What's the difference? Quality? Size?

iTunes wants to import new CD's as MP4, but I don't like the iTunes file and song naming structure. I transfer using Roxio, and then import the folder.

Earlier this week, I was still jet lagged and I ended up watching the History Channel and they were talking about the revolution of CDs and MP3s.

I'm sure I'll be corrected of I'm wrong but this is what I took away from it.
When we listen to music, there are some sounds that, say during a guitar riff, can't be heard because the guitar riff is overpowering our eardrums. Their example was you could be listening to music but when the phone rings, your attention would be directed to the phone and you may miss some of that music. MP3 recognizes that and strips out the music that is below your range of hearing at the point. The compression ratio is 1/10th of a CD's file.

MP4 takes that even further and instead of encoding the actual music and compressing that file, MP4 is like giving each player the sheet music and making your comptuer, iPod or other music player do the hard work. That compression ratio is 1/10th of an MP3 file or 1/100th of a CD file.

Hope that helps (and I hope that's right)

1 - Quality is in direct proportion to file size on both, the bigger the file, the better the quality.

2 - In listening tests (see www.hydrogenaudio.com) with the right encoder and options, MP3 as a rule beats AAC (also known as MP4) at the same file size.

3 - Most importantly, decoding MP3 takes less processing power to decode than MP4.... that directly translates into longer battery life when listening to MP3s.

For more info.... www.hydrogneaudio.com

D.

FWIW; iTunes CAN import as MP3. What don't you like about the naming structure?

in general, this was accurate, but I don't believe it still applies. WMA is better than MP3, at smaller file sizes. AAC is better than MP3 at same file sizes, and encoding.

I will read this site you have posted, but there are plenty of objective reviews over the past couple years that show that new encoding formats indeed prove to be of equal sound quality to Mp3, with lower bit rates and relative smaller file sizes.

I think in the future, mp3 will be done, even the media group supporting it says that and a new version of mp4, or another vorbis type encoder will be the best.

If you can believe it, I STILL buy CD's, and rip then in whatever format I think is going to give me the best sound, for the device and speakers(headphones) that will be required. I've created a couple easy scripts for this which do it all automatically. Drop the files from the CD on the Syphony/HomeHIFI script and boom, couple hours later I have the dynamic range and sound I expect to come out of the paradigms in the living room.

Sure wish sonos would support ALL formats though.

I know it can. But when I did it, it wanted to add the track number to the filename. I like Artist-Songname. THere's probably a switch to change it, but I couldn't find it. I've got Roxio set up the way I like it, so it's not a big deal to import the folder to iTunes.

I also figured out how to fix the iTunes problem where you can't tell in the main screen how much space your files take up.

When does the 6GB Nano come out? I'm ready to hand this one down to the Mrs. and upgrade.

Probably Christmas, the greedy b@stards.

Ah... you misunderstood.... I meant that within any given engoding a larger file size is better.... i.e. a larger AAC is better than a smaller one.

As for your assertion that AAC is better than MP3 at a given file size.... not true in most blind listening tests when using either Nero-AAC or iTunes vs. the LAME tuned encoder.

Then again, I use MP3 (as my Tivo and iPOD don't support OGG) and OGG Vorbis beats them both at almost any comparable file size.

I believe it. I own CDs for all the music I own.... over 500 CDs worth. I, on the other hand, rip them once to FLAC (Lossless) and the transcode as needed to other formats. Currently I transcode to high bitrate CBR for the home theater system, low-ish VBR for my iPOD, and lower VBR for my wife's shuffle. When the newer version of LAME's encoder came out with better quality, I simply dropeed in the new version, and fired off a process ot transcode everything once again to bump up the quality a bit with the same encoding bitrates.

Cheers,
D.