This morning I moved my entire collection of the BBC Radio 4 dramatisations of John Le Carre's George Smiley books from my iTunes music library to an 8GB USB memory stick.
As I bought each set last year, and the year before, I burnt them from CD to iTunes in AAC 256K VBR (error correction on) which is my default setting for everything I have on iTunes.
After moving the whole George Smiley collection to memory stick this morning, I tested it by plugging into the USB socket on the front of the Sony BDP-S370 to ensure that 'track' order was preserved (it was) and to get an idea of the quality (great quality).
Then I noticed the constantly changing AAC bit rate display in the top right hand corner of the TV screen. Most of the tme it is somewhere between 290K and 340K and only drops significantly lower if a woman's voice is speaking or there are prolongued quiet bits. Mens voices push the bit rates to around 320K (or higher) depending on the acoustic qualities of the space they are talking in. (Higher indoors, lower outdoors.) The very little time taken up by music (beginning and end of disks usually) the bit rate plummets! Odd.
I had always assumed that 'speech only' material (like radio drama) would have lower bit rates than music in general.
I am glad I never selected lower quality settings for 'spoken word' material (the majority of content on my iTunes).
It was only the S370 display of the changing bitrate that brought my attention to this. I had previously assumed that 256K AAC VBR meant that 256K was the highest quality it would achieve. I was totally wrong there. 256K is (on average) one of the lowest bitrates I have seen.
[Edit. I can't take my eyes off this thing! In a part of a 'flashback' to WW2 (Call For The Dead) there are some very loud explosions - as Smiley is meeting his German agent in the middle of an air raid - and the bit rate plummeted to 200K for their duration. The moment someone speaks after the explosions it goes right back to around 310K.]
As I bought each set last year, and the year before, I burnt them from CD to iTunes in AAC 256K VBR (error correction on) which is my default setting for everything I have on iTunes.
After moving the whole George Smiley collection to memory stick this morning, I tested it by plugging into the USB socket on the front of the Sony BDP-S370 to ensure that 'track' order was preserved (it was) and to get an idea of the quality (great quality).
Then I noticed the constantly changing AAC bit rate display in the top right hand corner of the TV screen. Most of the tme it is somewhere between 290K and 340K and only drops significantly lower if a woman's voice is speaking or there are prolongued quiet bits. Mens voices push the bit rates to around 320K (or higher) depending on the acoustic qualities of the space they are talking in. (Higher indoors, lower outdoors.) The very little time taken up by music (beginning and end of disks usually) the bit rate plummets! Odd.
I had always assumed that 'speech only' material (like radio drama) would have lower bit rates than music in general.
I am glad I never selected lower quality settings for 'spoken word' material (the majority of content on my iTunes).
It was only the S370 display of the changing bitrate that brought my attention to this. I had previously assumed that 256K AAC VBR meant that 256K was the highest quality it would achieve. I was totally wrong there. 256K is (on average) one of the lowest bitrates I have seen.
[Edit. I can't take my eyes off this thing! In a part of a 'flashback' to WW2 (Call For The Dead) there are some very loud explosions - as Smiley is meeting his German agent in the middle of an air raid - and the bit rate plummeted to 200K for their duration. The moment someone speaks after the explosions it goes right back to around 310K.]
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