Leave purchased iTunes (plus) as AAC or convert to MP3?

[RipcordAFF]

Hey guys,

I have a quick question. I have been converting purchased songs from itunes plus (256kbps AAC) over to mp3s. I have done this mainly to support my penchant for open-source as mp3s play on everything.

However, i realized recently that pretty much 100% of my listening is done from computers\ipods etc that can handle MP3s or AACs...am I just needlessly losing fidelity by doing that unnessary conversion? Should i just leave them as AAC?

Thanks!

 

[Ham Sandwich]

You don't want to convert from from lossy to lossy. You end up compounding encoding artifacts. It's a horrible thought for audio quality.

What you can do is convert (transcode) the AAC files to a lossless format (like ALAC or FLAC or WMA Lossless). You won't lose any sound quality doing that. But you will make the files 3-5 (or more) times bigger. You'll still have the sound quality of the lossy AAC file, but with the size increase of a lossless file.

 

[warrior05]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ham Sandwich /img/forum/go_quote.gif You don't want to convert from from lossy to lossy. You end up compounding encoding artifacts. It's a horrible thought for audio quality.

Couldn't agree more, therefore, I suggest leave it in the original AAC format.