[Drakokirby]

Since ordering my M50s, people say quality headphones mean nothing without quality headphones so I sought out to find websites that I can download/buy these files. I was going to get lossless first but I decided to start with AAC. Went to Mp3 Sparks to see how much it would cost for a usual song but I couldn't find AAC. I did find out that on the wiki page of AAC, MPEG-4 is mentioned multiple times and it says AAC is contained by MPEG-4. Does that mean AAC equals MPEG-4?

 

[necropimp]

MPEG-4 is a pretty broad term that covers a number of things from audio and video codecs to container formats
 
now when referring to the container format (.mp4 and also .m4v and .m4a and other variants) in the case of an audio only file one can fairly safely assume that AAC is the audio codec used (or ALAC)

 

[Drakokirby]

OK then. So between MP3, WMA7, WMA8, WMA9, OGG, MPEG-4, MPC, Lossless, and Wave, the second best in sq that is usable on an mp3 player behind Lossless would be MPEG-4 or Wave?

 

[necropimp]

wav is almost always lossless as it's usually uncompressed PCM... it is possible to put lossy audio into a wav container but most of the time it's PCM

but with lossy codecs which one is best is extremely subjective...

 

[Drakokirby]

OK. Hypothetically, let's say all of the music files I listed were at their peak of performance. Would Wave be the best and then lossless would be second? Who would be third?

 

[Centauri]

He just said WAV is Lossless.
 
Generally Lossless > m4a[AAC] > LAME MP3 > Everything else
 
Above a certain bit rate, the difference between lossy codecs hardly matters because they all become indistinguishable from each other and from lossless to the ear.
 
But technically, m4a/aac is the most advanced of the bunch. I run with it.