Audio Quality: 320kbps MP3 or AAC? Help me out!

[Kipper is King]

So, I am ripping my songs into Itunes, and I like a higher bitrate, but I don't want to go loseless because of the huge file size!

That begs the question: Does it make a difference in audio quality or file size if I use 320kbps AAC or 320kbps MP3?

[Winsor_Pilates]

I find very little difference between the 2 and ACC leaves less flexability if you ever want your music on anything but an ipod. I'd say use MP3 for that reason alone.

[Kipper is King]

Originally Posted by Winsor_Pilates

I find very little difference between the 2 and ACC leaves less flexability if you ever want your music on anything but an ipod. I'd say use MP3 for that reason alone.

Great! Thank you!

[photon]

There are other MP3 players that support ACC, and I would say ACC is slightly better quality over MP3, but 99% of people would never be able to tell the difference, especially at that bitrate.

But in general I agree, MP3 is going to be much more flexible.

[Bobblehead]

Every blind test I've read shows people can't tell the difference between 128 & 196 bitrates (even of they swore they could). That said, I still do 192VBR through EAC. It seems to be a good tradeoff between filesize and quality.

[photon]

I've even done some blind tests myself between 196, ACC, and CD and couldn't consistently tell the difference, though I got the CD right a bit more it wasn't statistically significant.

[Draug]

The ability to tell the difference between the sounds of the different bit rates will greatly depend on the quality of your sound equipment.

On small ear phones, or average car audio, it is hard to consistently tell. Just like Photon, you can get the higher quality sound right about 60% of the time.

However, if you ever dock your ipod to a full range home stereo (and a good one), you can easily tell the difference. You'll need good full range speakers powered by a good amp and receiver. The difference in the right set up is night and day.

[Hemi-Cuda]

i encode all my stuff in Ogg Vorbis as i find the quality to be better than MP3, and the filesize for comparable bitrates is smaller. i still stick with 256 though as even with my higher end Ultrasone headphones i can't tell the difference with anything higher than that

[Bobblehead]

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/do_..._rates_pay_off

We all thought it would be a piece of cake, for that matter. With the finest consumer-level soundcard, ace headphones, and tracks we knew by heart, who would have thought that identifying a compressed audio track could be so difficult? No one was more surprised than the audiophile. Like all the other participants, there was a lot of leaning forward, as if getting closer to the PC might expose some hidden flaw in the audio stream. Near the end of the tests, the Audiophile remarked, “I specifically chose this song because I thought it would be easy [to identify the compressed version]. It wasn’t.”

[llama64]

I tend to use 256k variable bit AAC encoding. MP3's may be a bit more portable, but I never decerned a need for that portability as all my devices can read the music in AAC format. For instance, my Sony bookshelf system can read my AAC files off my USB key just fine.

I'll likely re-evaluate things when I finally break down and buy a nice audio system. But that's a long ways away.