>And while I am at it again - my encoder for importing music into >iTunes is set to Mp3 encoder. Should I change that to AIFF? Not >knowing what actually either does, I wonder whether someone could >clarify this mystery. >Marta
I think everyone's confusing AIFF format with AAC format. Crash course in terrible nasty acronyms for the day: AIFF = Audio Interchange file format. Essentially, this is what is actually recorded on a CD. If you import a CD into iTunes using AIFF format, you'll get exactly what was on the CD so it will be absolutely top quality, every bit as good as the original CD, but the resulting files are HUGE. Typical songs are around 50 MB, typical CDs are around 600-700 MB. These will fill up a hard drive in a big hurry, and an iPod in an even bigger hurry. Unless you are a serious heavy-duty audiophile with real good hearing and real good audio equipment, you probably don't want to store stuff in this format - it just eats up too much disk space. MP3 - this is a compressed audio format. It takes up a LOT less disk space, and most people can't tell much difference between the compressed MP3 version of a song and the original version from a CD. This is the most common format, and the most portable - all the little flash memory based MP3 players use it, PC users can use it. What Apple developed a couple of years ago for the iPod/iTunes is the newer AAC format - Advanced Audio Codec. It is a newer software technology than MP3, and compresses music quite a bit more than MP3 does while keeping about the same sound quality. I've read a boatload of tests by audiophiles with way better hearing than my old ears and way better audio equipment, and the consensus seems to be that a song encoded with AAC at 128kbps sounds about as good as an MP3 encoded at 192kbps - so for the same sound quality, AAC will eat about 1/3 less disk space than MP3. It isn't quite as portable as MP3 format - PC users may have to install iTunes to listen to it, and there are few portable players other than the iPod than can play AAC songs. It saves tons of disk space though, so Apple pushes AAC format for the iPod - you can cram more music into the iPod since a song uses less disk space. Songs you purchase from the iTunes music store are in AAC format encoded at 128kbps. Bottom line - if the portability of the music is important to you because you want to use the songs with other players than the iPod or want to share music with PC users that may not have iTunes installed, use MP3. If you want to save more disk space both on your Mac and your iPod, use AAC format. I'd say most people with iPods use the default AAC format at 128kbps these days. Most people can't tell any difference between music compressed at this rate and the original CD. Songs end up using about 5MB of disk space, so even the original 5GB iPod can hold around 1000 songs with music encoded this way. If you want still better sound quality, you can encode using AAC at 192kbps - the test reports you can read on the web say even audiophiles have trouble telling the difference between a song encoded this way from the original CD. Hope this answers all your questions, Marta, have a fine day..... Jerry -- Jerry W. Ethington 245 Hawkeegan Drive Frankfort, KY 40601-3912 (502)223-5489 (502)682-2607 cellular jethington at mac.com "Quando omni, flunkus moritati." (When all else fails, play dead.) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.math.louisville.edu/pipermail/macgroup/attachments/20050124/fd5443b2/attachment.html
