agreeing
- hey man, I use my ipod every day. So can u test 4 battery life?
- —Guest pado
AAC All The Way
- I have found that on my iPod and my MacBook Pro that the sound quality and the memory usage of each song is better. The sound is more crisp, and the memory usage can be up to 2 mgbs less than using the alternative mp3 encoding.
- —Guest Andy W
Like to know battery life as well
- What is the effect of encoding format on battery life?
- —Guest wilbert
Thanks a ton
- Thanks! I'd been converting my songs to mp3's, but I was worried I'd sacrifice quality. This was really helpful.
- —Guest Crawsah
Which encoder?
- You need to say what encoder/s you used to do this! For example, I've heard that the iTunes mp3 encoder is poor, with the LAME implementation being much better (included in XLD).
- —Guest drstrangelove
Neither
- AAC and MP3 ar both "lossy" formats that produce a smaller file size but lose audio fidelity in the process. As the capacity of all digital storage media continues to grow (from hard drives to optical discs to flash memory), this size/quality tradeoff will become increasingly unnecessary and undesirable. MP3 will eventually become obsolete and "lossless" formats like FLAC and Apple Lossless will become the new predominent standards. My iTunes library is 100% Apple Lossless file format, and I enjoy a bigger, better, more dynamic sound.
- —Guest Afly
HE-AAC should be compared to MP3-Pro
- mp3 & aac are VERY similar under the hood. In fact, AAC came about largely to support HE-AAC, as a response to MP3-Pro requiring royalties for use, and was nearly a rip-off of the technology used, which basically encodes all the high frequency nuances & stuff as a sortof "metadata" side-band, so older or unsupporting players just ignore that stuff and it still sounds OK-ish. Note: HE-AAC is typically used for bitrates under 64k and until very recently (late 2009) was not even supported on an iPod. Anyway, if you're using 64k or less on your iPod you're obviously not too concerned about audio quality. Anyway, I switched immediately to AAC when it first came out to show my support and approval. After fighting incompatibilities everywhere I went, I've now switched back to mp3 and could not be happier. To compensate for my fear that mp3 may not sound as good as aac at the same bitrate, I just cranked the bitrate up a notch. Now I have just as good sound, and I'm compatible with EVERYTHING!
- —Guest Rob Cole
Great Findings!
- Exactly what I was looking for! My 32GB iPhone is getting low on space and wanted to confirm if mp3 is the right format I should be using when converting songs. ~Gillaum - his test was not for file size, did you read the article? He was trying to determine if there were any audible differences to the average consumer between the 2 versions. Due to the difference in compression between mp3 and aac, the files will NOT be the same size as you convert based on bitrate, not file size.
- —Guest Fishin
67584@live.com
- AAC wins over MP3 any day because its sounds much clearer,deeper,not so mudded,and or the blending of sounds to hide the clicks and pops that MP3 encoding produces. When encoding in AAC there are no clicks produced in the encoding process and pops unlike MP3 encoding so theres no mixing of the sounds to hide them. AAC may be a tad bit bigger in compared to MP3 of the same bit rate but there pretty close in file size for the same bit rate. My whole iPod is encoded in 128kbps AAC and 256kbps AAC and it sounds great,no distortions heard,and i have really good ears. So if i where you i would just use AAC over MP3 just because AAC sounds a hole lot clearer than MP3. So Go With AAC People.
- —Guest John
file size
- Why does the file size differ between mp3 and aac? Does aac contain that much overhead?!
- —Guest Joris
the bitrates arent the same
- the mp3@192kbps is smaller than the aac@128kbps so maybe a comparision between the same file sizes ?
- —Guest kuku
double blind testing reveals the truth
- In Double Blind ABX testing few people can discern the difference between a well done mp3 and a cd. This fact has been well documented. In fact I can find no conclusive evidence that in a true double blind test a difference was detected. IOTW put your music and mp3 and ignore unsubstantiated unscientific claims.
- —Guest lsiberian
typo earlier
- Sorry, when I posted earlier I meant to say 3 bitrates. The problem that I had with your testing was that 3 bitrates is not enough. I conducted my own test and found that audio (in my case A Day In The Life by The Beatles) encoded at only 48 kbps with the HE (High Efficiency) AAC codec sounded great, while a LAME MP3 of the same song at the same bitrate had terrible fidelity. That is something you might want to look into.
- —Guest Zolotros
Effect of adding VBR to the encoding?
- An article I read said in their testing, using 160kbps with VBR for complex passages improved the sound quality immensely. What about adding this encoding to your test?
- —Guest jrc
Another comparison
- I found this site because I was doing my own comparisons as to sound quality. I'm not a complete audiophile but I certainly used to pride myself on being able to hear subtle differences between turntables (that dates me!) and amplifiers, so I thought I could maybe make a valid trial. I just bought a recording of Bernstein's Chichester Psalms in iTunes, and when I played it, I was very impressed with the sound quality and the performance. But I don't have an iPod, and need to convert to MP3 for my player, and I found slight but audible (through noise-cancelling headphones) differences. There was almost no difference between a 256K MP3 sample and a 320K MP3 sample, and the file size difference leaves me in no doubt as to which I should use. But as between AAC and MP3, the AAC showed more detail, better "attack" from the bongos and the plucked strings, and more edge from the brass. Looks like I may need to step up and buy an iPod!!
- —fof9l
