What are your settings in iTunes for Music?

[Wicked1]

I have heard and read a lot about sound quality and settings used to import music, but I have always used whatever iTunes recommends as for default settings.

Right now everything i buy or import is using iTunes plus which for stereo settings is 256, curious to see what everyone else is using because I hear some people using 320 and that takes up a lot more space and I am sure that you can not hear the difference in sound as for the human ear can not tell the difference?

 

[vault]

It depends on your hearing ability and on the hardware you use to play your music. If you have some nice quality hi-fi system then you need higher quality files to get most out of it. Good, big speakers will show you all the faults of compressed music. If you use your built-in Mac speakers, then I think even 128k is enough...

Personally I use lossless for "important" stuff, and 320k for everything else. I mostly use Denon AVR for listening, though.

 

[TinHead88]

A 256 Kbit AAC (which is what iTunes music store defaults to) is the equivalent of a 320 Kbit MP3 because AAC is a newer and better format. Most people have a hard time distinguishing a 256 Kbit AA from the uncompressed original even on good quality sound equipment.

If you're listening on an iPod using the standard headphones or playing the music on average PC speakers 256Kbit is much more than enough, however, you don't have to rebuild your iTunes library if you ever get a better sound system.

I consider myself to be very demanding about sound quality and I am happy with my library being in 256 Kbit AAC.

Cheers,
Tom