I don't suspect 128 kbps is really "CD quality"; that's RDF all the way. I do think however, that 128 kbps AAC is easily equivalent to about 224 kbps MP3, maybe 256 on certain types of audio. But it's not as pure as what you get from a CD at this point IMO.
Jobs said that in the context that they went to the master tapes to encode some of these songs, hence (in theory) the AAC files were sometimes equal to or better than the CD encoding from those tapes. I'm thinking of those old CDs that were done in the mid to late 80's and even the early 90's when where the sound is very flat and "canned" becuase the CD encoding process focused on eliminating all analog artifacts in the recording. I have a bunch of stuff like that, and while some of the stuff in the iTunes Store sounds like this too, some stuff has much better treble and bass that got "squashed" on the original CD release. Try some of the Van Halen stuff for the former bad sound, and then try some of the Billy Joel stuff for the latter better sound.
On a lot of the tracks I've bought so far... being about 60$ worth (damn its just tooo easy) I hardly hear any difference. I recently bought ...and you will know us by the trail of the dead. And from the apple store it sounds way way better than the cheapo pressed cd I got at a show of theirs. I mean waaaay better.
Comments
Originally posted by Moogs
I don't suspect 128 kbps is really "CD quality"; that's RDF all the way. I do think however, that 128 kbps AAC is easily equivalent to about 224 kbps MP3, maybe 256 on certain types of audio. But it's not as pure as what you get from a CD at this point IMO.
Jobs said that in the context that they went to the master tapes to encode some of these songs, hence (in theory) the AAC files were sometimes equal to or better than the CD encoding from those tapes. I'm thinking of those old CDs that were done in the mid to late 80's and even the early 90's when where the sound is very flat and "canned" becuase the CD encoding process focused on eliminating all analog artifacts in the recording. I have a bunch of stuff like that, and while some of the stuff in the iTunes Store sounds like this too, some stuff has much better treble and bass that got "squashed" on the original CD release. Try some of the Van Halen stuff for the former bad sound, and then try some of the Billy Joel stuff for the latter better sound.