Skip to main content ↑ ↓

Notice

Please note that most of the software linked on this forum is likely to be safe to use. If you are unsure, feel free to ask in the relevant topics, or send a private message to an administrator or moderator. To help curb the problems of false positives, or in the event that you do find actual malware, you can contribute through the article linked here.

Poll

What iTunes AAC Bitrate is Transparent to You?

96 kbps
[ 0 ] (0%)
112 kbps
[ 0 ] (0%)
128 kbps
[ 9 ] (20.9%)
160 kbps
[ 9 ] (20.9%)
192 kbps
[ 14 ] (32.6%)
224 kbps
[ 8 ] (18.6%)
256 kbps
[ 0 ] (0%)
320 kbps
[ 3 ] (7%)

Total Members Voted: 84

Topic: What iTunes AAC Bitrate is Transparent to You? (Read 4476 times) previous topic - next topic
0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

What iTunes AAC Bitrate is Transparent to You?

After reading some posts on AAC quality and transparency I decided to setup a poll to see just what the HA community preferred here.  I'm not asking for advice in which bitrate I should choose as I have personally chosen 128 kbps as my bitrate as it is transparent to my ears on the vast majority of music I've thrown at it.  That amazed me as it usually takes a 192kbps+ MP3 to satisfy me.    I can understand why iTunes chose that bitrate for their music store.  Also I decided to switch to AAC because I plan on buying an iPod in the near future so I may as well take advantage of a better format in AAC to use on it.  I was leaning towards getting the Rio Karma but after receiving a tech support e-mail back from Rio stating they do NOT offer battery replacements for the Karma I quickly turned away from them and went to Apple since they offer battery replacements and you can buy battery replacements and install them yourself if you want.  Plus I hear nothing but great things about the iPod  Anyway, I got off onto a bit of a rant there, LOL.  What bitrate do you prefer to encode iTunes AAC at?

What iTunes AAC Bitrate is Transparent to You?

Reply #1 –
Quote
After reading some posts on AAC quality and transparency I decided to setup a poll to see just what the HA community preferred here.  I'm not asking for advice in which bitrate I should choose as I have personally chosen 128 kbps as my bitrate as it is transparent to my ears on the vast majority of music I've thrown at it.  That amazed me as it usually takes a 192kbps+ MP3 to satisfy me.     I can understand why iTunes chose that bitrate for their music store.  Also I decided to switch to AAC because I plan on buying an iPod in the near future so I may as well take advantage of a better format in AAC to use on it.  I was leaning towards getting the Rio Karma but after receiving a tech support e-mail back from Rio stating they do NOT offer battery replacements for the Karma I quickly turned away from them and went to Apple since they offer battery replacements and you can buy battery replacements and install them yourself if you want.  Plus I hear nothing but great things about the iPod  Anyway, I got off onto a bit of a rant there, LOL.  What bitrate do you prefer to encode iTunes AAC at?

Where's the "no bitrate is transparent to you" option? :B  Although I must say that I haven't tested AAC extensively, I know that at least the fatboy clip clearly isn't transparent at any bitrate.  However, I agree that 128 kbps AAC sounds incredibly good most of the time (judging from the files I have gotten from the iTunes music store).

What iTunes AAC Bitrate is Transparent to You?

Reply #2 –
Sorry, it didn't even occur to me to put a "None" option in there, lol.  I have found some clips that were not transparent to me at 128 kbps but the number of those clips for me was very low.  The majority of music is transparent to me at 128 kbps.  The couple samples that aren't transparent do not bother me especially when the artifacts introduced were not annoying (some just sounded a bit duller than the original).  So I can't see using a higher bitrate when only a few samples aren't transparent to me at 128 kbps.  Plus I'm tired about worrying over what is transparent all the time and is this good enough so I've settled on 128 kbps and am happy.  A great compromise for me between quality/file size/portable use.

What iTunes AAC Bitrate is Transparent to You?

Reply #3 –
224 is what i "import" my CDs in...on a lot of the 128 songs its not transparents to me but some are...

What iTunes AAC Bitrate is Transparent to You?

Reply #4 –
I think the question should have been, what bitrate do you use to rip your CDs. 128kbps is fairly transparent to me (on my crappy computer speakers at work anyway), so I rip at 160kbps just to be on the safe side 

What iTunes AAC Bitrate is Transparent to You?

Reply #5 –
After some limited testing, now use 224 kb/s with an iPod, Meta amp, and Etys.

What iTunes AAC Bitrate is Transparent to You?

Reply #6 –
128 - transparent on some tunes. Usually acoustic pieces with just guitar and voice
160 - transparent on a few more tunes (some rap, mellow & classic rock, etc)
192 - transparent on all but music with lots of high frequencies such as cymbals (Oasis or The Thrills for example)
224 - no different than 192 to me

I have decided to use 128 because I can only tell how much better 192 is when I encode the tunes to an audio CD and play it on my high end home or car stereo or when listening with my Bose Triports on my iPod. Since 90% of my AAC listening is done on my iPod with either a pair of sennheiser earbuds, i-Trigue L3450 speakers, or on my PC with L3450 speakers, 128 is good enough.
 

What iTunes AAC Bitrate is Transparent to You?

Reply #7 –
Back in my mp3 days, my music would end up between 220~230kbps, and I couldn't tell the difference to the original .wav. With AAC I go for 192kbps which is still a 10% improvement in terms of space (not a problem yet on my iPod though) and it's still transparent.

Suppose I'd be fine using a lower bitrate just for portable use, but when I put some songs together for a 'custom-made' CD, I like to know that the source is good enough. And getting the original CD out for this purpose...what's the point of keeping songs in a library then?