[spraggih]

I need to have all my songs in WAV or MP3 format because I am planning on using a wireless device that will only fast-forward, rewind within a track in WAV, FLAC or MP3.

I cannot use FLAC because I am connected to my iPod.

So it is either WAV or MP3. For my Apple Lossless collection I am uncompressing to WAV.

But what to do with my AAC 320kps encoded files? There are ~2,000 of them and I estimate-- converting them to WAV would require around 100GB and would not improve sound quality.

But I could convert to MP3 but I am concerned about sound quality loss. Any thoughts-- any encoders that take AAC 320 and do a good job with them?

Should I try the LAME encoder?

Thanks.

 

[scompton]

This is why I'm reripping all of my CDs to Apple Lossless.

I'm not quite sure I understand, are you connecting the wireless device to the iPod?

 

[TSi]

just make all the music that u have become 320mp3.

 

[spraggih]

the specific wireless device (Squeezebox Duet or any Squeezebox for that matter) has to transcode ALAC or AAC files. Since it is transcoding on the fly you cannot fast-forward or rewind within a song/track.

However if you use a SB native format (e.g., WAV, FLAC, MP3) then you can fast-forward, rewind within a track-- which is a requirement of mine.

-----------

Re: make all the music 320mp3-- q: are 320mp3s converted via iTunes a lower quality file?

 

[scompton]

You'll lose something, the question is, will you lose enough to hear it. How important is it for you to be able to fast forward or rewind within a track. The only time I personally do that is when I'm checking for errors after a rip. I assume you can go back to the beginning of the track and skip to the next track with AAC. If you can't do that, it would be a problem for me.

 

[krmathis]

Why not transcode some random files from AAC to MP3 (ex. LAME V0)? Then listen to them and decide if the end result have an audio quality you can live with...

 

[LeChuck]

Loss is inevitable. Your music is already contained encoded in one lossy format, and transcoding to another lossy format is not ideal.

My suggestion would be to transcode a track you are highly familiar with from AAC to MP3 using different bitrates, and then ABX it to the original AAC file until you find a comprimise between bitrate/quality that you are satisfied with (ie, can't tell the difference between).

While this might be a moot point, in the future you should rip directly to lossless to avoid issues like this. While your iPod might not be able to read FLAC files, conversion is as easy as mouseclick, a lot easier than re-ripping. Or use Apple Lossless.

 

[spraggih]

Thanks guys-- I rewind within a track enough to be bothered by it all if the feature does not exist.

On the lossless encoding always-- that kind of makes sense and would help me some now but the reason for not encoding all my music in lossless is because some of the quality is suspect to start with-- I just do not want to lose further sound quality with a conversion.

I have decided to take my highly rated music in AAC 320 and *convert* to WAV thus not losing any sound quality-- just wasting disk space because there will be no improvement in sound quality. So I will now have:

Lossless files converted to WAV;

AAC 320 Highly Rated converted to WAV;

AAC 320 Not-Highly Rated left as AAC 320 and if I find I like the songs enough to listen to often I will either convert to WAV or get the original CD and encode to WAV.

Thanks!