Hey everyone,
I'm still confused about the SBC & AAC codecs and their potential benefits.
I have a Macbook and Bluetooth headphones that support both SBC & AAC. By default, all music from Macbook plays via SBC but I found that with the dev tools you can force Macbook to always use the AAC codec (see screenshot).
A large portion of my iTunes library has been ripped from my own CD collection using either LAME CBR 320 kbps or LAME VBR (high -q 2 260 kbps) which is the highest possible quality VBR, but some of my older rips use lower bitrate ranging from 128 kbps to 192 kbps.
My headphones support the SBC bitpool of 52.
I'd like to ask you the following:
1. Given that most of my music is in .mp3 format rather than .m4a or .aac, does it even make sense to force my Macbook to use the AAC codec? Would ordinary mp3s really sound better over AAC, or is it only the files in e.g. .m4a or .aac format that would actually benefit from it?
2. If I played ordinary mp3s over AAC codec, wouldn't that mean that my Macbook would first autoconvert audio from my mp3s into AAC format each time I listened to them over Bluetooth and possibly cause tiny artifacts in the sound? And since AAC (if I'm not mistaken) only supports bitrate up to 250 kbps or so, my 320 kbps mp3s would actually be reduced to below 300 kbps over AAC codec? Or is my understanding incorrect?
3. SBC on the other hand supports bitrate of up to 319 kbps over my headphones apparently (see attached graph), so would in my case still be more reasonable to actually use SBC instead of AAC format?
It's really confusing as to what one should do... so I'd really appreciate if someone could advise about this.
Thanks!
I'm still confused about the SBC & AAC codecs and their potential benefits.
I have a Macbook and Bluetooth headphones that support both SBC & AAC. By default, all music from Macbook plays via SBC but I found that with the dev tools you can force Macbook to always use the AAC codec (see screenshot).
A large portion of my iTunes library has been ripped from my own CD collection using either LAME CBR 320 kbps or LAME VBR (high -q 2 260 kbps) which is the highest possible quality VBR, but some of my older rips use lower bitrate ranging from 128 kbps to 192 kbps.
My headphones support the SBC bitpool of 52.
I'd like to ask you the following:
1. Given that most of my music is in .mp3 format rather than .m4a or .aac, does it even make sense to force my Macbook to use the AAC codec? Would ordinary mp3s really sound better over AAC, or is it only the files in e.g. .m4a or .aac format that would actually benefit from it?
2. If I played ordinary mp3s over AAC codec, wouldn't that mean that my Macbook would first autoconvert audio from my mp3s into AAC format each time I listened to them over Bluetooth and possibly cause tiny artifacts in the sound? And since AAC (if I'm not mistaken) only supports bitrate up to 250 kbps or so, my 320 kbps mp3s would actually be reduced to below 300 kbps over AAC codec? Or is my understanding incorrect?
3. SBC on the other hand supports bitrate of up to 319 kbps over my headphones apparently (see attached graph), so would in my case still be more reasonable to actually use SBC instead of AAC format?
It's really confusing as to what one should do... so I'd really appreciate if someone could advise about this.
Thanks!
