Help Choosing Bit Rate for Importing CDs in ITunes

[Vashti]

Hey y'all. I'm trying to figure out what bit rate I should be importing CDs at. Currently, I listen on my 15" powerbook speakers and stock earphones - but I am certain that I will upgrade both as soon as I can. I've read a couple of threads about this, but nobody discusses what kind of music they listen to, and I'm guessing this is important. I listen to a lot of vocal and instrumental jazz and showtunes and some classical, world music, and pop, all music where catching as much nuance as possible is important. I listen to very little rock. I can definitely hear a big difference between AIFF and everything else, but AIFF files are just too big for me. I can't hear very much difference between the rates 192 and over, but I'm thinking this might change when I have better speakers/earphones.

I have a 40 gig ipod and about 1000 cds. Music quality is definitely more important to me than getting everything on, but I also want to fit as much as I can on to the ipod.

So, what have others found? Especially folks who are listening to similar music? How will it be different when I upgrade my speakers and earphoens? Thank you so much for the help!

[FattyMembrane]

you could always try the lossless codec. it is the same sound quality but averages about half the size. i listen to a lot of classical (some orchestral, but mostly solo piano and guitar) and if i don't use lossless, i rip at 192kbps AAC and have found it to be quite good (i can't tell the difference). i'm sure that at around 256kbps AAC, you really couldn't tell any difference unless you had some really really really good headphones and superhuman auditory acuity.

[mkrishnan]

Another suggestion might be, rip the same couple of songs at different rates, burn it back to a CDR, and play it in a stereo you consider to be "good". Then pick the lowest bit rate you feel comfortable with on the stereo. That should be a fairly good method, no?

I guess the problem is that style of music matters, but so does your personal sensitivity and what you listen for. I think I have sensitive ears and I find opera at 128 AAC acceptable, but that's not the same thing as saying it sounds like the original CD (it doesn't). But I can hear what I want to well enough. So I guess it's complicated?

[crees!]

you could always try the lossless codec. it is the same sound quality but averages about half the size. i listen to a lot of classical (some orchestral, but mostly solo piano and guitar) and if i don't use lossless, i rip at 192kbps AAC and have found it to be quite good (i can't tell the difference). i'm sure that at around 256kbps AAC, you really couldn't tell any difference unless you had some really really really good headphones and superhuman auditory acuity.

I agree with Fatty. Though I don't listen to what you do I rip my CDs at 192 AAC. Also the lossless codec would be a good choice... just like AIFF but a little smaller. I ran some comparison tests regarding file size with the lossless codec. They weren't exactly 1/2 the size of the original but they were smaller.

[FattyMembrane]

the lossless codec has varying efficiency for each file (it depends on the waveforms, quality, etc of the actual song). I've had lossless files be anywhere from about 35% to 80% the size of the AIFF - it all depends on the individual track.

[Vashti]

Thanks you guys. One more question: How does importing at higher bit rates affect the battery? I've been listening a lot today, trying to test this. It seems like I might need to bite the bullet and import at 224 or even 320 on much of my music. Does that drain the battery faster?

[rendezvouscp]

Well, the bigger the files are, the more the iPod has to spin up the hard drive, and the less battery life you get. If you listen to a "CD," at 224, you'll probably spin up three different times, whereas at Lossless you'll be spinning up at least once for every song. That wears out the iPod and your battery. If I were you, I would import at 320, but the exceptional tracks in Lossless. Good luck deciding! It took me forever (btw, I ended up importing in all Lossless, but using 256 for my iPod).
–Chase

[musicpyrite]

Well, the bigger the files are, the more the iPod has to spin up the hard drive, and the less battery life you get. If you listen to a "CD," at 224, you'll probably spin up three different times, whereas at Lossless you'll be spinning up at least once for every song. That wears out the iPod and your battery. If I were you, I would import at 320, but the exceptional tracks in Lossless. Good luck deciding! It took me forever (btw, I ended up importing in all Lossless, but using 256 for my iPod).
–Chase

There have been reports of the iPod having trouble playing 320 Kbps.

If I were you, I'd at least rip the songs at 192 AAC. I can tell the difference between 128 and 192. And also 192 and 224. But after 224, it all sort of sounds the same, and I want to have as many songs on my iPod as possible. In the Terminal, /dev/disk3s3 is my iPod.

Lol, only 2.3 MB of space left on my iPod. Muahahha!

[Daniel:~] daniel% df
Filesystem 512-blocks Used Avail Capacity Mounted on
/dev/disk0s9 160821336 119112312 41197024 74% /
devfs 190 190 0 100% /dev
fdesc 2 2 0 100% /dev
<volfs> 1024 1024 0 100% /.vol
automount -nsl [323] 0 0 0 100% /Network
automount -fstab [345] 0 0 0 100% /automount/Servers
automount -static [345] 0 0 0 100% /automount/static
/dev/disk3s3 29229312 29224624 4688 100% /Volumes/Yoda

[rendezvouscp]

What reports? I would be interested in reading them.
–Chase

[virividox]

192 aac
but that quickly eats up space

[ChrisFromCanada]

I have used 320 for 2 years and have only had one minor problem with my ipod (required restart, and then fixed) which was probably not even related to the fact that it was 320 so if thats what you want to do I say don't worry about it.

[AHDuke99]

I use 192 AAC, if I duplicate a CD i lossless it and then delete the large files...

I wish iTUnes offered lossless in the store to tell you the truth

[Vashti]

For those of who who import at 320 or 224, how long does your battery last?

[maradong]

If you analyse the streams of a 128, 192 and a 256 kbit aac file, and if you check the delta between the peaks for high and low frequencies, you will see that encoding at a kbit rate of 196 will bring you about 98% of the peak delta of an acc file encoded at 256.
So basically encoding at more than 192 kbit aac isn't (IMHO, as always) affecting the sound quality for normal humanoids anymore, and is therefore bs. ;-)
That may sound harsh, but the extra MiB just weight to much to justify the 2% gain.
Anybody interested in telling me how on earth to encode using the lossless encoder? I litterally never understood how to do so :( :rolleyes:

€dit: Made my statement a whole lot easier to understand ;-)

[rendezvouscp]

Yeah, there is a new option for iTunes when you select what to code in. Apple Lossless Encoder. Happy encoding!
–Chase

[MacFan26]

so. 192 AAC is supposed to be the same quality as Apple's lossless encoding, just a larger size?

[johnnyjibbs]

so. 192 AAC is supposed to be the same quality as Apple's lossless encoding, just a larger size?
No, it approximates to it, depending on who you are and how good your ears supposedly are.

Lossless doesn't lose any data and so should be as good a quality as the original AIFF (probably just gets rid of the blank bits).

To be honest, for normal Rock/Pop stuff, I can't tell the difference between 128 AAC and the original CD AIFF so I just stick with 128 AAC. Any difference there may be you will become accustomed to anyway if you constantly listen to the AAC.

192 AAC is just a less compressed version of 128 AAC so should be slightly better quality. I bet no-one could tell the difference between 128 and 192 AAC though.

[neoelectronaut]

Myself, I use 192 MP3.

I considered using AAC, but I wanted to be able to make MP3 discs and discs that will play on my MP3/CD player.

[ionas]

Go for 320KBs OGG - that should be indentical to lossless for any human being but will need lot less space.

And if you got space issues go for 256KBs OGG - Most people will never ever
hear differences anyway. I would not go below though.
You can hear the difference between 128 and 192. In some "scenes" you might hear the difference between 192 and 256 as well.

[ionas]

320Kbps VBR will do it as well. (VBR is great, it will go to maximum quality if needed (means if the sound spectrum is very wide) and will keep the quality low if there is nothing to save (e.g. passages with no sound at all, pauses for example, or very clear sounds; at least i understood it that way))

[MacFan26]

No, it approximates to it, depending on who you are and how good your ears supposedly are.


Thanks. Most of my stuff is 128 AAC, I'll probably be sticking with that. Even though I listen to quite a bit of classical music, I can't tell the difference between that and lossless. Oh well, maybe I just have bad ears :) Hm..I can't really tell the difference between Pepsi and Diet Pepsi either, is this a sign? ;)

[johnnyjibbs]

Thanks. Most of my stuff is 128 AAC, I'll probably be sticking with that. Even though I listen to quite a bit of classical music, I can't tell the difference between that and lossless. Oh well, maybe I just have bad ears :) Hm..I can't really tell the difference between Pepsi and Diet Pepsi either, is this a sign? ;)
It would be interesting to make a CD of one song, but with each track in a variety of bitrates (as someone mentioned earlier) - e.g. AIFF, Apple Lossless, 192 MP3, 128 MP3, 128 AAC, 192 AAC, 320 AAC, etc - shuffle them around and then ask an "audiophille" which one is the AIFF (best quality). I bet you 9/10 times they wouldn't get it right. :p ;)

You may decide the extra disc space isn't worth it.

[Bruce Lee, PhD]

...nobody discusses what kind of music they listen to, and I'm guessing this is important. I listen to a lot of vocal and instrumental jazz and showtunes and some classical, world music, and pop, all music where catching as much nuance as possible is important. I listen to very little rock. I can definitely hear a big difference between AIFF and everything else, but AIFF files are just too big for me. I can't hear very much difference between the rates 192 and over, but I'm thinking this might change when I have better speakers/earphones.

...

So, what have others found? Especially folks who are listening to similar music? How will it be different when I upgrade my speakers and earphoens? Thank you so much for the help!

Hi,

I listen to rock, bluegrass, jazz, and classical. I generally find that 128 is pretty good. Although I can tell a difference at higher bit rates, it's just not worth it to me personally to use the extra space. When I want an audiophile experience, I don't listen at my computer. :-) The one exception to that is when I'm listening to large-group works, like a big band or an orchestra. In those cases, the lower-bit-rate encodings seem to get confused and will randomly bring the raspy sound of a bow, or a particular horn, or someone's chair creaking (I'm not kidding), right to the front of the mix. When the groups are smaller (jazz combo, rock band, etc) and individual instruments are more distinct to begin with, I don't notice this. I suspect this is a direct result of the way these encoders work and how they choose to allocate bits. However, I haven't done much A/B of one piece encoded multiple ways. At this point I only know that, say, Beethoven's 5th or "Sketches of Spain" sounds noticeably weird when encoded at 128.

For non-orchestra music, my issue is that at any bit rate you can still hear the swishy high-end and other artifacts induced by the current codecs. So even though 320 is sometimes a noticeable improvement over 128 for rock/jazz, you can still hear the same sorts of problems, just less so. So the extra space just isn't worth it to me; the problems don't go away. I will have to try re-encoding some orchestra music at 320 to see if parts stop jumping out though.

It's tough to say what will change with better headphones since I don't have your ears. IMO you'll probably hear things about the same as now. I doubt you'll hear much improvement between 192 and even 320, since I don't think things get much better (with aac or mp3) until you go to lossless.

[Vashti]

Thanks so much. This helps A LOT. I've decided to wait until I buy some better speakers before making any big decisions, or importing any more cd's. I imported a jazz vocal cd last night on the apple lossless setting and even on my powerbooks speakers, the music was incredible - much better. I can tell I'll be reimporting the things I did at 128. That's just not enough for me. We'll see where I end up. I'm leaning toward 256 for things I care about a lot and 192 for most stuff. Of course, there'll be a few albums that need to be imported lossless. I guess I'll just have to see what things sound like on decent speakers. Thanks everybody!

[Rantipole]

I considered using AAC, but I wanted to be able to make MP3 discs and discs that will play on my MP3/CD player.
I'm in a similar predicament. I would like AAC for my purposes, since it sounds better bit-for-bit than MP3. However, there are times I would like to make an MP3 CD for playback. I have not yet gotten my new computer, so I don't know: with the latest version of iTunes, is it easy to just convert a bunch of AAC files to MP3? Or, would the conversion just ruin the sound quality?

[rendezvouscp]

I'm in a similar predicament. I would like AAC for my purposes, since it sounds better bit-for-bit than MP3. However, there are times I would like to make an MP3 CD for playback. I have not yet gotten my new computer, so I don't know: with the latest version of iTunes, is it easy to just convert a bunch of AAC files to MP3? Or, would the conversion just ruin the sound quality?

Well, it is really easy to just select and convert. If you have a high enough AAC file and convert to a lower bitrate MP3, it shouldn't sound bad, or even lossy too much. But if you go from 256 AAC ––> 192 MP3, or something similar, you should be fine.
–Chase

[Vashti]

I just realized there's a couple of terms here I don't know. What is OGG? And how about VBR? I thought that was a PC thing. We have it to? How do I select it? In the past, I've just gone to import option and selected bit rate and AAC. There are more things I can control? Thanks for the help.

[rendezvouscp]

OGG is another format, you can learn more about it at http://www.vorbis.com/music.psp. Here (http://www.vorbis.com/software.psp?pid=4) is a list of applications that support OGG in Mac OS X.

VBR is Variable Bit Rate encoding, that will change the bitrate during the "song." It's easier to say that it is kind of the opposite of CBR (http://www.afterdawn.com/glossary/terms/cbr.cfm), or Constant Bit Rate encoding. In CBR, the bit rate is the same. In VBR, it varies.

I don't believe AAC supports VBR in the same sense as MP3. In iTunes, you can't select VBR for AAC, but for MP3 you can. I hope that helps you out.
–Chase

[Vashti]

Yep, it does. Thank you. These forums are a very cool way to get some education.

[neoelectronaut]

Okay, question.

If I rip all my music to AAC from now on, and I want to make an MP3 CD, does checking off the MP3 CD option in the options thing make the AAC files convert to MP3 before they're burned?

[rendezvouscp]

Okay, question.

If I rip all my music to AAC from now on, and I want to make an MP3 CD, does checking off the MP3 CD option in the options thing make the AAC files convert to MP3 before they're burned?

According to iTunes' help, any format that's not MP3 will not be burned to the CD. So no.
–Chase

[bankshot]

It would be interesting to make a CD of one song, but with each track in a variety of bitrates (as someone mentioned earlier) - e.g. AIFF, Apple Lossless, 192 MP3, 128 MP3, 128 AAC, 192 AAC, 320 AAC, etc - shuffle them around and then ask an "audiophille" which one is the AIFF (best quality). I bet you 9/10 times they wouldn't get it right. :p ;)

I agree! The key here is to do a blind listening test. Anything else is inherently biased. Why? If you go through and listen to a song at 128kbps, 192, 320, lossless, and know which one you're listening to, your brain will trick itself into thinking the higher quality ones sound better. I found this to be true when I was first trying to determine my optimal bitrate. I complimented myself on the great ears I must have, to hear all those subtle differences. :D

Then I did a blind listening test. For each bitrate, I converted it back to AIFF. Then I wrote a little program to randomly pick one of the compressed/converted AIFFs along with the original source, and randomly name them "A" and "B". Then it randomly made a copy of one of those and called it "C". I had my program keep track of which was which, but you can just have a friend do it in the Finder while you're not looking. Then I listened to all three AIFFs (A, B, and C) and tried to guess which was the original and which was in there twice.

I found the 128 kbps AAC stumped me often but not always. With 160 kbps, my answers were no better than random guesses. This is with a good pair of headphones, but no audiophile stereo. So that's what I use, and my 370-CD collection takes up about 23.5 GB. Perfect for my 27.9 GB iPod. :p This was after I was sure I could hear a difference between 320 kbps and the original! Guess I was wrong. I mostly listen to my iPod in the car, and I couldn't be happier with the 160 kbps. I've never had a problem with the quality of my iTMS purchases either.

If you really want to choose the best bitrate, I suggest you go through this procedure. Pick a few songs you love and really know well, preferably from a few different genres. Try to listen on the equipment you'll be using most, as that definitely makes a difference too. Perhaps if I had a really good stereo, 160 kbps would have audible flaws, but I guess I'm happy being ignorant. ;)

[rendezvouscp]

Do you have the program? I'd love to do that on my own.
–Chase

[Squire]

Here's an idea: Just import everything twice- once uncompressed and once in a half-decent mp3 format. Then buy an external hard drive and keep all of the large files there while putting the mp3s on your iPod. That way, if you end up with a Mark Levinson system down the road, you'll be okay. ;)

Bankshot, that blind comparison test you mentioned is genius, by the way.

Oh, and I'm also having some regrets about importing in AAC. It's not that the there's a quality problem. It's just that it's a pain in the butt to burn a full 800 MB of mp3s for a friend. I was listening to my iPod in the car when my buddy asked me to burn him a CD. I downloaded some kind of LAME importer from Versiontracker and did a batch convert. It would have been much easier to just pick all the tunes and hit a "burn as mp3 files" button. Or is there an easier way to do things? I guess Apple is sort of torn between their ease of use and promoting AAC.

Squire

[mkrishnan]

Bankshot, that blind comparison test you mentioned is genius, by the way.

For curiousity see these:

http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,64123,pg,2,00.asp
http://www.recordstorereview.com/misc/aacmp3.shtml

Somewhere, there was one of these where the listeners were *all* audiophiles, but I can't seem to find that one now.

Anyway, it does seem to support that a lot of ppl can tell the diff between 128 and 192. But its interesting how different the score on the second link between non-blind and blind tests of AAC/128 is -- meaning a lot (but not all) of it was in the testers' heads....

[neoelectronaut]

I'm getting one of those neat Nokia 3300 phones, and it plays the AAC format. Now, it comes with 64MB of memory, so what's the lowest bitrate I can get with AAC and it'll still sound good? 128?

Should I not dip any further down?