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itunes won't rip at 128 kbps AAC, getting random bit rates, It's not VBR doing it

MacConvert2007

MacConvert2007

macrumors member
Original poster
May 23, 2007
63
2
Hi everyone,
Got my first Macbook in May 2007, and so far problems have been very few. I'm running OS X version 10.4.11

But a recent glitch has popped up as I use itunes 7.5. I've been ripping my CDs into 128 kbps AAC files, and hadn't had problems. But now suddenly, the last five CDs I've ripped no longer result in 128 kbps, but in somewhat random bit rates ranging from as low as 92 to as high as 131, and I get a lot of 125 and 127 files.

I find this annoying as I'm trying to create a uniform library. Everything seems to be set right to me in menu: itunes- Preferences - Advanced - importing. AAC encoder set to 128. I have not set it to custom or variable bit rate.

Note the music CDs are from: 1990, 1992, 1995, 2000, and 2007.

Please help me fix this and get 128 files.
 
Is variable bit rate better than just ripping at 128 kbps? I don't know the difference.

Anyway, under menu: itunes- Preferences - Advanced - importing, variable bit rate isn't even an option unless you select custom bit rate. So I selected custom, unchecked the variable bit rate box, set it to 128 kbps and ripped the CD. Same result - random/variable bit rates.
 
MacConvert2007 said:
Is variable bit rate better than just ripping at 128 kbps? I don't know the difference.
Click to expand...

Yes. VBR judges how much compression is required to encode a certain portion of the song. By not wasting extraneous bits on areas of low complexity, you save that space for more complex parts of the song.

In other words, with two files of the same size, VBR should be slightly better.

Having said that, I rip at 256 VBR all the time and my songs show up as "256" as far as I can remember. When you rip with VBR the song gets tagged with the average bit rate, which should be exactly what you set it to.
 
When I rip CD's into iTunes, I usually use 160kbps AAC, and they range anywhere from 157kbps to 163kbps, but never any farther than that.

Edit: And I'm not using VBR, either.
 
Well now I tried ripping at 256 kbps with similar results. I got files ranging from 185 to 260.

Before late November, itunes acted exactly as it was supposed to: when set to 128 it spit every song out at 128.

Note I don't have it set to variable bit rate or custom, so this just doesn't make any sense to me. Solution anyone?
 
Maybe if I roll back itunes to 7.4 it will fix this. How do I do this under Tiger 10.4.11? Thanks
 
Thanks dukebound, it does seem silly now to change back to itunes 7.4 since all that will apparently do is go back to reporting my file bit rates incorrectly.

So now I need to decide if VBR would be better. Can anyone point me to a good treatise on that? Or should I go up to a higher bit rate without VBR to ensure I always get at least 128?
 
I noticed that also but it really doesn't bother me. Some of the stuff I rip in my iPod never really needs 192 (except for some really loud parts in certain songs.) The quality of compression of iTunes is remarkable, and, unless you're using the mp3 encoder, you're not going to be able to notice the difference between a 128 and 130, to be honest (and even in that case the difference is absolutely minimal... kind of "blink and miss it" type of thing.)

You should be fine, unless, of course, you do believe that you can hear the difference.
 
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