JulianL Wrote: > I've been playing with dBpowerAmp (plus the Sveta Portable Audio add-in) > to connect to my iPod mini and also Anapod. I have all my music as FLAC > on my PC and was recently given an iPod Mini so I want to get some of > my music onto that. (Throughout the rest of this post all uses of "AAC" > refer to lossy AAC compression.) To maximise space on the iPod I really > want to go for AAC as the iPod format (see my "aside" on quality at the > end of this post). > > I think both the above programs are impressive but for me, since all I > want is to get music to the iPod (I use EAC to rip) I prefer Anapod to > dBpowerAmp since it is cheaper (am I correct in assuming that to fully > license what I need I would need to buy both dBpowerAmp and Sveta = > $38?) and Anapod allows me to delete stuff on the iPod as well as just > add it. The trouble is that as far as I can see, there is a > show-stopper with Anapod in that it doesn't support AAC transcoding. Am > I correct or does anyone have Anapod configured to do FLAC -> AAC > transcoding onto an iPod? > > As an aside on quality, I would be interested to hear people's opinions > of AAC vs MP3. On my current portable player I rip to 128kb CBR MP3 > (with LAME) and that is OK quality given that I mostly use it in noisy > environments (planes, cars and the gym) but I wouldn't want to go lower > since very occassionaly I plug it into various friend's home hi-fi > systems so any lower than 128kb would be embarassing. Most discussions > I've seen of AAC vs MP3 seem to indicate that at lower bit rates AAC is > at least as good as MP3 and most of the reports I've seem seem to > indicate that AAC is better. This seems to indicate that going for > 128kb AAC encoding would at least match, if not exceed, the quality of > my current 128kb MP3 stuff and maybe I could even drop down to more > like 100kb and preserve my current quality. I have noticed on the > dBpowerAmp encoder that it has really wierd options for the quality > settings, i.e. 100kb as the default with the next higher ones being > 125kb & 150kb (i.e. not powers of 2 which, for a computer scientist, > counts as "wierd" :) ). Does anyone know why this is? > > Anyway, I'd be most interested on people's thoughts on (a) am I correct > in my fear that Anapod doesn't support transcoding to AAC and has anyone > else emailed them about this and got any interesting answers (I emailed > them just now but don't have an answer yet of course)? and (b) general > thoughts on AAC vs MP3 quality since clearly one option I have is just > to stick with MP3 but, for the reasons outlined in the previous > paragraph, I would prefer not to go down this route since space is at a > real premium on my iPod. > > - Julian
LAME and Apples (Quicktime) AAC are pretty much equal quality (go to Hydrogenaudio and look at the listening tests for more detail). Other MP3 implementations (most of these are FhG) suck though quality wise including the iTunes one which needs 160kbps to sound about as good. Personally if your going to use iTunes for ripping then use AAC, if your doing it some other way then use LAME MP3s. (on a MAC you can use the iTunes LAME plugin so ignore this if a Mac user) LAME rocks! This is the law! I saw WMA mentioned earlier the non-pro version (the one hardware devices use) sucks. Don't believe the rubbish about 64kbps WMA sounds as good as 128kbps MP3, it isn't true. WMA is pre-echo filled junk. (WMA Pro is actually very good but as devices don't use it, it's practically useless). All of that said if you throw bits at problems then transparency is quickly reached. I use FLAC for my SB but it's overkill but reassuring overkill (archive wise). Fairyliquidizer -- fairyliquidizer "O wad some Power the giftie gie us To see oursels as ithers see us! It wad frae monie a blunder free us, An' foolish notion." -Robert Burns- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ fairyliquidizer's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=3678 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=16240 _______________________________________________ ripping mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/ripping
