itunes quality on pc questions

[mindmenglish]

1. Are all purchased itunes automatically downloaded in 256 aac? Is that the best itunes quality to play on hi fi?

2. If I decided not to burn my cds into lossless and prefer to insert them into dvd drive to play music. Will I loose audio quality?

3. For all questions above, are dac really needed?

 

[jjbomber]

Google play is at 320 and is also cheaper than itunes. Buy on Google play and burn onto a cd-rw. Then import the CD into itunes at 320.

The other questions depend on what quality your hi-fi and dvd player are.

 

[MajorFubar]

Isn't Google Play 'MP3' and iTunes 'AAC'? If so you can't really make a like-for-like comparison because they're different compression algorithms. And based on my experience of listening to some 96kbps/128kbps AAC online radio stations, it seems to pish all over MP3s of the same quality. Though whether you can tell the difference between 256k AAC and 320k MP3 is a moot point.

 

[shabbee]

it largely depends on the method of listening and the quality of the hardware being used. Standard soundcards work well enough but most digital players sound fairly good these days. However invest in a decent pair of headphones and a headphone DAC and the results can be surprisingly better. The DAC systems vary in quality too but most will be a big step up from a built in sound card. The better DACs will have an asynchronos clock which means the hardware controls the thruput of digital audio rather than the system which can introduce jitter and consequently degrade the sound ever so slightly.

Edited by and link removed by Mods - House Rules violation

 

[mindmenglish]

really really appreciate... but i'am not that advanced, please treat me as a learning bot and as a bot, let me replay my buttons:

1. just itunes, is purchased itunes automatically downloaded in aac 256kbps for highest quality? can i play/change around with the settings. ( itunes is new in my country but the hotline suck )

2. cd burn to lossless vs cd playing in dvdrw = same audio quality?

3. thanks. i'll get the hrt II dac to prevent unwanted sound

 

[wilro15]

1. Yes iTunes always comes as 256kbps AAC, I don't believe you can change this.

2. Yes it is the same.

 

[Alec]

Some computers can make lots of noise while playing CDs.