Best way to import songs?

[masterjedi73]

Which do you find to be the best quality for importing songs into iTunes? Which takes up the most space etc...?

thanks!

[Veldek]

I you’re an audiophile then you have to use a lossless codec, but this will also use the most space. I normally use best AAC quality (I think it‘s 192?), because my ears aren’t good enough to hear any difference to a CD.

[mwpeters8182]

I've got pretty good ears, as far as listening for imperfections goes, and I've found that the best - 192K (i think) AAC is perfectly fine. We have a good quality sound system at home, and mix CDs that I burn come out fine. Lossless is huge, especially since I only have the 60GB hard drive that I have in my PB, and 5 GB of space on my 1G iPod (if only the battery would die so I can get a new one).

I'd say 192 is the way to go.

MP

[ChrisFromCanada]

I do 320 and find that it has the best quality/size ratio for me personally.

[Duff-Man]

Duff-Man says....I think what is "best" depends on how you are listening to them. If it is for home, with a higher-end set of speakers then I would rip as high as possible, or use one of the lossless formats. But if it is for portable use where the listening conditions are not optimal anyway, then I use 192 AAC...oh yeah!

[munkle]

Best bit rate/codec will depend entirely on how you intend to listen to your music, how much space you have and how good your ears are! :D Best thing to do is to rip the same song at different bitrates and pick the sweetspot for you...personally I find 192 AAC to work perfectly well for me, even on my fairly high end stereo. If you're going to be listening to your music mainly through your ipod I would say 128 kbps is fine.

[applemacdude]

320 AAC Anything less is not considered good for me...

[Windowlicker]

I've been doing 160kbps AAC and don't really hear much difference to the original. on some classical tracks, there can occasionally be a bit different "coulours" with some sounds (if this happens it usually occurs once or twice in 10minutes and cannot be heard if not compared to the original record by playing them back and forth for a while).

So, eventhough I keep myself as a person who requires a good sounding record, the 160kbps aac is pretty much enough for me. actually, I have 128kbps on my ipod (15gb cannot hold enough and this saves some space) and it's fine with the in-ear headphones.