[iTunes] Re: MP3 vs AAC

[Jeremy Kezer]

Bdg,

>I agree that while there will be some space savings in converting MP3
>files directly to AAC, the best one could hope for is sound quality
>that's almost-as-good as the source MP3 - most likely worse.
>
>It seems that if you're happy with your existing MP3 collection and
>don't want to re-encode, leave them alone.  Encode new stuff with AAC.

I made an nice discovery...  You can preserve some metadata when 
re-encoding into AAC from your original CD.

Inserting a CD that I'd previously ripped into MP3, I was presented 
with the "these songs already imported" dialog, and after clicking on 
the "Replace Existing"  button, it re-imported the tracks as AAC and 
preserved some of the tags, including the comment field, which is 
important to me and my smart playlists.

I found that some CD's didn't prompt me this way, and I suspect it's 
because the CDDB database information has been changed since I 
originally ripped the CD's.  I've now added the step of resetting the 
track names before I re-insert the CD and so far every CD since has 
prompted me to replace the old (MP3) tracks with new AAC tracks.

Some tags are preserved.  Play count is not so preserved, so my "top 
50" smart playlist may be a little out of whack for a while.  :)

Jeremy

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jeremy at kezer.net                              http://www.kezer.net/
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