[Eug]

This is an age old question, but I'm just curious...

For those of you who still buy CDs or rip movies, what stereo audio bitrate do you use? Back in the old days (a decade ago!) I did some heavy testing ripping various songs into MP3, and quickly came to the conclusion that 128 Kbps MP3 with the encoder I was using just wasn't good enough. I finally decided that 224 Kbps was good to my ears, but ended up just encoding everything at 256 because everything I owned supported up to 256 Kbps anyway, and I wasn't too concerned about space.

Then iTunes came along, and after some tests, I decided on 192 Kbps AAC. I thought 160 Kbps was pretty damn good, but rarely 192 might be better, so I just went with 192.

However, that's all for music. Lately I've been encoding more movie tracks from ripped discs, encoded into .m4v files, and I usually include an AC3 track at 640 Kbps as well as a stereo track at 160 Kbps AAC. I was considering 192 Kbps AAC because of my experience with music, but it seems the iPhone 4/AppleTV specs specifically list 160 as the max supported, so I just left it at 160 for possible compatibility reasons. If there wasn't this specification limitation, I'd encode at 192 instead. (Then again, I encode the video with High Profile 3.1 and it works just fine on the iPhone 4/AppleTV even though they specify Main Profile 3.1.)

So, at what bit rates do you encode your AAC?

[chabig]

I keep it simple...iTunes Plus (that's 256kbps AAC).

[turtle777]

Ever since I got my Drobo, I encode Movies and Music at much higher rates.
I also got iTunes Match, and re-downloaded all music at 256kbps AAC.

-t

[gradient]

Originally Posted by chabig 

I keep it simple...iTunes Plus (that's 256kbps AAC).

Same here.

[Spheric Harlot]

Lossless exclusively. But I don't see the point of WAV or AIFF.

It's Apple Lossless.

[Eug]

If I were starting my collection today, I'd consider Apple Lossless. Disk space is a lot cheaper now, and even the smallest nano these days is 8 GB and supports Apple lossless.

Mind you, in my own testing I couldn't tell the difference between 256 AAC and non-compressed rips of the original CD. I could tell the difference pretty easily on 160 AAC though on some material.

[FireWire]

Thank you for asking it, I was wondering the same thing. Currently I'm using 192 AAC, but I wasn't sure what to suggest to my father who listen to music more "rich" (classical, jazz, blues). I think I'll suggest Lossless for him. What size does it produce, on average? I don't have much space right now but on the other hand I don't want to re-encode all my things a second time in the future. Same thing for my printed photos, I'm postponing until I can scan them in very high resolution.

Suppose I have songs in 128 kbps MP3, is there an easy way to transfer its info (playcount, comments, artwork) to the new hi-quality song?

[Spheric Harlot]

Check out dougscripts.com

There might be something there for your needs.

[mredofcourse]

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

Lossless exclusively. But I don't see the point of WAV or AIFF.

It's Apple Lossless.

Use WAV or AIFF for editing and recording, or in situations where processing is a greater issue than space. It wouldn't really make sense for most people to keep their iTunes library in WAV or AIFF as opposed to Apple Lossless (ALE/ALAC).

I'm a 256kbps AAC kind of guy myself. The exception to that would be voice based podcasts which I publish at 128kbps or even 64kbps mono depending on the source.

For video, I usually encode AAC at one level down than I otherwise would if it was an audio file, with a minimum limit of 128kbps stereo or 64kbps mono. And of course, H.264 MP4.

[Rosyna]

Anything over 256kbps AAC doesn't improve the quality.

And you don't need to rip CDs at 256kbps because the source (the CD) has crap quality audio on it.

The best, I think is to sign up to iTunes Match and get their 256kbps AAC files, which are mainly conversions from the masters, not CDs.

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally Posted by Rosyna 

Anything over 256kbps AAC doesn't improve the quality.

And you don't need to rip CDs at 256kbps because the source (the CD) has crap quality audio on it.

The best, I think is to sign up to iTunes Match and get their 256kbps AAC files, which are mainly conversions from the masters, not CDs.

Wow.

Three points made, and all three of them completely wrong.

[mredofcourse]

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

Wow.

Three points made, and all three of them completely wrong.

Well that's not very helpful. Here's my take on his comment:

"Anything over 256kbps AAC doesn't improve the quality."

It would be one thing if you said you couldn't hear the difference, but there is a quality difference, and it may be more relevant if you're editing and reprocessing audio. But ya, most people would find 256kbps AAC to be well beyond what they can hear in a comparison test.

"And you don't need to rip CDs at 256kbps because the source (the CD) has crap quality audio on it."

Some CDs are actually quite bad. A lot of people think a CD is "maximum quality" or that all CDs are created the same. Each CD title is going to be of varying quality. Regardless though, the actual spec of the file on the CD is greater than that of 256kbps. Ripping at 256kbps AAC (or even 320kbps) is inherently going to lower the quality as compared to the source (CD). IF you want a file that has the same quality of the CD, you'd need to rip at 44.1Khz 16-bit WAV or AIFF (1411kbps) or encode to a lossless format such as FLAC or ALE/ALAC, which various based on the complexity of the song, but my library has ALAC bit rates that range from 395kbps to 1010kbps.

"The best, I think is to sign up to iTunes Match and get their 256kbps AAC files, which are mainly conversions from the masters, not CDs."

Many, but not all, songs from iTunes are from better sources than CD. So yes, if you're going to rip and encode a CD at 256kbps AAC (or less), you're likely to get better quality from iTunes Match. Comparing an iTunes Match file to a lossless encoding from CD isn't a proper thing to compare since you really need to do a blind A:B:C comparison where A is the iTunes Match file, B is the encoding from CD, and C is the original master (not the CD).

However, most people don't have access to that kind of comparison, so is a 256kbps AAC from iTunes Match better than a lossless encoding from CD? It depends. A lot of it is subjective and dependent upon listener preference. A lot is dependent of the quality of the CD and how much analog compression was applied to the mastering. My experience though is that at 256kbps for an AAC, the compression artifacts are non-existent to my ears. However, when Apple has sourced from a superior master, the difference can sound far better than the CD.

I would go with the iTunes Match version unless I knew the CD was from a good master, and/or I was planning on editing and reprocessing the song.

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally Posted by mredofcourse 

Well that's not very helpful.

Basically, I just said everything you said, in a hundredth the word count.

1. If it's wrong that resolutions above 256 kb don't improve the quality, that means that they do.

Excuse the curtness; my views on this are all over this forum, dozens of times, every time some moron claims that there is no difference.

2. Why is an obviously silly claim like "the source (the CD) has crap quality audio on it" even worth responding to?


3. iTunes Store rip source: I have seen ZERO indication, ANYWHERE, that any iTunes Store material uses different masters from the CD, prior to the release of the Red Hot Chili Peppers' latest album, which Rick Rubin alleges to have mastered specifically for iTunes. The bullshit picked apart here:
Mastered for iTunes - meaningless hype ?
Incidentally, the whole point of that is because of point #1 above: the iTunes-specific master was created to disguise the sonic differences between the CD and the lossy AAC as much as possible.

Apart from that particular case:
I do not believe Apple accepts or sells 24-bit submissions (wouldn't make sense at 256 kb AAC, anyway), so any material that isn't just ripped from the CD is submitted from a 16-bit master, which is almost invariably the very file that is submitted to the pressing company for creating CDs.

[mredofcourse]

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

Basically, I just said everything you said, in a hundredth the word count.

No you didn't, you just insulted the OP and said he was wrong. It wasn't helpful or constructive to anyone.

Excuse the curtness; my views on this are all over this forum, dozens of times, every time some moron claims that there is no difference.

That's great that you think you're as important as you think you are, but obviously, the OP hasn't seen any of your previous work. Instead of being a jerk about it, how about simply linking to relevant information (even one of your previous posts) or responding directly in a constructive manner?

2. Why is an obviously silly claim like "the source (the CD) has crap quality audio on it" even worth responding to?

I don't know, why did you respond to it...TWICE? Apparently, he believed it to be true, and was being sincere about it, so why not either ignore him or educate him?

3. iTunes Store rip source: I have seen ZERO indication, ANYWHERE, that any iTunes Store material uses different masters from the CD...(snip)

I've heard Steve Jobs as well as product managers talk about the efforts to obtain the best sources. The key here is that CD are remastered all the time, and there's no way for consumers to know what source was used by Apple other than that they try to obtain the best master available to them at the time. This is why I was saying doing an A:B:C test to the CD isn't a proper test if you're comparing different sources. This is also one reason why upgrading a 256kbps AAC file ripped from CD with a iTunes Matched file may result in a better sounding file, even though it has the same file format.

I have yet to hear a 256kbps AAC file from the iTunes store that sounded worse than one ripped from CD at 256kbps AAC, but I've heard plenty that sound better.

[Spheric Harlot]

Point taken about the tone; apologies, Rosyna. These sorts of general claims just grate me, and refuting them does become tiresome (and I find it difficult to just let them stand).
(Though I wouldn't go so far as to say it was outright insulting.)

One would assume that the master used for the iTunes Store copy would be whatever one is current at the time, and would be identical to whatever is being used to press CDs at the time.

If you have an old CD from the gold-rush era of quick-and-dirty transfers using whatever-generational masters that happened to be available quickly, of course a newer iTunes master is going to sound better.

But current CD vs. current iTunes release is going to be identical in almost all cases, meaning that a lossless rip from CD is going to sound better. Also, it is a myth to believe that remasters are universally an improvement. In many cases, it is done to make the production conform to current listening standards (which are shit, mostly), and to re-sell the catalog, and not in the interest of any actual improvement in sound quality.

So, a slightly more differentiated response to Rosyna:

Point 1 is complete bunk, the way it is phrased.

Point 2 is untrue in most cases, and irrelevant in almost ALL cases, because the source used to make the CD and the source used to make the iTunes Store copy is almost always identical.

Point 3 is irrelevant with very, very few exceptions, because the iTunes Store copies and the CD are (generally) made from the SAME master, except the CD has a higher-quality transfer of that master.

[ghporter]

I use 128 mono/256 stereo. Most of the time everything I play either through an iPod or through AirTunes isn't going to need higher resolution. The stuff I really want to be of higher quality I'll encode as high as iTunes lets me, 320kbps stereo. But I'm starting to get a handle on the quality of my reproduction system, speakers/phones, etc., and I'm curious how large an Apple Lossless file will be compared to various other formats like AAC. Anyone done any comparisons already?

[billstclair]

I voted AIFF, that being the only non-compressed choice, but I actually use Apple Lossless, in 44KHz/16-bit for CDs or up to 96KHz/24-bit for music downloaded from hdtracks.com. The latter uses a gig of disk space for an hour of music.

Of course, it's not worth the disk space for that resolution unless you have an external DAC (Digital-to-Analog Converter) and speakers to handle it. Good ones can be had for a total of around $500 these days, an amazing deal compared to the $2,000 it cost in 1984 (in 1984 dollars) to buy comparative quality.

When I got my first external DAC and speakers, I reripped about 200 CDs in Apple Lossless format. Tedious, but well worth the effort.

I compress to 128K on my iPhone, since I listen to that mostly through its own little speaker or the car radio or cheap boom boxes, where higher resolution doesn't matter, and I want to fit as much as possible in that 32 gigs.

[billstclair]

Originally Posted by ghporter 

I use 128 mono/256 stereo. Most of the time everything I play either through an iPod or through AirTunes isn't going to need higher resolution. The stuff I really want to be of higher quality I'll encode as high as iTunes lets me, 320kbps stereo. But I'm starting to get a handle on the quality of my reproduction system, speakers/phones, etc., and I'm curious how large an Apple Lossless file will be compared to various other formats like AAC. Anyone done any comparisons already?

256K compresses from AIFF by about a factor of 5. Apple Lossless compresses by about a factor of 2. So lossless costs about 2.5 times as much disk space as 256K. Remember, of course, that you need to compress from full resolution. Recompressing an already (lossy) compressed file makes it worse, no matter the output resolution.

600 meg hour-long CD = 120 megs at 256K = 300 megs Apple Lossless.

[Eug]

Originally Posted by ghporter 

I use 128 mono/256 stereo. Most of the time everything I play either through an iPod or through AirTunes isn't going to need higher resolution.

My iPod headphones are Etymotic ER-4P.

I've toyed with the getting the 75 Ohm adapter, because it sounds a bit limited... but then it's still way better than most other small earphone type headphones I've come across. $50 seems a total ripoff for that cable though, cuz AFAIK it's just a 75 Ohm resistor.

[Eug]

Some time, in the last few months after a couple of iTunes updates, my machine got set to iTunes Plus 256 Kbps AAC VBR stereo.

I think I'll just leave it there. When I switched from MP3 to AAC, I dropped from 256 MP3 to 192 AAC mainly because the sound quality was similar and near-transparent on my equipment, but also because 256 was eating up a little too much space. However, nowadays I'm not so as concerned about space, and 256 is fine.

I'm not prepared to go Apple Lossless yet though, since I still use 1 GB shuffle and sometimes a 4 GB iPod mini. 1 GB only holds a single double album. Since I have the original CDs, I have the "lossless" data available here anyway in case I ever need it.

[subego]

I'm thinking at some point you'll be able to replace your 256k matches with lossless.

For a small fee, of course.