[JustinBM]

I have Winamp pro and it allows be to convert to a format called High Bitrate AACPlus and the major differences I am seeing between the two is wav is 1411kbps/44hz and AACPlus is 256kbps/88hz. Which one is of greater quality?

 

[youngngray]

Well, I hope I'm not getting too technical here, slow me down if I am.
Ok. 
1411 > 256 therefore the WAV is better.
 
Haha, kidding aside, the WAV file is the better quality. AAC and AACPlus are both forms of lossy compression that removes some of the musical information from a file in order to reduce the size.  This is different from compressed files that are still lossless such as FLAC and ALAC.

 

[JustinBM]

 
Quote:

Well, I hope I'm not getting too technical here, slow me down if I am.
Ok. 
1411 > 256 therefore the WAV is better.
 
Haha, kidding aside, the WAV file is the better quality. AAC and AACPlus are both forms of lossy compression that removes some of the musical information from a file in order to reduce the size.  This is different from compressed files that are still lossless such as FLAC and ALAC.

 
haha lol yea wav sounded better than aacplus too me but since winamp advertises it so heavily I wanted to know for sure lol. I obviously knew that 1411 > 256 it was more the x2 of hz that threw me.
 
thanks lol
 
 

 

[holychau]

i am using WAV too. The sound is good

 

[DaBomb77766]

There's no reason why anybody should ever be using uncompressed audio files for general listening unless their player simply cannot support anything else.  FLAC, ALAC or any lossless compression formates, really, will almost always be better to use.

 

[WrxSTI]

Quote:

There's no reason why anybody should ever be using uncompressed audio files for general listening unless their player simply cannot support anything else.  FLAC, ALAC or any lossless compression formates, really, will almost always be better to use.

Certainly. There is also absolutely no reason why anybody should be using lossy audio files, and it's not even a matter of whether you can hear the difference (I'll admit I had a hard time distinguishing 192 vs lossless - this was on PC multimedia speakers though) but MP3 was invented back in the days when everyone used 8 GB hard disks. In this day and age, I see really no purpose in using mangled audio files when storing CD-quality songs is more than possible enough - I have a 1 TB hard drive + a 250 GB portable which is less than most people probably have, and I'm only using around 30% of the capacity.

 

[DaBomb77766]

Quote:

Certainly. There is also absolutely no reason why anybody should be using lossy audio files, and it's not even a matter of whether you can hear the difference (I'll admit I had a hard time distinguishing 192 vs lossless - this was on PC multimedia speakers though) but MP3 was invented back in the days when everyone used 8 GB hard disks. In this day and age, I see really no purpose in using mangled audio files when storing CD-quality songs is more than possible enough - I have a 1 TB hard drive + a 250 GB portable which is less than most people probably have, and I'm only using around 30% of the capacity.

I'd say there's no reason anybody should use lossy files for archival purposes.  However, if you're using lossless files on an iPod or other DAP it will eat up the limited storage space pretty quickly.  I generally like having my entire collection on my iPhone so I can listen to whatever I want whenever I want...but even with lossy files I've already surpassed the 32GB limit on it.  If I were using lossless I'd probably have about 1/3 of the songs on it...and it's not like the iPhone is an audiophile DAP anyway, so I doubt many would be able to tell a huge difference between LAME VBR MP3 and ALAC files.

 

[DougofTheAbaci]

I'd tend to agree if only there was a way to change the encoding used for the iPod/iPhone. It defaults to 128 when I'd rather it be at least 192. Oh well... And yes, given the output capabilities of the iPhone having lossless audio on there does seem a little silly. However, not much you can do. It's either highest quality or low quality.

 

[DaBomb77766]

Quote:

I'd tend to agree if only there was a way to change the encoding used for the iPod/iPhone. It defaults to 128 when I'd rather it be at least 192. Oh well... And yes, given the output capabilities of the iPhone having lossless audio on there does seem a little silly. However, not much you can do. It's either highest quality or low quality.

Yeah...I would press the "convert all files to AAC" if it at least had it set to 192 or 256.  It's kind of dumb how it doesn't give you the option to change that, even though it does when you're importing CDs.  Of course, converting lossy to lossy isn't good...my library is full of lossy files.

 

[DougofTheAbaci]

I just did it to see if the sound is so horrible that I can't deal with it. I don't use my iPhone for music all that often... However, I was able to load a significant amount of music on my iPhone because of that one check-box.
 
I wish it was a hidden setting that you could change...