[xtenglong]

So I'm new to the audiophile world, and I've been reading around about these lossy and lossless types of music files. I currently have almost 5000 songs and almost all of them are in mp3 format. There is no way to improve the quality by converting these files to something else, is there? Am I going to be stuck with this situation? Also, just also wondering, if I buy music from the iTunes store, can I buy the song in a lossless form, or is it all lossy AAC or MP3 format?

 

[NiceCans]

Quote:

Originally Posted by xtenglong /img/forum/go_quote.gif There is no way to improve the quality by converting these files to something else, is there?

Looks like you already know the answer . . . .

Only way to improve the quality is to rip them from the original CD as lossless, or purchase them that way.

Sorry, I can't help you with the iTunes question, I've never used it.

 

[jonnymk]

Apple do have their own proprietary lossless format (Apple Lossless) but last time I checked you could not buy the songs from the iTunes music store in this format.

Chill, MP3 is a very good lossy format, a blind test between a 320kbps MP3 and a Free Lossless Audio (FLAC) file will keep you busy. The most important part is that the music has been obtained error free and stored error free, most people would recommend a program like EAC in secure mode to rip CD's in that way, and then use a high quality MP3 encoder such as LAME.

The idea of lossless, is if you want to preserve your main/original copy of music on a computer. Also ask yourself where you are going to play these files...if you are a portable type music listener, you would have to rockbox your iPod or Digital Media Player to use FLAC's and then you have the disk space problem.

As long as your MP3's are 192kbps and above then they should sound fine. My preferred option when disk space is an issue (Portable) is VBR ~256kbps. But at those bit rates you might want to check out the Musepack codec.

Regards,
Jonathan

 

[xtenglong]

haha, yeah I kind of already knew the answer, but I just didn't want to accept the sad fact >.<. Is it possible to raise the rate of kbps because about half of all my music are less than 192kbps >.<. It would take me forever for me to find the cd's and rip them all and stuff, and it would probably also cost me a fortune to replace those songs.

 

[satshanti]

Raising the bitrate is just as useless as converting an MP3 to a lossless format. Information that isn't there cannot be "reconstructed", hence the name "lossy". All that is lost in a lossy compression, will be lost forever

For listening on portable equipment MP3 from 192 kbps onwards should be fine. On a high quality PC based home system the difference between the original CD in a lossless format and MP3 can definitely be heard. It all depends on the quality of your system though. What I did myself is just rip a few songs from different cd's, compress them in both a lossless and lossy format and do a listening test on your own system. That's the best way to find the answer to your question I think.

 

[krmathis]

Let me see...
1. Correct. The audio data lost when encoding to MP3 can't be recovered.
2. You can always re-rip your CD's to a lossless codec. Or at least do so from now on.
3. iTunes Store only sell audio files encoded to AAC. No MP3 or Apple Lossless.

 

[Duffy1207]

Regarding iTunes, all songs are in 128kbps AAC that is DRM protected, meaning you can't make copies of the file or copy/paste/move it, you can only listen to it using itunes or any devices you sync with iTunes.

iTunes also offers a service called iTunes plus. The songs are 256kbps AAC and are not DRM protected. There is no extra cost for a "plus" song, but not everything on iTunes is avaliable in plus.