology and not the audio codec. This obviously isn't a problem with iTunes Plus content.

Best, Mark. 

Look, It's REALLY simple everyone.....

*drool* That is all.

I think B&o know what they're doing, ease up on the skepticism and nit picking it's getting really irritating for those of us who are loyal to the brand and it's astronomical achievements thus far. For heavens sake!

This is NOT a BeoSound 6 - they have learned from their mistakes from that venture. 

Now lets just sit back and relax, stop stressing. The core goal B&o set out to achieve when they design their products is that the products give many a positive experience.