iTunes, AAC vs MP3 and bitrates?

Posted by: Paul Hutchings on 31 December 2004

OK in my PC days whenever I ripped a CD I always used to use Lame at 192kbps VBR.

Now I have this Mac and all these different options, MP3, Apple Lossless and of course AAC, then I have all the different bitrates.

For normal listening on my Mac through a set of half decent PC speakers is there any need to use more than 128kbps AAC?

Most reports seem to rate it as equal or better than higher bitrate MP3 and the few CDs I've imported so far sound fine to me (which might be all I need to know)

cheers,
Paul
Posted on: 01 January 2005 by Hawk
Paul

I found 192AAC to be about right for just listening through modest pc speakers, but found 320AAC much better when i plugged headphones in... (grados into a G4 powerbook) I guess it depends on how close you want to listen..

cheers

Hawk
Posted on: 02 January 2005 by Paul Hutchings
Well I'll probably be told I should be burned at the stake for this but having ripped a couple of my own CDs into 128kbps AAC and replacing the previous 192kbps LAME MP3s I can't tell any real difference.

Machine is an iMac G5 so no idea how good, or not, the onboard sound it. Speakers are Labtec flat panels with sub, pretty decent IMHO.

I think I shall stick with the smaller files, they sound fine, there's no point wasting disk space needlessly or losing sleep over ABX tests and fifteen different bitrates - it's only for background noise Smile

cheers,
Paul