iTunes + converting songs to higher AAC

[Timshan0876]

So, while plugging in my iPhone... I noticed iTunes had an option to "Convert higher bitrate songs into 256AAC"

I understand that this means, certain songs with the ability to sound better in AAC than mp3 will sound better. But after converting my a large portion of my music into this 256AAC, my iPhones music went from 8gb of music to 7.8gb....

If I am making my music sound better coming thru my headphones, should my phone require more memory for the music?

And should I just switch it back to regular mp3 quality? Will the other songs that did not get converted actually sound worse?

 

[killmoms]

No, unfortunately you've got this all wrong.

The conversion option is there so that people with songs that are HIGHER bitrate than 256kbit AAC (or 128kbit AAC, another option for automatic conversion) will be converted down.

However, any lossy-to-lossy transcode (converting, say, an MP3 file to AAC) will always result in a further LOSS of quality, no gain. So, if you're converting MP3s to AAC, ALL your music will sound worse. Basically, if you don't have a library full of lossless music, don't bother enabling this option.

 

[Timshan0876]

No, unfortunately you've got this all wrong.

The conversion option is there so that people with songs that are HIGHER bitrate than 256kbit AAC (or 128kbit AAC, another option for automatic conversion) will be converted down.

However, any lossy-to-lossy transcode (converting, say, an MP3 file to AAC) will always result in a further LOSS of quality, no gain. So, if you're converting MP3s to AAC, ALL your music will sound worse. Basically, if you don't have a library full of lossless music, don't bother enabling this option.

Oh wow really! Thank you!

But I my friend is saying that AAC is better than MP3... how can that be?

 

[w00t951]

Oh wow really! Thank you!

But I my friend is saying that AAC is better than MP3... how can that be?

I don't really think there's a difference when comparing songs of the same bitrate. AAC has a higher bitrate limit, but it's no use converting a lower quality song to a higher quality. You will end up with the same sound, but a larger file size.

 

[Julien]

I don't really think there's a difference when comparing songs of the same bitrate....You will end up with the same sound, but a larger file size.

AAC and MP3 use different algorithms and AAC (AKA: MP4) is more advanced (and newer) so the quality is generally higher for the same bit rate. Comparisons (subjective) are often made that 256kbps AAC is about as good as 320kbps MP3.

Worse, not the same. You have already lowered the quality by encoding in MP3 and permanently removing most of the date. You then take this "crippled" data and remove most of it again by converting to ACC (even if it's a higher bit rate). Also MP3 and AAC have their own algorithms and each has it's own weaknesses. So by converting MP3 to AAC you add in each system's weakness. The only way to convert MP3 without farther loss of quality is to convert to lossless (of course the original loss to MP3 is still there and the files will be larger).

For the OP: If you want to use higher quality AAC files you will need to re-rip your CDs.

 

[killmoms]

Yes, AAC is better than MP3 at low bitrates, but each becomes transparent (indistinguishable from the uncompressed source) at around the same territory. So it’s really just up to you which you’d like to use. As Julien pointed out, if you want to switch to AAC as your codec of choice, you need to re-encode your files from the original CDs (or lossless backups of them).