AAC sounds great and it's less filling

Now that iTunes and the iPod support AAC, I decided to see if it would be worthwhile to convert my CD-based music library to AAC.

Macintouch's iTunes Reader Report has a message from an audio engineer who referred to Donald Fagen's A New Frontier as “an impeccably recorded song”. He tried the 128Kbps AAC from the iTunes Music Store of that song and said it sounded great, using professional equipment. Since I have Donald Fagen's The Nightfly album, I could use that same song for my own tests.

I had already ripped that CD to 192Kbps MP3 and tried a rip of the song to 192Kbps AAC. File size was about the same but the sound quality was better than the MP3. I ripped the song again (from CD) to 128Kbps AAC and compared to the 192Kbps MP3. The file size was about 33% smaller (as expected), but I still think it sounded better. The MP3 wasn't as bright and seemed to lose some of the incidental sound. As a friend described it, “It's the difference between hearing an instrument and hearing someone play the instrument.”

Now I'm re-ripping all of my CDs into 128Kbps AAC for better sound. And the added bonus is that with 33% smaller files I'll be able to load more songs onto my 5GB iPod.

kherr @ 12:44 CDT | link | music