MP3 v. AAC- an IPOD question

augustwest · December 8, 2003 12:30PM

I have almost 20 GB of music on my itunes/ipod that got there the old fashioned way-- I imported from CD's that I've purchased over the years. It took me a long time to get them all in there in MP3 format.

I'm trying to decide if it would be worth my time to RE-IMPORT the music in the newer AAC format, or just stick with MP3.

How much memory would be saved (i.e. freed up) if roughly 20gb of MP3 music were converted to AAC?

ebby · December 8, 2003 12:35PM

If you encode at the same bitrate (128K) no memory will be saved but the audio will be higher quality.

sonofsylvanus · December 8, 2003 12:53PM

Alternatively you can record at a slightly lower bitrate with no noticeable difference in quality compared with mp3.

stupider...likeafox · December 8, 2003 1:51PM

Don't bother, it's not worth it.

luca · December 8, 2003 2:15PM

It's not worth it. Besides, MP3 is a fairly open standard. AAC is controlled mostly by Apple. It has the ability to use DRM. I'm not saying Apple would actually start making it so iTunes would track all the music you rip in AAC format, but it's possible to do something like that. I'll take MP3s any day.

pensieve · December 8, 2003 2:58PM

I don't know.... For me, it was worth it. I originally ripped my stuff at --alt-preset standard with LAME encoding and many of my tracks were encoded at around 200kb/s. I've been re-encoding my tracks (slowly) at 160 kb/s .aac and I'm able to save about 10 megs per cd. I've got a small iPod (5gigs), so for every 5 or 6 cds I re-encode, I can get another one on there.

But if you've already got them at a lower bitrate (like 128 ), you won't see any space savings unless you go obscenely low but you will notice a quality boost.

idave · December 9, 2003 12:23AM

For me, it came down to wanting slightly higher quality at the same bitrate, not to saving space, so I did it.

k_munic · December 9, 2003 2:03AM

Quote:

Originally posted by AugustWest

I?It took me a long time to get them all in there in MP3 format.

I'm trying to decide if it would be worth my time to RE-IMPORT the music in the newer AAC format, or just stick with MP3.

How much memory would be saved (i.e. freed up) if roughly 20gb of MP3 music were converted to AAC?

many people say, at a sampling rate <160, aac sounds better?

\

BUT:

don't re-encode your mp3s to aac! this is a very lossful method! if you want to improve sound quality by the same bitrate, you have to encode from your "masters"?- sound like a week full of music

aquatic · December 9, 2003 2:08AM

Luca all this hype about Apple and DRM is ridiculous, they have basically ZERO DRM for anything reasonable, they let you clone playlists 10 times, and you can always burn to CD and re-rip, etc etc. Microtrash restricts you way more and they aren't getting flak. It's not fair. Apple's very slogan is Rip Mix Burn and I hate how people look so hard to pick on them. They definitely give you a lot of formats to import in from iTunes. AAC Plus at one quarter the size of a 128kpbs MP3 will have the same quality theoretically, since AAC is twice as good at the same bit rate than MP3, and AAC plus at lower bit rates cuts the size again in half for the same quality. Do iPods support AAC Plus now? IIRC QT does now.

wrong robot · December 9, 2003 2:18AM

iPods DO support AAC now, they have for a while(since the music store was released at least)

Another common misconception about AAC, it IS an open standard, in some ways more so than .mp3, however it's not a very embedded standard, and since apple is pretty much the only company pushing it right now, it may SEEM closed or proprietary, but it is quite the opposite.

stupider...likeafox · December 9, 2003 3:15AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Aquatic

Do iPods support AAC Plus now? IIRC QT does now.

ACC HE (High Efficiency)? I don't think either is true. You may be getting confused with the mobile phone spec for mp4 which was added to Quicktime 6.3 (I think)..

dmband0026 · December 12, 2003 1:58AM

If you have 20gigs of music it would take a long time and be one heck of a pain in the butt to re rip all of that just for a slight improvement in quality. Just stick with the Mp3, but do all your future stuff in AAC.

nofeer · December 13, 2003 5:30AM

help with calculations

128 with either aac or mp3 how many songs per MB and GB,

my wife just got her ibook yesterday and wants to rip all her cds, she only did one but at 128 mp3, so this is the time to make the choice

i will get her a 20g ipod for christmas (don't tell her)

if aac at 128 is as good as mp3 at 160 or 200 then aac is the way to go for quality vs space.

also are there any books that help with leaning these apps rather than use the help menu.

der kopf · December 13, 2003 7:15AM

Quote:

Originally posted by NOFEER

help with calculations

128 with either aac or mp3 how many songs per MB and GB,

my wife just got her ibook yesterday and wants to rip all her cds, she only did one but at 128 mp3, so this is the time to make the choice

i will get her a 20g ipod for christmas (don't tell her)

if aac at 128 is as good as mp3 at 160 or 200 then aac is the way to go for quality vs space.

also are there any books that help with leaning these apps rather than use the help menu.

There sure are. I can't recommend any because, well, because I know my mac quite well, but here are some titles:

OS X Missing Manual by David Pogue, a rather acclaimed author on the Mac, and the original author who started the 'Missing Manual' series. Supposedly a good book on everything OS X.

iLife Bible on iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie & iDVD, if you want a narrower perspective. I wonder how much better this would be than Pogue's book.

Also, in my case: I have re-encoded many cds which I had previously ripped to 192 kbps MP3s into 128 kbps AAC, because I couldn't hear a difference (though I have very muched tried to).

A tip for all of you who might want to make sure: if you have Quicktime Pro, you can open an mp3 and an aac rip of the same track side by side (even an AIFF, or whatever QT can handle), and then you can choose, in the menu 'Movies' the option 'Play all movies', which will start and play all 'movies' simultaneously, but only let you hear the sound of the frontmost one. By clicking the various windows, you will hear how all the clips sound. If you're really, like I did, somewhat anal about encoding options, it's nice to try and name that format. You need to name the tracks the same, of course, so you can't see which one is which, and then try and name which one is which. I found that I could distinguish a 160 mp3 from a 128 aac and an aiff, because the mp3 sounded worse than the other two, between which I couldn't hear a difference.

This procedure is the same Jobs used in one of his presentations with that Vanessa Carlton video clip.

k_munic · December 13, 2003 11:30AM

so, now something for your ears:

a german guy has made a test: 5 files, encoded with different codecs (mp3, aac, 64kB, vbr etc) and has re-encoded these demos as aiff, so you cannot "see" by size or header which is which?

http://homepage.mac.com/cmon_/.cv/cm...s.sit-link.sit

de-sit it and listen ........

/no, no german needed ;-) /

give it a try - which file has what compression?

btw: some dozends at our german mac forum have made the test - just ONE gave the correct answer! - he is planning to make the same test with classical music.

PS: i had absolutly NO clue!

wrong robot · December 13, 2003 5:54PM

One thing that should be noted about all compression and all codecs and algorithims and what not, is that they vary in performance from song to song, while the variation may be very slight in some cases, I have heard some stuff that just sounded terrible in AAC, but fine in .MP3 and vice versa, so don't put TOO much stock into all these A/B tests out there, there is some stuff to learn from them, but take it with a (albeit small) grain of salt.

nofeer · December 14, 2003 6:24PM

so how many cd's at 128k AAC for 20g ipod?? i figure at about 12 songs per cd about 400+ is that off? apple says 10k for a 40g ipod so 5000 for a 20g i'm assuming they used 128aac

that's a lot of music

nofeer · December 16, 2003 9:44PM

can you reverse the encoding, say you have a mps or aac and you want it back to cd format, can itunes do this? why, because many people i want to share with dont have mp3 players yet, but have cd

idave · December 16, 2003 10:42PM

Yep, in the iTunes preferences: burning, choose audio CD. This will convert the MP3 or AAC files to AIFF when burning a CD, so that it can be played on a regular CD player. It won't, however, bring back the original AIFF quality of the original source.

MP3 v. AAC- an IPOD question

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