This doesn't explain the odd reports of home ripped AAC sounding *better* than the store bought tunes. Very strange.
Well the other speculation was that Apple uses the masters and not the CDs. I didn't mention that because I wanted to hear all about aacPlus which, I now understand, is only meant for low bitrate streaming.
No, I would expect Apple encoded files to sound better than iTunes ripped AAC at the same bitrate, for the reasons given above.
What is surprising is the people on the Apple support forums who complain that they can rip their own CDs and get better quality than the AACs they bought from Apple at the same bitrate.
Other people have problems with AACs bought from Apple that skip, so there could simply be a quality control problem.
This is better than the altenative theory which is that Apple messed with the audio by adding a audio watermark that would survive re-encoding, or worse a macrovision type technology that would intentionally interfere with re-ripping by subtly distorting the audio.
Testing by people who have reripped bought tracks seem to rule the last one out though.
AAC+ rocks. If you've ever listened to XM Radio, that's what they use.
I have XM and while it sounds great for radio, I would not want to use it for my music collection, at least not at that bitrate. You can "hear" the compression on occasion... mainly in the higher frequency range. If I had to make a comparison, I'd say it's along the lines of maybe 112-128Kbit mp3.
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Originally posted by stupider...likeafox
This doesn't explain the odd reports of home ripped AAC sounding *better* than the store bought tunes. Very strange.
Well the other speculation was that Apple uses the masters and not the CDs. I didn't mention that because I wanted to hear all about aacPlus which, I now understand, is only meant for low bitrate streaming.
What is surprising is the people on the Apple support forums who complain that they can rip their own CDs and get better quality than the AACs they bought from Apple at the same bitrate.
Other people have problems with AACs bought from Apple that skip, so there could simply be a quality control problem.
This is better than the altenative theory which is that Apple messed with the audio by adding a audio watermark that would survive re-encoding, or worse a macrovision type technology that would intentionally interfere with re-ripping by subtly distorting the audio.
Testing by people who have reripped bought tracks seem to rule the last one out though.
Originally posted by Eugene
AAC+ rocks. If you've ever listened to XM Radio, that's what they use.
I have XM and while it sounds great for radio, I would not want to use it for my music collection, at least not at that bitrate. You can "hear" the compression on occasion... mainly in the higher frequency range. If I had to make a comparison, I'd say it's along the lines of maybe 112-128Kbit mp3.
-Leigh