[wy4tt]

i've a lot of aac files that i'd like to convert to mp3...anyone have a fav way of doing this? thanks.

[Developer]

Yes, iTunes can do that. In iTunes->Preferences->Importing choose mp3, then select the tracks you want to convert and select Convert Selection to mp3 from the Advanced menu.

However, it's not a good idea to do this. If you need mp3s for an mp3 player that does not support AAC for example, you should re-import from the original CDs directly as mp3.

[wy4tt]

excellent. thanks Developer. that's what i was looking for. are they quirky on an mp3 player?

[Chuckit]

Originally posted by wy4tt:
are they quirky on an mp3 player?

It's a lossy-to-lossy conversion (i.e. it loses quality when you encode it as AAC, and then again when you encode it as MP3). This means that the resulting MP3 will be lower quality than the original AAC, and certainly lower quality it would be if you just re-ripped it.

[wy4tt]

ah, makes sense. thanks for the help! back to ripping i go.

[ryju]

I'm just curious, why are you converting AAC to MP3?

[ervier]

I've heard somewhere that converting to MP3 is a one-time-quality-loss. What I mean is that if you rip a cd to MP3, then burn an audio cd from those MP3's, and then again rip that last cd, the new MP3's will be the same quality as the first ones. The opposite happens with VHS and JPEG (open JPEG in Photoshop and export the same picture again as JPEG will have a double quality loss). Can anyone confirm that this doesn't happen in MP3?

[Russian Mac fan]

Many of my songs are in AAC at 96 - I heard it's the same as mp3 at 144. I think it even says that on the AAC web site. This really saves me space.

[wataru]

Originally posted by ervier:
I've heard somewhere that converting to MP3 is a one-time-quality-loss. What I mean is that if you rip a cd to MP3, then burn an audio cd from those MP3's, and then again rip that last cd, the new MP3's will be the same quality as the first ones. The opposite happens with VHS and JPEG (open JPEG in Photoshop and export the same picture again as JPEG will have a double quality loss). Can anyone confirm that this doesn't happen in MP3?

I've never heard that, and I highly doubt that it's true.

[ervier]

Originally posted by wataru:
I've never heard that, and I highly doubt that it's true.

You could compare it with the GIF-compression method. There you get a one time loss, but afterwards you can edit the picture in Photoshop (or any other image editor) and save it again as GIF. Then you can again decide what compression method to use, and you don't need to loose more and you can compress at the same factor. But of course I don't know if it works like this, just to illustrate that something like this is not so strange.

[Ω]

Originally posted by ervier:
I've heard somewhere that converting to MP3 is a one-time-quality-loss. What I mean is that if you rip a cd to MP3, then burn an audio cd from those MP3's, and then again rip that last cd, the new MP3's will be the same quality as the first ones.

[flame resistant suit]I would tend to agree. When you encode using a lossy format it removes 'unneccessary' data. When you copy this file you are copying the whole file, and it is lossless. When you go to encode again the unneccessary data is already removed.

Though I am by no means an expert. [/flame resistant suit]

I do know if you convert your AAC to MP3 you will lose even more quality. Always rip from originals if you can.

[Synotic]

Originally posted by wataru:
I've never heard that, and I highly doubt that it's true.

Doesn't MP3 work by stripping out some of the ranges that we supposedly can't hear? If these ranges have already been taken out then there's nothing more to take out. I don't think it affects the data that is left behind.

[wataru]

Ok, so maybe it's true. Anyone want to do a test?