[rodman]

hey guys,

ive only recently, thanks to head-fi, discovered the wonder that is aac for my tiny 1g ipod shuffles. i wish to convert my mp3 collection currently 192 kbp cbr to 192 kbp aac with itunes.

now with the cds i have, i will be reripping them to 192 kbp vbr, but some of the music is from cds i borrowed and it would be a bitch to borrow them again and rerip them. so i was wondering if theres any benefit in converting to 192 kbp vbr from cbr or whether that would just be a waste of space. if it is, what should i rip it to? 192 kbp cbr?

thanks!

ps sorry for being so anal. but thats wat head fi is about right?

 

[some1x]

It is a bad idea to re-encode a lossy file (such as MP3) into anything.
1. If you re-encode to another lossy format, the result will only sound worse, even if the new bit-rate is higher.
2. There is no point to re-encoding to a lossless format.
3. The only situation where you might consider re-encoding from a lossy format is from a 320kbps or otherwise very high quality file into a <128kbps file to save space for your limited storage Shuffle. Even this case is worse than starting from a lossless format such as the original CD or FLAC/APE/ALAC.

If you are ripping a CD, then rip to a lossless format. You can always re-encode those to whatever format suitable for your DAP.

 

[frozenice]

The shuffle and iTunes supports mp3 so why not leave it as is. Reconverting music will only make things worse - it certainly won't make it any better .

 

[sackynut]

Both previous posters are right. Converting from and Mp3 (or other "lossy" format) to another "lossy" format just makes quality worse.

I suggest one of two things:
1. keep all your files. an ipod can play Mp3s fine.
2. re-rip all the CDs into 192kbps AAC VBR, and just use the Mp3s from the CDs you cannot re-rip.

When people say that AAC's at the same bitrate as an MP3 are generally more high quality, they are comparing the

CD > AAC to the
CD > MP3.

YOu cant "create" quality, just by converting it.

A great place to learn more about this is :
Hydrogenaudio Forums.
Those guys deal with audio formats and encoding, Head-fi deals with actually reproducing those sounds. (in headphones)

 

[rodman]

i see, point taken. ill save myself the trouble then! thanks for your help!

i wasnt really trying to "create" quality, a smaller file size with same quality was what i was looking to achieve

 

[antran7]

Another thing you might want to consider (which made me change my ripping process) - do you make mp3 cd's for your car?

most car stereos (and stereo's, for that matter) will play mp3 cd's, but not aac. so if you collection is aac and you want to make some mp3 cd's for a road-trip - you've got to convert the files to mp3.

if you're in itunes, this is a total pain in the hiney - convert songs to mp3, find newly made mp3s and burn them to cd, and then erase them from your itunes library (otherwise you'll have two version on them in your library, thus they get over-represented in the all-song-suffle).

so my current decision is to burn mp3 with itunes at 256 vbr, taking it audio hit but gaining convenience (cause i make mp3 cd's fairly often).

maybe future versions of itunes will be able to keep a library of flac files, and on-the-fly convert to mp3 or aac if you want to downsize the files for ipods or cds.

 

[sackynut]

Quote:

Originally Posted by rodman /img/forum/go_quote.gif i see, point taken. ill save myself the trouble then! thanks for your help! i wasnt really trying to "create" quality, a smaller file size with same quality was what i was looking to achieve

Sorry I misunderstood. The answer to that, is that when you convert for example fro 192 to 128, you actually end up with much less than 128's worth of quality just because of the conversion process.

 

[rodman]

Quote:

Originally Posted by antran7 /img/forum/go_quote.gif Another thing you might want to consider (which made me change my ripping process) - do you make mp3 cd's for your car? most car stereos (and stereo's, for that matter) will play mp3 cd's, but not aac. so if you collection is aac and you want to make some mp3 cd's for a road-trip - you've got to convert the files to mp3. if you're in itunes, this is a total pain in the hiney - convert songs to mp3, find newly made mp3s and burn them to cd, and then erase them from your itunes library (otherwise you'll have two version on them in your library, thus they get over-represented in the all-song-suffle). so my current decision is to burn mp3 with itunes at 256 vbr, taking it audio hit but gaining convenience (cause i make mp3 cd's fairly often). maybe future versions of itunes will be able to keep a library of flac files, and on-the-fly convert to mp3 or aac if you want to downsize the files for ipods or cds.

although my car's cd player is too old to play mp3 cds, thanks for the pointer. i hadn't really thought of that. but ive pretty much decided from looking through this forum that in future, ill rip all borrowed cds in flac or apple lossless and archive them. while with cds i own, thats not really a problem, i can just rerip them and delete them.