mp3 to AAC

How do you want me to quantify the loss? I'm not sure how it would be measured, but I tried it out of pure curiosity. There was a noticeable difference between the MP3 converted to AAC and the AAC file that was re-ripped directly.

I don't notice a difference...
Of course I'm sure most people here would probably think I'm an idiot because 192Kbps (MP3) is perfectly acceptable for me.

As long as the high-end isn't too "tinny" and lows too "muddy" I'm happy!

I've converted most of my collection to AAC already and I love the format. I get the same quaility for a smaller footprint.

I have a couple questions regarding the new AAC format. As I understand it, if I convert MP3s to AAC the sound quality will degrade. Is this true? Therefore if the original was from a CD, I have to re-rip the CD. Not a big problem. But what if the original was a downloaded file. Is converting a viable option or will I lose too much sound quality.

Also, I have now set up itunes to import as AAC. Therefore if I download a file, I assume its automatically being converted to AAC when I import into itunes. Does this degrade the sound?

Thanks,

Dave

How many people are actually going to convert mp3 to aac? Are some going to stay with mp3?

Originally posted by randydecker
There is absolutely no reason to convert mp3 to AAC.

The file size would be significantly smaller ;)

Personally, I convert all MP3s higher than 128 bitrate to AAC (128 bitrate) and leave all my 128-bitrate MP3s alone.

Justin,
No, you don't have to pay to encode in AAC. The licensing is taken care of by Apple and any agreements they've got. AAC has been around for quite awhile, but in a form from Psytel. Psytel was bought out by Ahead Software (Nero) and the development efforts continue there. I belive it's Dolby Labs that also has an AAC codec, but I'm not 100% sure.

As to the original question of converting .mp3 to .aac. I wouldn't personally do it unless my .mp3's were of exceptional quality from the start. Exceptional being you ripped from CD and you encoded to a very high bitrate. I'd say nothing less than 256 or --alt-preset extreme. If it's something you've downloaded from the net then forget about transcoding as it's quality suspect anyway.

Just a hint when converting, and here I'm referring to re-converting the original CD (AIFF) to AAC to replace mp3s already in iTunes, rather than converting an mp3 file to an AAC file.

When the CD is re-converted sometimes you are prompted to Replace Existing songs, which is preferrable, or sometimes there is no prompt to replace and another copy of the song is made and then you have to clean up the AAC and delete the mp3 and lose all your previously played info. This happens to me all the time with most of my CDs, which for the most part are from overseas.

What I do is open the CD in a separate window, select all the songs, command-i to change the tags and change the fields to make them the same as what I've already got in iTunes. This step usually is enough to provide the Replace Existing prompt. Sometimes a song title is different and doesn't get replaced and then I just let it slide and clean-up that particular song.

This is working well for me.