Better yet, choose the “sounds good to me” test

RecordStoreReview.com has two good comparisons of AAC versus MP3 encoding (part one, part two). While stating the obvious fact that compressed music doesn't sound as good as CD-quality, the articles do a good job of comparing sound quality of different formats, bit rates and codecs. Your music is only as good as the codec used to rip it, after all.

While the articles conclude that 128-bit AAC is the best for portable use, it seems the 320-bit AAC is the “audiophile-friendly” choice. I'm going with the 128-bit AAC for my 5GB iPod; I think it's a good trade-off between size and quality.

kherr @ 22:22 CDT | link | music