[X4U] Which format for Music?

[Richard Nagle]

Hi Thomas,

Well this is double edge sword....
First off, AIFF or WAV, for the best sound quality (.)

Now, lets look at realistic aspects of this....

Been in Audio for 24 years, as a sound recording engineer,
and listen to many recording sessions.

The key is listen... What does your ears tell you,
not what you feel, what do your hear...

Now, I use a pair of Stax Signatures headphones, have compare
many types of compression and lossless to a audio recording.

Let look at portability, AAC & Apple Lossless, are just
for Apple iTunes, and IPOD only....

AIFF and WAV and Mp3's are for many machines....& MP3 players.

So, if flexibility is one key, there you go...

Now, what about space, a typical AIFF Lossless file is about
42 megs.... that allot of space... X 1000 Files of this size,
would be 42 GB Hard Drive...

Now lets look at MP3's,
This is what I use, to record my cd's...
Set the setting to 320 CBR / Stereo / 44.1 / NO Filters / NO Eq's / With 
Error Correction on.  Get about a 9 - 12 MB file, that is very good 
compare to AIFF, in sound quality about 92% - 95% there... but the space 
savings, are huge. compare to a one AIFF file sizes, I could have 5 
mp3's of the same space..(approx).

SO, enclosing, you can always dump your collection
to another mp3 player, other than IPOD with those three
formats... AIFF, WAV, MP3.

You choose, what fits your needs...

Cheers
Richard





Thomas Bulat wrote:
> Hi,
> I plan on loading a number of my CDs into iTunes, and I noticed that
> Apple gives you the choice of the following encodings:
> AAC Encoder
> AIFF Encoder
> Apple Lossless Encoder
> MP3 Encoder
> WAV Encoder
> 
> I want the highest fidelity lossless encoder for the music.
> 
> Which one should I use?
> 
> Thanks in advance, and so long for now, TOM
>