Apple lossy and lossless codecs resulting in same file sizes?!

[Ethan]

I've been trying to minimize my physical footprint by digitizing my music collection.

I'm confused. Maybe I'm having a late night dumb-attack or this must be a bug...
I'm using the Music app (formerly iTunes) macOS Big Sur 11.0.1

I imported 13 tracks from the same CD 3 times using a different import setting each time:
1) Apple Lossless Encoder (ALAC)
2) AAC ("High Quality" 68kbps mono, 128kbps stereo)
3) AAC ("Itunes Plus" 128kbps mono, 256kbps stereo)

Every time, every track's file size was exactly the same--slightly bigger than the actual CD itself, which I suppose could just be extra metadata, but I would expect different file sizes between the 3 different encoding options.

Has anyone else run into this?

 

[Ethan]

Ok, I found the issue.

In the file menu of the Music app, if you select "import" it will always copy the files as an uncompressed lossless .aiff file--regardless of what your default import settings are set to. Only when you choose the option to "Convert" will it actually adhere to your default import settings you set in preferences...one would think setting "default" settings would be global.  :

EDIT: In other words, you have to select the songs on the CD, "add to playlist" (which doesn't actually copy the files just creates a pointer to them) then select them all and convert to [whatever default format you chose in preferences]. Cumbersome.