Converting WAVs to AAC in itunes. How is the quality?

Icaras said:

Without going into scientific details, I'm curious as to the quality of the sound if you were to convert a WAV file to an AAC file in itunes. Would it be the same as if I ripped and encoded a track from a CD straight to AAC? Because I know there are quality issues when converting from one lossless format to another (Mp3 to AAC).

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Anytime you re-encode to any compressed format you lose some quality. How much loss depends on how much compression you dial in, and how it 'sounds' is totally subjective. Transferring WAV files to AAC should be comparable to ripping CDs to AAC (at the same compression rate), assuming the original WAV audio quality was comparable to a CD. Use a high rate and it should be fine.

Incidentally, MP3 and AAC are not lossless formats. The only real lossless formats are those that incorporate the original digital data without converting it, or use compression algorithms it in such a way that it is bit-for-bit reconstructable on playback (such as Apples "Lossless").

Icaras said:

Without going into scientific details, I'm curious as to the quality of the sound if you were to convert a WAV file to an AAC file in itunes. Would it be the same as if I ripped and encoded a track from a CD straight to AAC? Because I know there are quality issues when converting from one lossless format to another (Mp3 to AAC).

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Just to clear up any confusion, MP3 and AAC are lossy. The quality issues are when converting from one lossy format to another. Going from a lossless format like FLAC, Apple Lossless, AIFF or WAV to a lossy format is just like ripping the disc, as long as the lossless file was sourced from the disc.