[X4U] Rip It Up - iTunes Import Settings Survey

[John Lyon]

I don't consider myself to have tin ears, but I simply don't have the
opportunity to listen to music as mindfully as I could pre-child. Or even
pre-marriage.

That said, I can hear the flanging, or whatever the heck you'd call the
artifacts with poorly encoded files. I've used MP3 at high quality VBR,
which generally does a good job for how I listen to music these days,
although I've switched to AAC at 128. The key for me is portability, and
that they sound good enough.

I've encoded over 1000 CDs, and can tell you, too, that your *source* may
dictate what format you use. Anyone who has the original CD release of Bat
out of Hell, and has encoded it to MP3 at 128 can tell you how bad it
sounds, due to the poor mix. It sounds better at higher bit rates, or with
AAC. Better mixed discs do better at lower bit rates.

Finally - consider how you will use your files. Are they for your use only?
Then you needn't be concerned about the format. If you will share files with
friends/customers/web site visitors, I'd recommend MP3. I formerly used a
product called StreamSicle to stream my MP3s - it doesn't support AAC, so
it's no longer useful, and my choice to use AAC, while "Mac Pure," means I
have less flexibility with what I do with my files.

If cost were no object, I'd have a huge raid array, maybe at the end of a T3
somewhere, where'd I'd store my files in some format that the jukebox
software I'd installed could serve them up with no problems.

On 5/5/05 10:00 AM, "revDAVE" <coolcat at hostalive.com> either wrote,
forwarded or quoted:

> I'm curious to find out what importing format and  bit rate settings you
> generally like to use when importing audio into iTunes. Years ago, the
> standard was MP3 at 128 bitrate - sample rate 44.1,  but now I'm curious
> what people like to do.
__
John