[remilard]

If you can abx it, it is not in your head, otherwise it is.

 

[bundee1]

Go with ALAC. Its the perfect compromise between space and sound quality and youll never have to rerip your collection as you upgrade your equipment because it will always be the best. With the new Ipods battery life the strain on battery life shouldnt be as worrisome. I have 1300 lossless songs on my 4G 40GB Ipod and that includes several 70 minute mixes joined into several tracks so I bet I could get another 100 individual songs in their place upping the total to around 1400 ALAC songs on a 40GB. You can probably get 2000 songs on a new 60GB photo and get 6-7 hours of battery life out of it. Im getting 4hrs with my lossless tracks no backlight.

 

[audeo]

iPod sound quality is also affected alot by your environment, and the isolation ability of your headphones. For casual listening walking around, etc., I use an iPod shuffle with 128 AAC. For serious listening, I bring a lossless collection around on hard drives, or higher quality (260 VBR MP3 (old rips)) on an iPod photo. I use Shure E5cs, which offer very good isolation, but outside noise still leaks in, especially on airplanes. So, consider your usage.

That said, if you have space, you can always rip in lossless, and then down-convert from within software for use on a portable player - and just keep two copies of your library.

 

[stefan]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fickle-Friend I have just been told this... QUOTE: "Any quality difference above 192Kbps AAC and Lossless is all in your head." Is that true?

I've never tried AAC.
But I've tried MP3 (Lame encoder), MPC, Ogg and WMA at all bitrates.
Lossless (I use APE) beats them all on a good reference system. The sound is fuller, rounder, warmer....

But there are exceptions: I've a cheap old amplifier and speakers, and they actually sound slightly better with MP3 @128 than lossless -- in lossless I think the extra detail just came out as being muddy.

So: can you hear a difference? Depends on the playback equipment and the environment.

 

[nsahoo]

I have heard worse sayings.

"Why bother buying $200 headphone if all you are going to hear is mp3?"-a friend.