I bumped up the bitrate-- nice improvement!

[ds-]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Imyourzero No way IMO! 320k MP3s sound great with a lot of music and, according to the results of various double blind tests, sound virtually identical to the original CD. This is for the majority of people, of course. If you are intent on re-ripping your collection, consider lossless. The cool thing about lossless files is that they can be transcoded into pretty much any other format, which is a big plus if you listen to music on the go as well as at home.

Ok thanks. You just saved me days and days of re-ripping

 

[appar111]

Quote:

Originally Posted by blessingx Generally VBR>ABR>CBR. So if iTunes CBR is really ABR and its VBR is actually more VBR-ish ABR, then its wait I'm confused. Anyway use VBR.

VBR's better than CBR for space, not necessarily sound, right? Can iTunes use VBR for AAC files or only MP3 files? I'm wondering if I should use VBR and re-rip (again) my Maiden stuff to save some space.

 

[blessingx]

Quote:

Originally Posted by appar111 VBR's better than CBR for space, not necessarily sound, right? Can iTunes use VBR for AAC files or only MP3 files? I'm wondering if I should use VBR and re-rip (again) my Maiden stuff to save some space.

It's your call on the reripping. I haven't heard of any tests comparing sound quality yet. With the new iTunes/QT, iTunes has a VBR AAC setting (BTW iTunes VBR setting for MP3 is always the minimum bitrate). If early reports are to be believed (I haven't verified myself with Foobar), AACs normal/CBR setting was always ABR. So if you were recording say 160 kbps it would fluctuate between a small range of about 150-170 resulting in an average of 160. With the new 'VBR' setting supposedly the fluctuated range would be larger to say 140-180 (these numbers are all approximate however one persons test on one album did swing ~19 kbps either way), still resulting in an average of around 160. In the end there is a very slight difference in file sizes (say 1-2MB per album from two albums I compared - see VBR thread), but in theory, should the encoding being tuned correctly the sound quality should be where the increase is felt (more bytes where you need it because less is spent where you don't). So practice then (if this all works out in theory) quality should increase if you keep the same bitrate as you encoded previously... or you may be able to decrease your bitrate setting a notch and keep the same quality much of the time ... maybe.

I use 224 AAC because that's where I can't no longer tell the difference until lossless (and then only with my home DAC). Plus it saves bat life on the iPod. Most of the time I can't tell on the iPod (where I use lossy files) between 192 and 224. Using VBR I may not be able to tell at all. We'll see. This all make me want to try all the way back to 128 if I ever get a nano.

 

[Jahn]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jahn yep! when i get home i'm going to rip some stuff in 256VBR AAC and compare it to 320AAC!

i couldn't tell the diff tween 256VBR AAC and 320 AAC. of course I was listening to ancient Jukebox Ella Fitzgerald, but she sounded just as sweet.