bitrate advice

[admin_exported]

okay, i just bought the 160GIG iPod, most of my music is 320kbps, am i likely to notice a difference at apple lossless quality?

 

[Anonymous]

Hi. I have virtually all of my Mp3s at 320 kbps. I also wondered if I would notice any difference encoding them at apple lossless quality.

I tested about a dozen different songs. Encoding them at both 320 kbps and apple lossless. Then added them to a playlist, shuffled them and listenend.

I personally could not notice any difference. I think it depends on alot of variables. ie what heaphones, speakers etc you are using. And without overlooking the obvious, how good your own ears are. Some people will have better hearing than others, and will notice differences.

My advice is to try something along the lines of what I did and decide for yourself if it is worth switching to apple lossless.

 

[mattc76]

[quote user="rabyburns"]okay, i just bought the 160GIG iPod, most of my music is 320kbps, am i likely to notice a difference at apple lossless quality?[/quote]

I can't tell any difference between my VBR mp3's and lossless through my ipod with shure 530's. I still use lossless though purely so I can have a lossless archive and therefore don't have to bother reripping cd's at a later date. I can convert between apple lossless and WAV when making cd compilations, or lossless to FLAC for using with my squeezebox - happy in the knowledge that the audio information is identical to the original CD.

 

[Anonymous]

thanks for that info, however, my problem is will lossless be around in a few years, im under the impression their all battling it out to have the best lossless codecs??

 

[mattc76]

[quote user="rabyburns"]thanks for that info, however, my problem is will lossless be around in a few years, im under the impression their all battling it out to have the best lossless codecs??[/quote]

Since lossless is lossless a "better" codec will just be able to compress into smaller files i guess. Since they're all lossless they will all SOUND identical. Lossless formats are just a way for you to store your CDs in another digital format without loss of sound quality (unlike mp3's) and do it using the smallest amount of space possible! Don't worry about it too much - you can interchange between lossless formats and there will be no loss of sound quality at all - just don't ever convert them to a LOSSY format (eg mp3) without keeping the original lossless rip!!?? Some people have tried converting mp3's to FLAC which is possible but utterly pointless because in making the original mp3 you have lost much of the audio data and therefore much of the sound quality!

The only way as i see it for current mainstream LOSSLESS formats to become obselete is if higher quality audio becomes the standard ie 24bit/96khz (as in DVD audio). Then I suppose we'll have to buy all our music again in that higher quality!! (Assuming the original 24/32 bit (or whatever) or the original pure analog recording still exists!!) (I digress!)