[ast3r3x]

So I'm starting to acquire better ears, and I am hating it I think. Lately I've been listening to my music a lot more closely, and I've come to a dilemma. I like my songs to sound great of course, so I have a CD or two at 224kbps AAC. I thought that would be more then good enough, but while it's not bad by any means, I can still tell a difference from it and the original wave. So I go higher (dare even lossless?! I don't want to lose that much space) or should I just be happy that it sounds good...I mean it's not like I'll be comparing them while I listen to it.

[Crusader]

I have most of my music ripped at 360kbps with AAC. It sounds alright to me, but then again I don't have pro-level cans or anything so...

[sunrain]

I rip my CDs at 192 AAC. I think it's an adequate compromise between size and quality. Anyway, if I want it to be pristine, I just grab the CD off the shelf.

[DMBand0026]

Same, if I want it perfect, I go for the CD. Other than that I rip at 160kbps AAC

[Brad]

This thread deserves a...


(it's a pole vaulter, ya' morons!)

SO IT SHALL BE DONE!

[Wrao]

Generally I do 160 AAC, though I've been experimenting with apple lossless recently.

The thing is. While I do have pretty sensitive ears. I have crummy headphones and speakers. I can live with lower quality music, because even if I ripped at .aif format, it'd still sound pretty much the same through my headphones.

I get a lot of music on iTunes, and that's all 128 AAC, no gripes there. I mean, yea, sure, I can hear the difference between say, a single I bought from iTunes and when I play that CD in my powerbook, but it's marginal, especially with the $20, partially blown headphones I have, And I don't let it get to me.

A friend of mine recently took to reconverting his *entire* CD collection(hundreds and hundreds of CDs) into .wav format. He has over a terabyte of space to work with though(he recently built a terabyte file server in his house, he also has about 500 GB on his main desktop., so it's no big deal that his music collection takes up like 200 GB

He's doing it mainly because he can, not so much for quality.

[wretched]

I rip my music at 192 Kbps, I can only tell a difference between that and 128 kpbs mp3 format, not aac. How good can music actually sound at like 320 kbps? I don't think my ear's are great because 192 kpbs aac and a cd sound the same to me O.O

[Mass Appeal]

Originally Posted by ast3r3x So I'm starting to acquire better ears, and I am hating it I think.

You could do what I've done and frequent scuzzy dive bars with really loud bands playing. Soon you too will be able enjoy 128 AAC as the height of digital music quality.

[xionja]

All of my stuff was MP3 for a long time, and then I got new speakers, so I know what your talking about. Like you just wanna listen to the music, but once you know its not as good as it could be, it just bugs the hell out of you. Once I got new speakers, I started converting all my stuff to Lossless, and all the new cds I get I import as Lossless. With the audio equipment I have, you can actually hear the difference

[LoCash]

I've been ripping to a new hard drive at lossless, but before most of my stuff was either 192 MP3 or AAC. Whenever someone lets me borrow a new CD I rip it at lossless though.

[BarracksSi]

I assume that my CDs are going to last a long time, so I've been ripping to AAC at bitrates between 128 and 192 (usually 128, as it turns out). I listen to my music almost exclusively through my iBook speakers or iPod earbuds these days, and surprisingly enough, it doesn't sound too bad through my Sony home theater-in-a-box.

I've also got a bunch of recordings that were ripped as low as 56 kbps, so anything double that bitrate sounds really nice by comparison.

[ast3r3x]

Originally Posted by Brad This thread deserves a... (it's a pole vaulter, ya' morons!) SO IT SHALL BE DONE!

I was going to congratulate the poll maker for adding the required funny options, but when I got to your post and saw the elaborate image to signify the poll...I'm blown away and don't know what to say. Very clever you magnificent bastard

[Ryan]

I've been using AIFF, but now I'm starting to encode with Apple Lossless. But with a music collection quickly approaching the 1000 song mark, I might have to switch to 320 AAC. I have plently of space on my desktop, but my iPod only has 15 GB.

[Luca]

BAA-AAA-AAA! BAA-AAA-AAA! I USE AAC BECAUSE IT'S APPLE!

I use 320kbps MP3. I like more flexibility with my music - I can't tell the difference between MP3 and AAC in sound quality (especially at 320kbps), so why not go with the format that's been around for years and will continue to serve the mainstream for years to come?

[Eugene]

Originally Posted by Luca BAA-AAA-AAA! BAA-AAA-AAA! I USE AAC BECAUSE IT'S APPLE! I use 320kbps MP3. I like more flexibility with my music - I can't tell the difference between MP3 and AAC in sound quality (especially at 320kbps), so why not go with the format that's been around for years and will continue to serve the mainstream for years to come?

Because the point is to not use it at 320 kbps, but rather at lower bitrates where the difference between Apple AAC-LC and even the vaunted LAME is noticeable. Is that the answer you were looking for? Can your golden ears tell the difference between 128 kbps Apple AAC-LC and ~128 kbps LAME APS?

Baa indeed. AAC is no more Apple than MP3.

[Wickers]

What? Am I the only one here that uses OGG????

Common!

You even joke about it in the damn poll. .. fuck.

With my speaker system (Creative 5200 5.1) and sound card (Audigy OEM w/firewire) OGG sounds the best when compaired to .mp3, .m4a, and a few others.

I use quality setting 6 and 8, depending on how often I listen to the album. . .


I love OGG. . . and it's command line tools. .. I have even written my own bash scripts to rip a CD to OGG or convert .m4a files into OGG in one command.


OGG rocks. .. IMO, and if you don't think so. .. it's your loss. hehe. . .

[Eugene]

Originally Posted by \/\/ickes What? Am I the only one here that uses OGG???? Common!

Rare!

With my speaker system (Creative 5200 5.1) and sound card (Audigy OEM w/firewire) OGG sounds the best when compaired to .mp3, .m4a, and a few others.

It's best for you to be quiet now...

I love OGG. . . and it's command line tools. .. I have even written my own bash scripts to rip a CD to OGG or convert .m4a files into OGG in one command.

Unless those .m4a files are lossless, why?

OGG rocks. .. IMO, and if you don't think so. .. it's your loss. hehe. . .

You're right...your reply has left me quite lost. Ogg Vorbis and FLAC are fine, but I tend to ignore people who make such meaningless claims about "Ogg" being better than ".m4a"

[Luca]

I wouldn't consider myself to have "Golden Ears." The only reason I use 320kbps is... well, why not? I have tons of extra room on my hard drive, there's nothing wrong with going for the highest quality I can. And I don't have to fit all my music onto an iPod, so there's no reason for me to save space. Well... I don't have enough space to rip with Apple Lossless, but 320kbps MP3 is more than enough for me. I'm fine with 192kbps MP3, but as I said... why not go for 320? There's no drawback for me.

I guess I can see why some people use AAC, but I'm surprised that almost everyone here uses it.

[Eugene]

I don't see the point in ripping at 320 kbps MP3...ever. It's not useful for portables. It's still lossy despite not sounding much different than ~200 kbps MP3. It takes up more space for virtually no reason then. Why not save yourself the trouble and just encode with "lame --alt-preset extreme" then?

Oh yeah, because you were struggling to find a reason to call AAC users sheep in the first place. I think the lamb would be the person who encodes at 320 kbps MP3 just because he has "plenty of space."

[Wickers]

Originally Posted by Eugene Rare!

True. . .

Originally Posted by Eugene It's best for you to be quiet now...

hehe. . . it's my opinion, based on what I hear, out of my speakers. .. Which my not hold true for everybody's setup or hard-collected fact.

Originally Posted by Eugene Unless those .m4a files are lossless, why?

My main OS is Linux and getting .m4a files to run is often not as easy as you would think. . . most distros do not support them by default, so you have to grab some source files and play around with stuff. . .

I switch distros often (far to often in fact) so it becomes a pain. ..

OGG however, is supported by most distros 'out of the box' and if not, it is easy to setup.

Originally Posted by Eugene You're right...your reply has left me quite lost. Ogg Vorbis and FLAC are fine, but I tend to ignore people who make such meaningless claims about "Ogg" being better than ".m4a"

I only stated my opinion, which once again is based on my audio setup and my ears. . . and until now, I did not realize that it was 'meaningless'.

But if it makes you feel better, here is something not so 'meaningless'. . .
http://ff123.net/128test/interim.html
http://www.xciv.org/~meta/audio-shootout/

[thuh Freak]

i still steal most of my music, so i'm at the mercy of gnutella... i mean, i randomly decide which mp3 bitrate to choose. yea...that's the ticket. but seriously, with 192 vbr mp3s ripped straight from cd, which is what i do when i rip, i couldn't really tell the difference. i never really tried to hear the difference, but then again i've never had a strong impetus to try.

[ast3r3x]

I download most of my music as well, so 128 is the de facto (yuck) but 160-192 is what I try to go for. I download with bittorrent, and when I do, I'll often get lossless or something, so that is when I try to keep quality good. I like good quality, so it annoys me to have lossless next to 128 mp3...it just doesn't do it for me.

What do people think about mpc? Has anyone had to deal with this yet? I downloaded a cd in it, and it was like 94 megabytes but expanded to >500mb. It is not lossless, but it's pretty damn good quality. I wish iTunes could support this, I wouldn't have had to expand them to wav, then convert to 224kbps m4a and while taking up almost as much room, have shittier sound quality. I had never heard about it before, but grabbed some stuff from here and was pretty impressed. Someone make iTunes support it!

[alcimedes]

i encode at 256kbps mp3's. i use mp3's for the same reasons Luca mentioned. i know that 10 years from now, i won't be able to help and find an MP3 player. as for where .aac will be, who knows?

i sure as hell won't buy anything that's DRM'ed. i have a hard enough time trying to keep track of old software to work with, the last thing i need to do is worry about that shit for my music collection.

music is supposed to be for enjoyment, not work.

[InactionMan]

128kbps AAC. Sounds good enough to me. And I listen to music so bloody loud that it just doesn't make a difference. If I'm downloading, I'll try for 160 or 192 MP3s because I actually can tell the difference with a 128k mp3. Just sounds a tad muddy. I tried Apple Lossless but couldn't tell the difference, though that may have been because the album I ripped was Pussy Galore's 'Sugarshit Sharp'. Screeching feedback at any quality is still just screeching feedback.

[BarracksSi]

Originally Posted by Luca I guess I can see why some people use AAC, but I'm surprised that almost everyone here uses it.

I can't say why anyone else uses it, but for the same bitrates as mp3, AAC somehow has less distortion in high frequencies. Cymbals & strings sound much more "normal", and without the swirling effect so common with sub-192 kbps mp3's. I've got a bunch of stuff ripped at 128 kbps AAC that sounds pretty good -- good enough so that I don't find myself wanting to go back and re-rip at higher bitrates.

I really need to keep the file size of my music collection down (over half of my iBook's HD is music files), so I'm not about to encode my CDs in either AIFF or Apple Lossless. Instead, I go for the lowest bitrate with reasonably good sound.

[Eugene]

Originally Posted by \/\/ickes My main OS is Linux and getting .m4a files to run is often not as easy as you would think. . . most distros do not support them by default, so you have to grab some source files and play around with stuff. . .

Wow... wow... Install VLC or MPlayer or XMMS+plugin. Problem solved. If you can't do that, why are you using Loonix?

I switch distros often (far to often in fact) so it becomes a pain. ..

Again, why are you using Linux?

OGG however, is supported by most distros 'out of the box' and if not, it is easy to setup.

Googling for Linux and m4a turns up some pretty braindead easy set-ups.

I only stated my opinion, which once again is based on my audio setup and my ears. . . and until now, I did not realize that it was 'meaningless'.

The meaningless part is you state .ogg is better than .m4a when .ogg is just a container like .m4a. Understand? An Ogg file can use any number of codecs like Vorbis and FLAC while .m4a can also use multiple codecs like AAC and Apple Lossless.

If you can hear the difference with a Crummy Creative 5.1 set-up, props to your golden ears. Personally, I wouldn't make any assertions about the stated encodings without using headphones.

But if it makes you feel better, here is something not so 'meaningless'. . . http://ff123.net/128test/interim.html http://www.xciv.org/~meta/audio-shootout/

http://www.rjamorim.com/test/multifo...8/results.html
Vorbis ekes out a small advantage on some tests, but note that Vorbis is not being tested at 128 kbps. Several songs are encoded above 140 kbps. One is even encoded above 150 kbps.

The funniest thing about your first link is how when the initial results are not to one person's liking, he reduces the sample size to 9 "consistent" listeners to provide more "accurate" results. What if the consistent listeners were consistently bad? What's the point of large sample sizes if you throw out most of the results and don't let standard deviation work its magic?

The second link uses a sample size of 1. Great.

[Barto]

MP3 just works. AAC only "just works" with iTunes, otherwise it's a pain in the ass... and doesn't work at all if you want to use something other than an iPod. Granted right now the iPod is king, but for the future MP3 is the safer option.

256kbps normal stereo MP3 here.

[Purgatos]

I rip it at 192 AAC, any higher and I can't really notice the difference on my less than spectacular system.

Plus I think that AAC is liable to be adopted and jump into the mainstream with MP3, if not replace it.

That's just me though.

[usurp]

i used to rip at 128AAC (128MP3 before AAC) but now since i got my new mini and Shure E2's i am ripping at 192AAC.

[EmC]

Mine are at 128aac, but I need to redo them some are from my pre-mac days and have been converted from wma->mp3->aac