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06/12/09
Can one rip an ISO of an audio CD or the equivalent?
06/12/09
iListen to my iPod in a vehicle or outside. The ambient noise kills anything the higher bit rate would save.
Now, if you moved all your Classic CDs to MP3 and can afford the space, then 320K...
06/12/09
Really? I thought iTunes users would more often than naught use mp4 AAC.
06/12/09
06/12/09
I tried MP3 and ditched it in favor of AAC. I was never able to get decent sound in my car with WMP's default MP3 encoding, but it's great with iTunes' default AAC.
See, MP3 is an antique format at this point, and while you may say that, "oh, but they've made great strides in improving the format in recent years," I've got a quick and easy response with, "ah, but can you tell the difference between an MP3 that was encoded ten years ago with ten-year-old software and one that was encoded yesterday with the latest-greatest...just by looking at the filename?" Yeah, didn't think so. MP3 is basically the lowest common denominator for the simple reason that it predates pocketsized digital music devices and _noone_ has any sort of claim on exclusivity. Since it's a legacy format, most early players supported it, which meant that it was the choice format for online music piracy, which meant that newer players had to continue to support it or you'd have to choose between Brand X' new player's features or rendering your entire music library obsolete.
However, even though I had a much better experience with AAC, it did have some issues that I needed to address, some of which are purely due to the CDs they were ripped from. I run everything through MP3Gain to bring all the albums to a similar line level, then I crank the track volume adjuster to the top in iTunes, and I fix what I have to with EQ settings.
06/12/09
Does that mean to imply you should encode differently if you're not using iTunes? Gasp! You mean, some people actually don't use it?
The world does not, in fact, revolve around Apple.
06/12/09
06/12/09
06/12/09
Anyone who's using an AIO suite is screwing themselves. If you're actually going for quality nothing beats EAC + LAME for MP3.
06/12/09
One of the biggest issues I have with lossless is the big limitations it has on portable gear. It's nice and all to have it at home with beefy sound systems and oodles of storage capacity, but when you're carrying around something between 30-160 gigabytes, and has a limited supply of on-board power, it sucks.
If I listen to the entire Koyaanisqatsi album in lossless on my iPod, I'm already sucking out as much juice as a low res video would.
06/12/09
Even at lossless, 160GB isn't enough to keep you entertained? Why do people insist on carring around 200+ hours of music?
06/12/09
06/12/09
But storage is not so much an issue as the hit on my battery. Listening to an entire album is akin to watching low resolution videos. I make good use of my iPod's particularly long playtime very often, so I require that my tracks are not too big a drain on the power.
06/12/09
06/12/09
@Aaron Martin-Colby: RockBoxed 5.5 gen iPod.
06/12/09
The Scene chose -V2 for a reason.
06/12/09
06/12/09