iPod MP3/AAC or WAV/ALAC

[MrCrouton9597]

Coming from an iPod classic 120gb, I’m stumped on what to use. Space isn’t an issue as I don’t have a lot of music, under 500 songs I believe. I’m concerned that WAV/ALAC being harder to run. Would it even be worth the reduced battery life for the sound quality or should I stick to MP3 or AAC

 

[Sheepish-Lord]

Coming from an iPod classic 120gb, I’m stumped on what to use. Space isn’t an issue as I don’t have a lot of music, under 500 songs I believe. I’m concerned that WAV/ALAC being harder to run. Would it even be worth the reduced battery life for the sound quality or should I stick to MP3 or AAC

What are you listening to your music on/with primarily? I’m into audio and sometimes it’s very hard to distinguish between a good AAC vs ALAC file. Additionally, if you’re using Bluetooth to listen or just basic speakers then ALAC isn’t worth it IMO as it will be harder to process and stream.

 

[MrCrouton9597]

What are you listening to your music on/with primarily? I’m into audio and sometimes it’s very hard to distinguish between a good AAC vs ALAC file. Additionally, if you’re using Bluetooth to listen or just basic speakers then ALAC isn’t worth it IMO as it will be harder to process and stream.

I would like to listen on my iPod classic just for fun and nostalgia but normally on my iPhone I listen to lossless with AirPods and I think it caps out at 44.1 to 48 kHz while on Bluetooth so I’m guessing that with a good aac/mp3 it probably get up to that as well?

 

[arw]

I would like to listen on my iPod classic just for fun and nostalgia but normally on my iPhone I listen to lossless with AirPods and I think it caps out at 44.1 to 48 kHz while on Bluetooth so I’m guessing that with a good aac/mp3 it probably get up to that as well?

The Bluetooth codec on Apple devices is AAC 256 kbps so every material on the iPhone above that (or even Hi-Res Lossless) is a complete waste of space/bandwidth for Bluetooth consumption.

Apparently space is not an issue on your iPod. So it depends on your setup if lossless is worth a reduced runtime on battery (haven't found any actual numbers).

On my Classic iPods I have activated "convert higher bitrate songs to 256 kbps AAC". This is because:

1. I only have lossless files (ALAC) in my library, so converting allows a lot more songs to fit on the devices
2. I don't think I'm able to distinguish lossless from 256 kbps AAC - at least not with the setup connected to my iPod
3. Having only lossless source files, I'm not converting from lossy MP3 to lossy AAC. If you have mainly MP3 files, then converting them to AAC only worsens sound quality without any noteworthy gain in disk space
4. The iPod Classic is able to sync lossless up to 48 kHz at 24 bit but apparently distort audio noticable when dithering 24 to 16 bit. By always converting everything to AAC, you avoid this problem.
5. Even if space is not an issue, the battery runtime suffers (to some degree) from lossless as the iPods cache gets filled way quicker and it has to spin up the HDD more often to re-fill it. When replacing the HDD with an SSD or SD, this might be negligible. I have done it and still convert because of the points above.

 

[GMShadow]

ALAC was developed with the iPod in mind, so the battery life hit isn't as big as you'd think. You've also got 64MB of RAM in that iPod so it'll be fine caching music.

If you're worried about quality, use ALAC. If not, load it in 256kbps AAC.

 

[Traverse]

Lossless ALAC for my main library house on my Mac - but AAC on all of my devices. Despite being a music enthusiast I cannot tell the difference. I just want the highest quality files possible for my Mac and backup purposes, but for my deivice I'm fine with 256kbps

 

[philden]

You can customize the settings too. I use 320kbps on my smaller iPods and laptop, and ALAC on my desktop and larger iPods.