Digital Music Format

[mikecentola]

I know I asked this before on the previous site, but there's more people on here now, and I have new dilemmas lol.

I have a bunch of CD's that I ripped using iTunes into MP3 192k format. Now that iTunes has iTunes Plus which is all DRM-free music, I'm considering buying CD's off that instead of at the store and then ripping them. However, they only come as AAC 256k format. Should I re-rip all my CD's into AAC 256k format?

Am I being to OCD for wanting all my music in the same format? What formats do you guys all use?

Unfortunately there still is a lot of music that is only available in the DRM section of iTunes, so I will have to buy those on regular CD still and rip them...

[Pike]

I guess that's entirely up to you and how much time you want to invest in it. I use mp3 for my collection and, like you, prefer to have everything in one format.

How big is your collection?

[mikecentola]

Originally Posted by Pike

I guess that's entirely up to you and how much time you want to invest in it. I use mp3 for my collection and, like you, prefer to have everything in one format.

How big is your collection?

It's not huge, about 1000 songs, and 4.7 gig... I guess if I decide to buy anything, I can burn it and re-import it. CD's are uber cheap anyways.

[Pike]

Ah you're fine then. If it was in the double digits then I'd say stay with what you got. But that shouldn't take you very long at all. Just make sure you stick with your decision. I'm 135 gigs deep so I can't really change anything up at this point heh.

[mikecentola]

haha wow. I decided to stick with MP3... Like I said, if I buy something off iTunes, I'll burn it and re-rip it as MP3 or look for a AAC -> MP3 conversion

[JiM P 2001]

i did the AAC conversion to all of my music...

[nysulli]

most of my collection is in MP3 form, but anytime i rip a cd into my digital collection its done in FLAC format now, lossless is just far superior to mp3, might not be obvious listening to onboard sound and ibuds, but if you get a decent sound system put together the difference is night and day

[mikecentola]

FLAC is awesome, in fact I posted about it before we redid the forums, and no one had really known about it. It's a great format, however, it does have its drawbacks.... filesize and the need for a special media player

[Cavi Mike]

Obviously wav(lossless) is the absolute ultimate format but 360kps mp3 can attain the exact same quality in 25% the space. In order to achieve that same quality in AAC you need almost 10% more space than mp3. Since none of those can actually be compared in true audible sound quality, the matter comes down to size/compression. mp3 requires more computing power to decompress which means a player will need need more/faster computing abilities and wav requires the least.

This is the quick summary:

If you're using the file to share or for your 'mp3' player, mp3 is the best, hands down. 160k is plenty good for most anything, btw, and 128k vs 160k sound is negligible on factory car speakers.

If you're running the songs on a very slow computer, wav format is the best. Yes the files are MUCH larger but that has nothing to do with the amount of computing power it would have taken to decompress an mp3 file.

Hope this gives you an idea.

*edit* Oh wait, did you say wma somewhere in there? hahahahahaha

[mikecentola]

LOL I don't think anyone mentioned wma ha

I think I'm going to stick with MP3 for now, and if I end up buying anything on iTunes store, I'll burn it and then re-rip it.