Higher BitRate AACs?

[MacRumors]

MacDailyNews adds an unconfirmed rumor to next week's iTunes-release.

According to the news site, Apple may start offering higher bit rate encoded AACs on their iTunes Music Store -- with claims up to 190kbps. The iTunes Music store presently offers 128kbps songs.

 

[oliverlubin]

wow, this would be great!

 

[soosy]

That would be great.

 

[Wonder Boy]

ive just about enough of any AAC file, no matter the bit rate. i bought a staind cd on the itms and it doesnt play in any of my cd players. sorry to get off topic right off the bat, but damn, i thought these things were compatible.

problem fixed. i it was the media.

 

[1macker1]

So is it the format or the bit rate which provides the better quality. I'm confused. Just for an example, if i have an ACC file at 96bps and a WMA file at 128, is the WMA going to sound better. Or is it like everything else in the computer world...a combination of the two.

 

[1macker1]

Staind's new cd is a good buy. I've never had any problems with my songs playing in any CD players, they just dont play on pcees

Originally posted by Wonder Boy
ive just about enough of any AAC file, no matter the bit rate. i bought a staind cd on the itms and it doesnt play in any of my cd players. sorry to get off topic right off the bat, but damn, i thought these things were compatible.

 

[arn]

Originally posted by 1macker1
So is it the format or the bit rate which provides the better quality. I'm confused. Just for an example, if i have an ACC file at 96bps and a WMA file at 128, is the WMA going to sound better. Or is it like everything else in the computer world...a combination of the two.

It's a combination of the two.

But a 190kbps AAC should be "better" than a 96kps AAC.

arn

 

[ennerseed]

Originally posted by Wonder Boy
ive just about enough of any AAC file, no matter the bit rate. i bought a staind cd on the itms and it doesnt play in any of my cd players. sorry to get off topic right off the bat, but damn, i thought these things were compatible.

AAC will have nothing to do with it playing in your cd players... Did you burn it as a music cd, or a data cd?

 

[rogueimage]

Originally posted by Wonder Boy
ive just about enough of any AAC file, no matter the bit rate. i bought a staind cd on the itms and it doesnt play in any of my cd players. sorry to get off topic right off the bat, but damn, i thought these things were compatible.

How did you burn it? Naturally, the CD deck won't play a protected AAC file bought from the iTMS. If you burn it in audio CD format, it should read it though, unless your CD deck or CD-Rs are of poor quality. (No offense intended. I've had experience with both, and it's the manufacturer's fault.)

 

[dstorey]

Originally posted by 1macker1
So is it the format or the bit rate which provides the better quality. I'm confused. Just for an example, if i have an ACC file at 96bps and a WMA file at 128, is the WMA going to sound better. Or is it like everything else in the computer world...a combination of the two.

Itys a combo of them both. AAC for example is better than mp3 at the same bit rate...128 aac sounds better than 128 mp3. I'm not 100% sure of the actual data but maybe the lower one down (96 or whatever?) in aac will sound as goodish as 128 mp3. As for if 96 aac is better than wma, well i'm not sure but I imagine not as I think wma is better than mp3 (again not 100% sure and not an audio geek) but again at the same bit rate, AAC is better than wma. Of course if aac was at a really low bit rate and wma at 128 then wma would win hands down. Just look at it as you can save disk space with a better codec at the same quality, or you can get bettr quality at the same file size.

 

[BlueDjinn]

Excellent idea!

For one thing, it's relatively painless to do from a technical perspective--all that's required is re-ripping the same songs; no new artwork/ID3 tags/etc. needed. Sure, they'll need 50% more bandwidth/server capacity, but I gotta figure that they're already beefing this up 5-10-fold for the Windows version already anyway (not to mention doubling the number of tracks available).

In addition, depending on how they do it, they might even nab some extra cash from everyone who's already bought tracks--the more serious music lovers would probably be willing to pay, say, another $0.25 to "upgrade" each of their tracks from 128 to 192. I could see something like $0.99 for 192, $0.79 for 128, and $0.25 to upgrade existing 128 tracks to 192...

...or would this make the whole thing too confusing for new users? Maybe just change every track to 192 and keep it at $0.99 would be better.

The *only* downside I can think of is that it would mess up their iPod advertising a little bit--the "10,000 songs in your pocket" slogan is based on 128 tracks; at 192 it'd be "6,500 songs in your pocket" which is still great but not *as* great...

 

[dongmin]

Re: Higher BitRate AACs?

Originally posted by Macrumors
According to the news site, Apple may start offering higher bit rate encoded AACs on their iTunes Music Store -- with claims up to 190kbps.

shouldn't that be 192 kbps?

 

[MasterMac]

Originally posted by Wonder Boy
so i f burn it as an audio cd, it wont work, but an mp3 it will?

Other way around

 

[canadianmacguy]

This would be great, but only if all the songs I've bought I can re-download again in the higher bit rate.

If I can't, this decision would suck...

 

[dho]

the difference between 128 and 190 is surprising. Sounds like it would be great

 

[evil]

Originally posted by dho
the difference between 128 and 190 is surprising. Sounds like it would be great

i disagree. i have my whole cd collection on my ipod at 128 aac. i use my ipod as my home stereo through my reciever.

i play my stuff pretty loud and it sounds damn good.

i honestly dont see the need to use 192 aac unless for professionals or something...but professionals would use an even higher bit rate.

 

[daddy-mojo]

easy

Originally posted by Wonder Boy
so i f burn it as an audio cd, it wont work, but an mp3 it will?

make sure your itunes prefs are set to burn as an audio cd.
select your itms staind tracks.
hit the burn button.
it will encode it to be a normal audio cd.
you can't just burn the files as a data disc with audio files on it and expect it to play in a cd player. and check the media as well. simple.
good luck.

 

[Daveman Deluxe]

Originally posted by evil
i disagree. i have my whole cd collection on my ipod at 128 aac. i use my ipod as my home stereo through my reciever.

i play my stuff pretty loud and it sounds damn good.

i honestly dont see the need to use 192 aac unless for professionals or something...but professionals would use an even higher bit rate.

I tried out 128 kbps AAC files and hated it. I wasn't pleased with the quality until my AAC files were 256 kbps. That's fine because I wasn't at all pleased with my 256 kbps MP3 files, so I'm happier now.

This move by Apple is a step in the right direction but it's not enough to convince me to buy music at the iTMS.

 

[iamtiger]

192kbps AAC should sound better than 128 AAC by virtue of retaining more digital information from the original uncompressed audio cd. Personally, i prefer quality over quantity anyday, so i dont care if it holds less songs in my pod as long as im getting a nice digital reproduction and the ability to still hold thousands of tracks. Moreover, i encode the majority of my cd's to 256 kbps AAC because i honestly can't tell the difference between the uncompressed audio cd and 256. However, i think 128 mp3 sounds equivalent to FM radio quality. On the other hand, 128 AAC sounds slightly better than FM quality, quite similar to uncompressed cd audio, but not the real deal. As a result, Apple is rumored to offer "quality" encodiing at 192 AAC probably to satisfy us audiophiles more so than the average joe who doesnt care and can't notice the difference anyway.

 

[jaxbrokenheart]

i hope this is true. i encode all my cd's as 192 Kb/s AAC's, so if they were all the same, that'd be great.

 

[Lord Bodak]

Wonder what this would mean for already purchased music...

 

[rog]

Hmm, the AACs from iTMS are supposedly from original source material so they sound better. Also, there are different AAC encoders so not all 128 bit AACs will sound the same even from the same source. Everything I've gotten form iTMS has sounded great to me. My ears and an iPod, often used on public transportation or noisy areas, are not good enough to really detect dramatic differences in sound anyway unless it's otherwise silent and I'm concentrating on the music. So I kind of think 192 would make me less likely to buy. Takes longer to download, takes up more space on my iPod. I'm barely able to fit all my music on my 20 GB iPod and it's mostly at 128 bit AAC. If it was all 192 it wouldn't fit. iTMS 128 bit AACs already probably sound as good as or better than a home ripped 192 AAC from a CD source using the default built in encoder. (apparently if you're a glutton for punishment, you can rip using a higher quality setting via Quicktime). Given that broadband is still not a household standard, a 50% longer download time per song doesn't make a whole lot of sense. They ought to stick with 128 and focus their efforts on expanding selection. 90% of what I look for on iTMS just isn't there.

 

[evil]

Originally posted by rog
Hmm, the AACs from iTMS are supposedly from original source material so they sound better. Also, there are different AAC encoders so not all 128 bit AACs will sound the same even from the same source. Everything I've gotten form iTMS has sounded great to me. My ears and an iPod, often used on public transportation or noisy areas, are not good enough to really detect dramatic differences in sound anyway unless it's otherwise silent and I'm concentrating on the music. So I kind of think 192 would make me less likely to buy. Takes longer to download, takes up more space on my iPod. I'm barely able to fit all my music on my 20 GB iPod and it's mostly at 128 bit AAC. If it was all 192 it wouldn't fit. iTMS 128 bit AACs already probably sound as good as or better than a home ripped 192 AAC from a CD source using the default built in encoder. (apparently if you're a glutton for punishment, you can rip using a higher quality setting via Quicktime). Given that broadband is still not a household standard, a 50% longer download time per song doesn't make a whole lot of sense. They ought to stick with 128 and focus their efforts on expanding selection. 90% of what I look for on iTMS just isn't there.

that was an excellent point. both on the the broadband issue and expanding the selection.
i totally agree with you on that. i havbe not bought anythiugn on itms because they have nothing that i want. if there was a better selection i would maybe buy things.

 

[jywv8]

Originally posted by Daveman Deluxe
I tried out 128 kbps AAC files and hated it. I wasn't pleased with the quality until my AAC files were 256 kbps. That's fine because I wasn't at all pleased with my 256 kbps MP3 files, so I'm happier now.

I wholly agree. I purchased a song from ITMS, encoded at 128 kbps, and I think the sound quality is lacking. I was suprised they used such a low bitrate.

I think they should sell 256 kbps files. Or, if people are worried about filesizes, they should at least give you the option of choosing a higher bitrate if you want it.

 

[MorganX]

This is good to see. With 384k 5.1 WMA at bumusic and 160k WMA at musicmatch, Apple is not waiting around to respond.

Seeing them compete in such a timely manner builds my confidence that Apple won't be giving up and is in this for the long haul. That alone makes me feel better continuing to buy AACs.