AAC Encoder at 320 kbps...

Question

Hello all,
I'm new to the forum. I've had to erase my hard drive and ipod of everything so I've lost over 3,000 songs and have to re-import all of my music
The question is: I am assuming AAC Encoder at 320 kbps is the absolute best sound quality that I am going to get? I will be playing my music through my vehicle speakers and I want near CD sound quality!!!
The other question is: What can you tell me abou the other selections of encoders for importing?... I've searched the forums and haven't found anything, nor did I find a itunes manual.
Thank you all!!!

Answer 1

WAV and AIFF both are uncompressed audio formats.
WAV is mainly used on the Windows platform and AIFF on the MAC platform.
These formats can be read and edited by virtually all players and audio editors.
There's one disadvantage. They produce huge files of about 10 MB/minute of audio.
To reduce file sizes, people invented compression techniques.
Some of them succeeded in creating a codec (encoder/decoder) that will retain all audio information but reduce the file size to about half the size of WAV and AIFF.
Examples of these are Apple Lossless and FLAC (not supported by iTunes).
Your iPod (except the iPod Shuffle) supports WAV, but it will quickly fill up with those huge files.
Like Chris suggested, you should rip a song at different bit rates and try to determine what is best for your situation.
It all depends on your ears (hearing) and your playback system.
In my car, I can't even hear improvements above 128 kbps AAC.
M