saving space with 80 kbps AAC with high-efficiency

[HeavenlyYeti]

I don't know what this new "high-efficiency" option does in conversion, but I've found that an 80 kbps AAC with the high-efficiency turned on sounds MAGNIFICENT. Plus, I think I've lowered my music space at least 5 times over.
I listened to various Radiohead, U2, and Brian Eno tracks with my Dr. Dre headphones, and honestly could only spot very very miniscule differences between the 320kbps and the 80kbps.

AAC is awesome. If you're looking to free up a ton of space, this is a sweet idea. :apple:

[GermanSuplex]

Is this something built within iTunes? Or another program?

[HeavenlyYeti]

Is this something built within iTunes? Or another program?

it's in itunes. Go to EDIT > PREFERENCES > GENERAL > IMPORT SETTINGS > click CUSTOM > choose 80 kbps and check the box that says "high efficiency".

go back to your music and press CTRL+A so all your stuff is highlighted. Go up to ADVANCED > CREATE AAC VERSION.

then you leave the computer to go workout or watch avatar or something, come back a day (or more, depending on how many songs you got) later and you should be set. I converted 6 GBs of music down to 2 GBs. And like I said, there's really no difference in quality that you can hear.

Best part? you can delete all those MP3s taking up all your hard drive space. More room for new music and movies!

Take that, Thom Yorke! :)

[miles01110]

That works for certain genres, but not for others. Classical music at bitrates under 192 is borderline un-listenable for me.

[HeavenlyYeti]

That works for certain genres, but not for others. Classical music at bitrates under 192 is borderline un-listenable for me.

sure.

[BlizzardBomb]

HE-AAC at 80 kbps is roughly equivalent to MP3 at 160kbps, so to most of the population, any distortion/ quality loss is inaudible. Any songs you have at 128kbps are definitely worth converting to HE-AAC if you're tight on space.

[cubeeggs]

If you’re trying to hear the difference between HE-AAC and AAC or MP3, HE-AAC parametrizes (destroys and reconstitutes) high frequencies, and low-bitrate HE-AAC also parametrizes stereo separation.

[Yvan256]

I'm not a big fan of re-encoding lossy audio. This is not a good way to evaluate a new CODEC since you're starting out with already compressed, lossy audio.

I'll have to try it with a CD, however. But do all iPods support HE-AAC? How about my old 3rd generation iPod touch and my 2nd generation iPod shuffle? :confused:

[lostless]

I'm not a big fan of re-encoding lossy audio. This is not a good way to evaluate a new CODEC since you're starting out with already compressed, lossy audio.

I'll have to try it with a CD, however. But do all iPods support HE-AAC? How about my old 3rd generation iPod touch and my 2nd generation iPod shuffle? :confused:

Ive found that the older ipods will play the AAC HE, but do not play the extra high frequency track. So it comes out sounding like a 80kb/s AAC.

[kalafalas]

Ive found that the older ipods will play the AAC HE, but do not play the extra high frequency track. So it comes out sounding like a 80kb/s AAC.

iPod classic 6.5 generation (120GB, or the thin 160) will play it perfectly, Any iOS Device running 3.1 or higher, and iPod Nano 4th generation and up will play HE-AAC perfectly, any older model will treat it as a regular AAC song, and only see the 80 kbps part, not the HE reconstruction

[JulianL]

Yes, AAC-HE is great. My main archive on my file server is stored in FLAC (that's a lossless format, i.e. a perfect copy of the source CD, equivelent to Apple Lossless Encoder) so I have the option to convert my music to whatever format I want without lossy-to-lossy conversion artefacts.

I did some experiments a couple of years back when I wanted to put as much of the music on my 30GB iPod onto my smartphone which at the time only had about 6GB of free space so I had to look at aggressive compression. I experimented with all the formats I could find at 64kbs (MP3, MP3 Pro, AAC, Ogg Vobis and AAC-HE). To my ears they were all unlistenable-to at 64kbs with the exception of AAC-HE that really did sound pretty much as good as 128kbs MP3.

Edit: I also tried WMA in my old tests and it was also unlistenable-to at 64kbs.

- Julian

[winninganthem]

Cool find, thanks.

[DealerQueen]

I did some experiments a couple of years back when I wanted to put as much of the music on my 30GB iPod onto my smartphone which at the time only had about 6GB of free space so I had to look at aggressive compression. I experimented with all the formats I could find at 64kbs (MP3, MP3 Pro, AAC, Ogg Vobis and AAC-HE). To my ears they were all unlistenable-to at 64kbs with the exception of AAC-HE that really did sound pretty much as good as 128kbs MP3128 is surely better than 64, but is it listenable anyway? I can hardly imagine myself listening to stuff like Godspeed You! Black Emperor or King Crimson in 128:confused:

[JulianL]

128 is surely better than 64, but is it listenable anyway? I can hardly imagine myself listening to stuff like Godspeed You! Black Emperor or King Crimson in 128:confused:
It's best to think of them as very, very different formats with different design goals. "normal" AAC and "normal" MP3 are designed to offer a satisfactory experience at 128kbs and an increasingly more faithful reprodruction of the original as the bit rate increases (192kbs, 256kbs, maybe all the way up to 320kbs).

AAC-HE is not just AAC at lower bit rates, it uses different algorithms that are optimised for lower bit rates. If you want to see the difference then try istening to the same song encoded at 64kbs AAC vs one encoded at 64kbs AAC-HE; the difference is staggering, at least to my ears.

General wisdom seems to be that 64kbs AAC-HE is not quite at the quality level of 128kbs MP3 but it is very, very close and my own listening tests seem to tally with this "general wisdom". Because of this I am pretty confident that, when I come to start trying out 80kbs AAC-HE for the new format on my iPhone 4, I personally will have no issues with the quality level and expect it to have no problem equalling 128kbs MP3 and maybe even beat it slightly.

- Julian

[supercooled]

Do you folks keep two separate libraries for your mobile devices and your home system? I haven't have to think about space conservation since storage became affordable a few years back so I'm basically content with 192kbps or above which seems to be the norm in terms of the stuff that are shall we say, procured through downloads.

I just converted a Keane song from 320kbps mp3 @ 7.9MB to 2.1MB and the differences are negligible at best. I've looped it a few times and I lost track which bitrate I was listening to. If you just sample it briefly, say a few seconds your bias will more than likely prefer the higher bitrate due to the placebo tendencies. Of course that is not the most scientific method of testing but there are people that do that and will dismiss it outright.

[rWally]

I'm not a big fan of re-encoding lossy audio. This is not a good way to evaluate a new CODEC since you're starting out with already compressed, lossy audio.

I'll have to try it with a CD, however. But do all iPods support HE-AAC? How about my old 3rd generation iPod touch and my 2nd generation iPod shuffle? :confused:

What he said. Are you guys re-encoding your MP3/AAC files or are you re-ripping from a CD? I cringe at the thought of re-encoding a lossy file.

[JulianL]

What he said. Are you guys re-encoding your MP3/AAC files or are you re-ripping from a CD? I cringe at the thought of re-encoding a lossy file.
Mine is essentially from CD (CD -> FLAC -> AAC-HE).

I chose FLAC years ago but now that I have an iPhone (the iPhone 4 is my first) it's become an issue that iTunes won't work with FLAC so I plan to do a one-off conversion of all my music from FLAC -> ALAC for my raw source material. (FLAC and ALAC are both lossless compression algorithms.)

Re supercooled's other recent question. At the moment I keep separate libraries, my master source material as discussed above and then a separate directory structure with the compressed versions for my portable devices. I currently manage both folder structures manually and my compressed library is a mess with a mixture of some stuff in MP3, some in AAC-HE 64kbs, various tagging errors, artwork at a resolution appropriate to 5 year old screen resolutions and not today's iPhone with retina display, and some CDs (FLAC files) not converted into compressed format at all. I plan to delete my current compressed library completely and re-generate it from scratch, all in AAC-HE 80kbs with consistent tagging and coverart.

For my re-build of my compressed library I'm considering using the automatic encode-on-copy-to-device feature in the newer iTunes to do the conversion to AAC-HE and then take a backup of the music on the device so that I don't need to spend days re-encoding when I move to a new device.

I don't know enough about iTunes to know how to backup the music on my device though (I really am new to the Apple world), where the backup is stored on my PC, what sort of folder structure will be created for it, and if I will be able to easily identify what's stored in the backup. I need to start doing some reading and experimenting; it's on my to-do list for this month.

- Julian

[Sol]

For those of you thinking about having two libraries, one made of high quality and one made of low-bitrate music, you should be aware that such a function exists in the latest iTunes. When your iPod, iPhone or iPad is connected to your computer and recognised by iTunes, select the device from the left side of iTunes and put a check-mark on 'Convert higher bitrate songs to 128 kbs.' It would be ideal if we could select what format and bitrate to down-convert to but for most casual listeners 128 kbs should be fine.

Now that we can buy cheap 2 TB drives it makes sense to rip CDs in Apple Lossless format. You can always down-convert using the above mentioned method in order to fit all your music on a current iPod and in a few years you will have portable devices with the capacity to hold lossless libraries.

[JulianL]

For those of you thinking about having two libraries, one made of high quality and one made of low-bitrate music, you should be aware that such a function exists in the latest iTunes. When your iPod, iPhone or iPad is connected to your computer and recognised by iTunes, select the device from the left side of iTunes and put a check-mark on 'Convert higher bitrate songs to 128 kbs.' It would be ideal if we could select what format and bitrate to down-convert to but for most casual listeners 128 kbs should be fine.

Now that we can buy cheap 2 TB drives it makes sense to rip CDs in Apple Lossless format. You can always down-convert using the above mentioned method in order to fit all your music on a current iPod and in a few years you will have portable devices with the capacity to hold lossless libraries.

Thanks, that's really helpful information. I was aware of the ability to do this automatic conversion in the latest iTunes but I hadn't been able to find such a nice simple explanation as to how to set it up.

One thing though. If I have my iTunes ALAC library then I know where to find all my ALAC tracks, I can just browse my iTunes music library directories and all the trachs are in a fairly sane directory structure, or even in my own directory structure if I've ticked the option to manage my own folders.

If I've chosen the down-convert option though, where do I find my AAC files? I see three possibilities:

1) They only exist on my device so, if my phone is stolen, my next device sync will be measured in days because everything is re-converted from the source ALAC files.

2) They are part of the iPhone backup but mixed in with lots of other stuff in the general very cryptic backup file structure where it is pretty much impossible to tell what's what.

3) As well as down-converting and pushing to the device, iTunes also saves the files in a well structured music library on my PC, possibly just saving them in the same folder structures alongside my original ALAC files.

Which one of the three does iTunes do?

I must say though, I now have a dilema. I'd been assuming that the same options were available as the "Import from CD" options so I was really banking on being able to use the iTunes down-convert feature for 80kbs AAC-HE. It's profoundly disappointing to discover that this isn't the case. I guess that iTunes is upgraded quite frequently and the next iPod Touch launch would be a sensible time to make major enhancements in the music management area so I might just hold off a bit before deciding what to do. In the meantime, pending an answer to my question above, at least I seem to be really close to fully understanding one of my options.

- Julian

[Sol]

If I've chosen the down-convert option though, where do I find my AAC files? I see three possibilities:

1) They only exist on my device so, if my phone is stolen, my next device sync will be measured in days because everything is re-converted from the source ALAC files.

That is how it works. Today it takes days, tomorrow hours.

AAC-HE looks like a format made for streaming. It may save space but I do not think it is meant to be used for that purpose. The space it saves is negligible considering how cheap hard drives have become.

[JulianL]

That is how it works. Today it takes days, tomorrow hours.

AAC-HE looks like a format made for streaming. It may save space but I do not think it is meant to be used for that purpose. The space it saves is negligible considering how cheap hard drives have become.

Yeah, but iPhones don't have hard drives! I wouldn't have been so bothered if Apple had done its usual doubling of storage capacity with the iPhone 4, it's one of the reasons I held off buying the 3GS, but I'm finding 32GB restrictive so the space saving for me of 80kbs (AAC-HE) vs 128kbs (AAC) is well worth having.

Thanks for the clarification on how the down-converted files are managed.

- Julian

[ortuno2k]

Try listening with good headphones. The ones that come with the Apple products don't let you experience the music at its full.

Try some AKG K701s, Grados, and for under $100, you can get these (http://www.amazon.com/Technica-ATH-AD700-Open-air-Audiophile-Headphones/dp/B000CMS0XU/ref=pd_cp_e_2), which REALLY made a difference from the $20.00 Sennheiser I was using before.

Apple Lossless or AIFF all the way... down-convert to 128 kbps automatically in iTunes while synchronizing to my iPhone. Can't take all my music, but it's okay. :rolleyes:

And - don't get rid of the higher-quality files... you'll regret it later. ;)
:D

[JulianL]

Try listening with good headphones. The ones that come with the Apple products don't let you experience the music at its full.

Try some AKG K701s, Grados, and for under $100, you can get these (http://www.amazon.com/Technica-ATH-AD700-Open-air-Audiophile-Headphones/dp/B000CMS0XU/ref=pd_cp_e_2), which REALLY made a difference from the $20.00 Sennheiser I was using before.

Apple Lossless or AIFF all the way... down-convert to 128 kbps automatically in iTunes while synchronizing to my iPhone. Can't take all my music, but it's okay. :rolleyes:

And - don't get rid of the higher-quality files... you'll regret it later. ;)
:D
I sort of agree, within reason. I absolutely agree about keeping lossless source files for home use (ALAC, FLAC, WAV or whatever) and as the source for subsequent lossy conversions. I also agree about the basic Apple headphones being poor and it's certainly worth upgrading them but how far it's worth going is heavily affected by one's use of the mobile device (iPhone, iPod or whatever).

I used to use Etymotic ER4S headphones for a long time and I still have them but a lot of my use is on aeroplanes and that's such a noisy environment that aspiring to anything more than the quality of a decent car stereo is, to my mind, pretty pointless. I now use V-Moda Vibes because that rumble that pervades the inside of an aircraft really sucks the bass out of the music so I find that a bass-heavy headphone works best for me.

So ultimately, even if one can hear a difference between two different formats when listening at home in a quiet environment, for me the issue is more as to whether I can really hear any appreciable difference on an aeroplane, out jogging or walking through town.

Honestly though, I still haven't made up my mind. I think I'm going to download dbPoweramp, convert all my source material from FLAC to ALAC (I'm in the Apple world now so I might as well do that) and then convert some tracks to 128kbs AAC and 80kbs AAC-HE and see if How much of a difference I can detect. I could even break out my Etymotics as part of the testing; that's not a bad idea actually.

- Julian

[blairbeckwith]

I love listening to music casually. I'm more then your average Top 40 Listener, and I'd say I know significantly more about music then a lot of people, but I am by no means an audiophile.

I converted a few songs to 80 kbps AAC-HE, and I have to admit... I can not for the life of me tell the difference between this and 256 kbps iTunes+ tracks, 320 kbps MP3 tracks, or Apple Lossless tracks (versions of the same tracks, rather).

I've converted a selection of 650 tracks which weighed in at 5.10 GB to 80 kbps, and I've ended with a total of 1.48 GB. If I can listen to these without noticing any difference, I'm gonna convert the rest of my library.

Very exciting stuff.

[JulianL]

...

Very exciting stuff.
Very rare stuff. AAC-HE is one of those hard to find technologies, one that really does live up to the hype (not that there's been that much hype around AAC-HE, but it deserves it).

I don't like the idea of having to reconvert all my music every time I upgrade my phone, and I might as well get the space saving of 80kbs AAC-HE so that my current 32GB phone can last a year longer (otherwise it'll probably be full and need a 64GB upgrade be next year) so I've decided not to go with the iTunes on-the-fly down-convert to 128kbs. I'm going to use dbPoweramp Music Converter (http://www.dbpoweramp.com/dmc.htm) to create a shadow tree of AAC-HE encoded files alongside my FLAC originals and then import the AAC-HE folder tree into iTunes to sync with my device.

- Julian

[JulianL]

I've converted a selection of 650 tracks which weighed in at 5.10 GB to 80 kbps, and I've ended with a total of 1.48 GB.
What did you convert from? What did you use to do the conversion?

- Julian

[blairbeckwith]

What did you convert from? What did you use to do the conversion?

- Julian

The 650 songs were a pretty much even split of 256 kbps AAC songs purchased from the iTMS, and 320 kbps MP3's ripped from CD's. I converted to AAC HE in iTunes.

[Labaguette]

ouch! 80kbps HE-AAC really hurt my ears ;) i wanted to try it after your description, but i can't agree that this is how music was meant to be heard. maybe for people with these rip-off white apple earphones. okay. I'm on iPod Classic 8G with Ultimate Ears SuperFi 5 and i'm missing so much of the sound! 15 Hz Bass makes your brain shake, you won't go with less than 192 kbit AAC!

Regards,
Baguette

[Sol]

ouch! 80kbps HE-AAC really hurt my ears ;) i wanted to try it after your description, but i can't agree that this is how music was meant to be heard. maybe for people with these rip-off white apple earphones. okay. I'm on iPod Classic 8G with Ultimate Ears SuperFi 5 and i'm missing so much of the sound! 15 Hz Bass makes your brain shake, you won't go with less than 192 kbit AAC!

Regards,
Baguette

I agree; that is not how music was meant to be heard but at 80 kbps and below you may not have a better option. When you are trying to fit your whole music library on an iPod Nano the trade-off in sound quality is worth considering for some people; commuters in public transport for one.

As for down-converting purchased AAC, no-one should do that. The original sound quality is something that you pay for and once it is reduced it cannot be recovered unless you re-download the file from iTunes, if that is possible. Imagine buying a CD, recording to a cheap cassette and throwing the disc away; that is essentially what you would be doing.

[JulianL]

I agree; that is not how music was meant to be heard but at 80 kbps and below you may not have a better option. When you are trying to fit your whole music library on an iPod Nano the trade-off in sound quality is worth considering for some people; commuters in public transport for one.

You've got it exactly right. I finally got round to doing some test conversions today, with the source being lossless FLAC files derived from ripping CDs and the encoding done using dbPoweramp which uses the Nero encoder for AAC. The results surprised me. Today I am much less happy with AAC-HE than I was when I did my original tests about 3 years ago and I think that Sol has hit on the reason why.

Three years ago I had all my mobile music in 128kbs MP3 (originals always FLAC) and it used just under 24GB of space. I'd decided that I wanted to streamline my gadgets and use my Windows Mobile phone for as much of my music as possible but the biggest memory card at the time was 8GB so I only had about 7GB of space to play with after other apps and data and stuff. I was desperate to cram as much as I could onto the phone and chosing just 25% of my collection to put on the phone was just too small a subset so the fact that 64kbs AAC-HE was at least listenable-to in a noisy environment won the day.

I remember now that the real differentiator with AAC-HE was that, once one got to the sub 128kbs range, all the other formats (Ogg, WMA, MP3, AAC-nonHE) had very audible encoding artefacts that really did hurt my ears, some even so bad that they had a "warble" all the way through the tracks; AAC-HE didn't. Doing my tests again today though, although AAC-HE 64kbs and 96kbs don't have the huge encoding artefacts, I definitely notice a loss of details and attack vs even 128kbs regular AAC.

I now have a 32GB iPhone 4 that, once I've allowed for apps and other data, probably has about 25GB available for music. I estimate that at 128kbs my total music collection now needs about 27GB today so in theory 128kbs isn't enough compression but I don't need to trim my library too ruthlessly to fit it in and I hope that in a year's time the next iPhones will be 64GB at which point the problem goes away completely so my new plan is to go with regular 128kbs AAC for my iPhone format.

- Julian

[gdkid2010]

I tried this the other day and while it doesn't sound too bad, I can still hear the "low quality" in it. I have good ears for that and I'm picky about the bit rate of my music. It doesn't sound a bit like its has that "radio compression" on it.

[digs5446]

on a fairly related note...

so clearly transcoding from one lossy format to another (mp3 -> AAC) is very bad. but what about going from a higher bit rate to a lower bit rate within the same lossy codec?

a lot of my music in iTunes is at 192 kbps, but after some intensive listening tests i've concluded that 92 kbps is perfectly sufficient given my playback equipment and ears. if i do the proposed transcode, will the result be the same as if i went from WAV (or FLAC) to 92 kbps AAC? or am i essentially getting a severely shrunk version of the 192 kbps file?

[Googlyhead]

It's never going to be the same; the codecs aren't just 'lossy', they replace patterns with approximations and more compressible fillers. If it just snipped bits out, I'd have said yes...
Best case; the patterns get replaced with more compressed versions. But that's not always (often) going to happen, and you'll likely get different approximations of approximations; the software could even attempt to preserve and enhance what previously was just an artifact of the original compression.

[Googlyhead]

Anybody else think that to simplify such a decision for us, that '128kbps' reencode option should have been made configurable? :rolleyes:

[digs5446]

It's never going to be the same; the codecs aren't just 'lossy', they replace patterns with approximations and more compressible fillers. If it just snipped bits out, I'd have said yes...
Best case; the patterns get replaced with more compressed versions. But that's not always (often) going to happen, and you'll likely get different approximations of approximations; the software could even attempt to preserve and enhance what previously was just an artifact of the original compression.

well, ok - forget I used the word "same"...would taking the 192 file and creating a 92 file from it be closer to creating a 92 out of a WAV (about 1/15 the size of the WAV), or closer to ending up with a file that's 1/15 the size of the 192 file? meaning a horribly compressed 92 version that's a much different animal than creating a 92 file from a WAV?

sorry, a bit of a layman here...just want to make sure it's worth taking the time to re-rip my CDs to 92 instead of just "creating an AAC version" from the existing AAC version via iTunes.

EDIT: actually, after rereading I think I absorbed your reply better....basically you're saying it might be OK going from 192 AAC to 92 AAC but it's a gamble and it could very well end up with crappy results. So probably worth the time to do a fresh WAV/FLAC > AAC 92 conversion. Thanks!

[7thMac]

I haven't tried 80kbps on music and I'm a bit skeptical. 128kpbs is definitely listenable on a portable system. Lossy to lossy doesn't work for me - the result is frequently not listenable.

[Fuzzy.Dunlop]

I'm looking to do this as I've ditched my touch and classic and only have my iphone now do desperately need the space. If I convert is the file replaced or a copy made so I could have a mobile library and normal for outputting through speakers/dock?

[Googlyhead]

I'm looking to do this as I've ditched my touch and classic and only have my iphone now do desperately need the space. If I convert is the file replaced or a copy made so I could have a mobile library and normal for outputting through speakers/dock?

Converting by means of selecting the items in your library and using 'convert to aac' will make a copy, preserving the original. Problem is; you end up with two entries in your library for each track. You're going to have to sort these from the originals.
Using the 128k checkbox has the advantage of creating the compressed file on-the-fly for upload to the device, without affecting the library itself. Disadvantage; a little more processing to sync each track, and currently no modifiable settings.

[OutThere]

Converting by means of selecting the items in your library and using 'convert to aac' will make a copy, preserving the original. Problem is; you end up with two entries in your library for each track. You're going to have to sort these from the originals.

You could easily make a smart playlist that is your entire library excluding the low bitrate duplicates.

The only reason I'd downgrade to low bitrate would be to save space on my iPhone, which I use for my running/biking playlist. The problem there is that I have a lot of hip hop on that list, which I think sounds strange at low bitrate. Maybe I'll give it a shot anyway.

[Fuzzy.Dunlop]

Converting by means of selecting the items in your library and using 'convert to aac' will make a copy, preserving the original. Problem is; you end up with two entries in your library for each track. You're going to have to sort these from the originals.
Using the 128k checkbox has the advantage of creating the compressed file on-the-fly for upload to the device, without affecting the library itself. Disadvantage; a little more processing to sync each track, and currently no modifiable settings.

Checking the 128 box only brings my library down to 24gb so is only a temporary solution (I like to have all my tracks and shuffle all as I still haven't listened to everything) plus when I try to do it it keeps finding unknown error (-50) and stops converting, from looking at the posts on 80 AAC HE I'm guessing my library will come down to around 15gb?

I should have been a bit clearer with my question my music folder is all manually managed by album for easy drag and dropping (Itunesmusic/Music/then albums), so if I convert will the AAC HE version go within that folder (for eg will each album folder have the original rip + the converted version) or does it/can it go to a new folder

Would probably be easier if you could output your conversion to somewhere else then drag in the fully converted folder and run a smart playlist from that

[Fuzzy.Dunlop]

Can anyone help I keep getting the (-50) error so the conversion stops

[Hisdem]

On my iPhone I keep everything @ 128kbps AAC, which brings everything down to ~10GB, but on my MBP I have everything as Lossless. I may do this 80kbps HE AAC when I get the 120gb SSD though.

[Rithem]

I try and find music at 320kbps only. I stopped using lower bit rate songs a few years back and haven't turned back.

[JulianL]

I try and find music at 320kbps only. I stopped using lower bit rate songs a few years back and haven't turned back.

I just don't find that there's enough space on mobile devices to fit all the music that I want to carry around with me. I can barely fit everything onto my phone at 128kbs. At 320kbs I'd be having to choose to not load up almost 2 out of every 3 albums that I have.

At the point when an iPhone has 128GB of storage then I'd definitely go to 256kbs on the "I can so I will" basis but until that happens then I need the lower bit rates. Even with a 128GB device I'm not sure that I'd be comfortable with the the amount of free space I had left over if I went to 320kbs.

For my home listening I use lossless compression and I really wish that the iTunes store would offer downloads as lossless files so that I had perfect duplicates of the source CDs as the starting point for my iPhone conversions. I don't buy music off iTunes because of this.

- Julian

[Sol]

For my home listening I use lossless compression and I really wish that the iTunes store would offer downloads as lossless files so that I had perfect duplicates of the source CDs as the starting point for my iPhone conversions. I don't buy music off iTunes because of this.

Yes, lossless would be ideal but why settle for CD quality? I hope one day the iTunes offers 24 bit 192 kHz and better but that could take decades. Whatever the next bit-rate and codec are, Apple should handle the transition better than the transition from 128 kbs protected AAC to 256 kbs AAC. Asking us to pay for better quality versions of the files we already purchased was ridiculous. Just doubling the bit-rate is not worth the price they ask for it.