Bit rates, file type, MP3 encoders, quality settings etc.

Can someone provide me with or point me to a good explanation of various sound file types and settings and how it relates to sound quality and disk space? I've been importing tunes, recording some streams etc. and I realize I need a definitive source to explain to me how I can get the best sound quality, with all the variables involved: bit rate (64, 96, 128kbps etc.), file type (AIFF, WAV, MPs etc.), MP3 encoder (Apple lossless, AIFF, AAC etc.) Thanks in advance.....

OK. The following is my opinion.
iTunes supports 5 formats. WAV and AIFF are uncompressed and lossless. Apple Lossless Encoding (ALE) is compressed and lossless. MP3 and AAC are compressed and lossy.
WAV, AIFF, and ALE give the same quality as a CD but are too bulky for use in an iPod. The practical choices are MP3 and AAC.
AAC gives better quality for a given bit rate. However, it is not as widely supported as MP3. Many non-Apple players cannot handle AAC. So choose between MP3 and AAC accordingly.
Both AAC and MP3 allow you to select an encoding bit rate, usually in the range of 32 to 320 kb/s. That number affects the audio fidelity of the compressed file as compared with the CD quality original. Given that you will be using a good stereo at least part of the time, I suggest go no lower than 192.
You can do a web search and find listening tests, etc. You can also take a couple of tracks, rip them at 192, 256, and 320, and see if you notice anything better with the higher numbers.
Enjoy the music!

Similar Messages

Issue with playing 320 k bit rate files on iOS 5

I was able to successfully update my iPhone 4 with the iOS 5 however to my (unpleasant) surprise I realized that all the music files of 320 K Bit rate that I had could not be played with this new OS. All other music files (of 128 K bits rate) was able to play normally.
When I attempt to play the higher bit rate ones, it doesn't give any warning or crashes. The Play symbol at the bottom changes to "Pause" indicating it's playing and when clicked again it changes to "Play" indicating it's paused. But the time slider stays at 0:00
It may be noted that the high bit rate files plays normally on the latest iTunes software on my PC running windows 7.
I haven't yet tried to remove all the paylists first and then add them back when syncing it next time. That might solve this problem but I am not sure. Even if it does, this is a major defect with iOS 5 that has gone un-tested. with the previous version, I had no problems playing the same high bit rate music files.

After I faced the above problem, I did the following:
1. Sync the iphone after unchecking the playlist having the 320 K Bit rate music files. As expected the playlist was removed from the iPhone.
2. Checked the playlist and then re-sync the iphone. This time when the music files were copied to the phone, all the files having a bit rate higher than 128 K were automatically converted to 128 K Bits.
The above process made these high bit rate files convert down to 128 K bits and playable on the iOS 5.
The question is why is iOS 5 not able to play the bit rate higher than 128 K Bits while the older version could? Does playing the high bit rate files offer any better sound quality on iPhone?
I have played the high bit rate on my car's audio system (Harmon Kardon premium speakers) and it definitely sounds better than it's 128 K bit equivalent.

Bit rates : "good" in mp3 is "high" quality in ACC ?

When I got my Mac in late March, and commenced w/ the importing, I knew nothing of bit rates. Don't know much more now.,.,...but a friend recently pointed out the rate of 128 being lossy.
Checking preferences, we see that in mp3, 128 is indeed the lowest of 3 choices_yet in ACC encoding, it's listed as "high".
I'm sick to the bone at the thought that the nearly 10,0o0 items I've imported into iTunes are now ALL in need of a re-do !!
Is 128 in ACC actually inferior ?
I'd imagine that converting the entire library to mp3's doesn't do more then slightly "expand" tracks that were encoded lossy to begin with !
==oY!==
TIA,
~~~=Dave

Is 128 in ACC actually inferior ?
Not if you play back using a 'standard' audio system. On high end systems you may notice lack of 'depth' compared to playback of an original (store bought) CD. AAC 128 kbps is good quality for general purpose.
Importing your CDs is always a choice between the available space on your HD (and/or iPod) and the audio quality.
The best audio quality is achieved by importing your CDs in AIFF, WAV or Apple Lossless.
The first two are uncompressed formats, having all audio information, but they result in huge files (about 10 MB per minute).
Apple Lossless is a compressed file format, still has all audio information (it's lossless as the name implies), but results in smaller file sizes (about 5 MB per minute).
MP3 and AAC are lossy compressed file formats, resulting in small file sizes (about 1 MB per minute at 128 kbps). Both compressing methods 'throw away' certain, less important parts of the audio.
AAC is considered to have a better algorithm (calculation method).
As a result AAC at 128 kbps is as good as 160 kbps mp3.
If you're happy with the audio quality of AAC 128 kbps (same format as songs sold in the iTunes Store) there's no need to redo them.
Converting these songs to 160 (or 192) kbps mp3 will not improve sound quality, but worsen it.
Omitted parts of the audio cannot be recovered (only calculated).
As AAC and mp3 use different calculation methods, some of the audio information will be omitted again and worsen the quality.
If you are unhappy with the audio quality, import a few tracks in losless formats (AIFF, WAV or Apple Lossless) or AAC and/or mp3 at higher bit rates.
Listen to them on your system and determine which quality sounds good for your ears.
Remember though, importing at high bit rates or uncompressed formats requires lots of disk space.
Hope this helps.
M
17' iMac 800 MHz, 768 MB RAM, 200 GB HD, DL burner Mac OS X (10.4.8) iTunes 7.0.2

Burning iTunes Plus and other 256 bit rate material to get best quality?

I understand that iTunes Plus and most songs on Amazon are provided at a higher bit rate than non-Plus iTunes songs in order to provide higher audio quality on playback. But, does this quality differential come through when burning a song to disc from within iTunes?
I ask because of an experiment I just conducted. I downloaded the same song from iTunes (not a Plus version) and from Amazon. The Amazon version takes up twice as much file space as the iTunes version. (The ACC file at 128kbps was 5MB while the MPEG file at 256 kbps was 11.6MB.) However, when I burned both songs to a CD, those files where identical in size. Further, when played on a near-audiophile stereo system, I could hear no discernible difference between the two.
So the question: Does whatever extra information and hence sound quality contained in the Plus or other 256 kbps material get lost in the conversion to audio CD format? Are there settings in iTunes I'm missing? Are there alternative software or file formats available that would burn audio CDs without this loss?
(I realize that whatever difference there is in sound quality would not be detectable on most equipment. What I'm looking for is to preserve quality differences that can be heard on high-end equipment. As it is, I'm able to tell the difference between well-recorded and produced commercial CDs and the same material bought through iTunes.)

The quality of compressed audio is not always linked to file size. I believe it is possible for a 128 kbps AAC file to sound as good as a 256 kbps MP3 file. MP3 is not the best audio compression format but it is by far the most commonplace. A 128 kbps AAC file isn't as good as a 192 kbps AAC file, however.
When your audio files were uncompressed for burning to audio CD they naturally became the same size because there no longer was any compression.
If your objective is to have audio CDs that sound best on high-end equipment then you should continue buying audio CDs rather than purchasing on-line music. That way there is no loss in audio quality from compression. I'm not aware of a source that is selling lossless on-line music downloads.

GB3 SAYS CANNOT IMPORT THIS FILE TYPE - MP3

I have long lecture (4 hours) that I'm trying to cut into a podcast. I was given WMV files which I coverted to MP3 with EASY WMA. Now when I try and import these files into GB3, I get an error saying it can't import this file type. What am I doing wrong? Is the file too big? Do I need to be using AIFF? Help please!!!

http://www.thehangtime.com/gb/gbfaq2.html#recordlength

Are .aac bit rates the same as mp3 bit rates?

Are .aac bit rates the same quality as mp3 bit rates? That is:
1. Is an .aac bit rate of 128kps the same quality as an mp3 bit rate of 256kps?
2. Is an .aac bit rate of 192kps the same quality as an mp3 bit rate of 256kps?
3. Is an .aac bit rate of 256kps the same quality as an mp3 bit rate of 256kps?
I use VLC Media Player v. 2.1.5 Rincewind.
1. How do I find out what the bit rate is for an .aac file?

1. Is an .aac bit rate of 128kps the same quality as an mp3 bit rate of 256kps?
2. Is an .aac bit rate of 192kps the same quality as an mp3 bit rate of 256kps?
3. Is an .aac bit rate of 256kps the same quality as an mp3 bit rate of 256kps?
Angel,
Assuming that all of the files you referred to were all transcoded from the same high-quality source, such as a CD, here are the answers:
1. At 128, AAC has an advantage
2. At 192 they are about the same
3. At 256 they are equivalent

What are the Bit Rates of the Music Store and Podcasts?

What is the bit rate quality and format of a song downloaded in the Music Store? And podcasts? Are they perfect, Apple Lossless quality or what...?

This might be true, but you won't experience any improvement in sound quality. Here's some info on bit rates:
This was originally posted by the incredible Sparky the wUnderdog
"As a general principle, you can fit more CDs on your iPod if you encode at lower bitrates (making smaller files), but at the cost of audio quality. Lossless promises to capture all the data on the original CD (thus preserving quality) but coded so the file takes half the space. MP3 and AAC (an implementation of variable bit rate MP4) both eliminate some of the information on the CD in order to compress the digital recording into ever smaller files--the lower the bitrate, the smaller the file, but smaller files mean more information lost and consequent poorer sound quality.
iTunes's MP3 encoder is so-so; the LAME encoder is better at preserving sound fidelity to the original. AAC files ripped in iTunes certainly sound better than its MP3s, with audio quality close to the best LAME MP3s at higher bitrates. With the type of music I listen to most often, sound quality declines substantially as bitrates fall below 256kbps, but LAME or AAC @ 256kbps sounds pretty darned good, and at 320kbps LAME alt-preset-insane is amazingly faithful to the original. However many users claim that with the music they listen to they can't hear the difference between 192 or even 128 kbps files and the original CD source, so they naturally choose higher compression rates to fit more "songs" on their iPods.
CDs take approximately 10MB per minute of music; Apple lossless takes 5MB/minute; LAME insane takes 2.5MB/min; AAC or MP3 at 256kbps take 2MB/min; and iTunes Store files (AAC@128kbps) take 1MB/min. At these rates, a 20GB iPod (really 18.6GB) can hold anywhere from 30 hours to over 300 hours of music. (iPod marketers express this potential playback capacity as "songs," figuring 4 minutes per song--thus 300 hours at 128kbps = 4500 "songs.") You will need to listen to samples ripped with different bitrates and codecs to determine the optimum tradeoff point for you between quality & quantity. It's worth taking some time to do this at the start as it sure beats reripping everything in your collection 2 or 3 times to get it right later.
So far as convenience goes, nothing beats iTunes's one-step process. To change bitrate as you import from CD, go to the iTunes menu > Edit > Preferences, select the Importing tab, choose AAC or MP3 encoder in the "import using" selection box, then choose "Custom" in the "setting" box, and the window permitting bitrate selection will pop up. If you choose iTunes MP3 encoder, at least use VBR (variable bit rate) to maximize the sound quality. (VBR increases sample size as data complexity increases.)
If you would prefer LAME MP3s, fear not, for the easy-to-use CDex ripping software is a free download and requires only one simple extra step to get the files into iTunes for transfer to your iPod. Now if AAC sound quality is comparable to LAME MP3, you might wonder why you should even consider LAME: Because of portability to other devices. At present, hardly anything but iPods can read AACs or Apple Lossless, but almost everything reads MP3s. So if you plan to burn CDs of your compressed files for playback on your home or car CD player (for instance), it would be wise to choose MP3.
One other consideration specific to the iPod: It has a 32MB cache. If you choose a compression rate that results in large files (i.e. lossless), then the cache won't hold very much 'music' and the hard drive will have to spin up frequently to fill it, and that will shorten your battery life somewhat."
JC

Bit rate too high DVDSP, build stops.

DVD Studio Pro used to be DVD Maestro from Discreet, but I was thinking since Apple bought it long ago, it would have a forum. I searched for DVD and DVDSP and only came up with this forum.
If anybody in here uses DVDSP and if you know the solution I would appreciate help with this.
Upon building this, I did lower the bit rate to a lower size after getting the error message.
As of now I have the BR between 4.2 and 5.2 as the max br.
I'm concerned if I lower it anymore it will start looking like a pixelated mess. Does anybody know how low you can take the rate and still have a good looking project?
The project was taped in HDV. However I encoded it using compressor so I don't think it's an HD file anymore that DVDSP can't read. In the settings you'll see "SD".
I'm using DVD Studio Pro 4.
The settings I used for compressor were:
Video:
Name: MPEG-2 6.2Mbps 2-pass
Description: Fits up to 90 minutes of video with Dolby Digital audio at 192 Kbps or 60 minutes with AIFF audio on a DVD-5
File Extension: m2v
Estimated size: 2.79 GB/hour of source
Type: MPEG-2 video elementary stream
          Usage:SD DVD
Video Encoder
          Format: M2V
          Width and Height: Automatic
                    Selected: 720 x 480
          Pixel aspect ratio: NTSC CCIR 601/DV (16:9)
          Crop: None
          Padding: None
          Frame rate: (100% of source)
                    Selected: 29.97
          Frame Controls Automatically selected:
                    Retiming: (Fast) Nearest Frame
                    Resize Filter: Linear Filter
                    Deinterlace Filter: Fast (Line Averaging)
                    Adaptive Details: On
                    Antialias: 0
                    Detail Level: 0
                    Field Output: Same as Source
          Start timecode from source
          Aspect ratio: Automatic
                    Selected 16:9
          Field dominance: Automatic:
                     Selected Progressive
          Average bit rate: 6.2 (Mbps)
          2 Pass VBR enabled
                    Maximum bit rate: 7.7 (Mbps)
          High quality
          Best motion estimation
          Closed GOP Size: 15, Structure: IBBP
          DVD Studio Pro meta-data enabled
Audio:
Name: AIFF 48:16
Description: 48kHz, 16-bit AIFF stereo audio
File Extension: aiff
Estimated size: unknown
Audio Encoder
          16-bit Integer (Big Endian), Stereo (L R), 48.000 kHz
Error message from DVDSP
Starting DVD Build BIG_DADDY_DVD...
Compiler Initializing...
Precompiling Project BIG_DADDY_DVD
Compiling VMG Information...
Created 8 PGCs in VTSM1
Created 8 PGCs in VMG.
1 Menu(s) will be created...
Compiling Menu PGCs...
Compiling Menu#1 (Menu 1)...
Rendering Menu:Menu 1,Language:1...
Generating Transition: VTSM #01, VOB #1...
Writing VIDEO_TS.VOB
1 VTSs and 1 Titles will be created...
Compiling VTS#1 (Big Daddy compress video)...
Muxing VTS_01_1.VOB
Video Bitrate Too High
Build cancelled
Building was not successful. See log.
I tried the same project in IDVD and it worked like a charm the first time

There is still a DVDSP Forum - it's under Final Cut Studio at https://discussions.apple.com/community/professional_applications/final_cut_stud io
Select "refine this list" in the blue button to nake it easier to find DVDSP related issues.

Unable to change file type to audio book; previously able to.

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Hi,When I douwload some podcast and I send the podcast to my mini playermusic(archos 104),most of items appears under"file type podcast".Some others appears under" file type MP3".
I want all items under"file type MP3"...But I don't know to do it! I've tried to select items and choosing "translate file in MP3"in the itune menu,but it doesn't change,items stays under "file type podcast" in my music player.
It 's not a problem to read them on my music player,but i would like to listen them on my other computer(from work),and that computer accept only MP3 files,not posdcast file...Is there someone who can help me?
Tahnk you!
Juliette

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Sorry it took some time but there was some other housekeeping to do on the script.
Visit the page where my DeDuper script lives and download DeDupeKeepSmall.
tt2

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Bit rates, file type, MP3 encoders, quality settings etc.

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