CD Ripping: AAC over MP3
Recently I upgraded to iTunes 9, and I began to notice many of my tags within my MP3 files had been removed. I am not sure if this was due to iTunes, or the original encoding of the MP3s which I had performed using an older version of iTunes. I had made the decision to re-rip my CD collection and was torn between AAC and MP3 file formats.
I decided to re-rip all of my CDs and I was weighing out the differences between AAC and MP3. When you rip songs from a CD in iTunes, you can choose what file format you would like the songs to be saved in, and different file formats do have different strengths and weaknesses. Generally speaking trading off file size for sound quality.
The two (2) most common file types in iTunes are MP3 and AAC, although iTunes also offers Apple Lossless Encoding, AIFF, and WAV. For the sake of this post I will be focusing on AAC and MP3. AAC was created as an improved performance codec over MP3, and the advanced audio coding (AAC) was promoted as successor to MP3. These encoded files are higher in quality, but the same could also be said of Microsoft’s Windows Media format, and OGG files, but none are supported as well as good old MP3. AAC is the native file format for iTunes, however one may not want to use due to this format now being as widely supported. Just about every OS (including favors of Linux) will play an MP3 file out of the box, however playing AAC files generally requires the end user to download a 3rd party piece of software (Apple’s Mac OS X excluded).
AAC’s file format does have some improvements over MP3, and I have outlined a few of them.
* More frequencies (from 8 to 96 kHz) than MP3 (16 to 48 kHz)
* Up to 48 channels
(MP3 supports up to two channels in MPEG-1 mode and up to 5.1 channels in MPEG-2 mode)
* Higher efficiency and simpler filterbank
* Higher coding efficiency for stationary signals
(AAC uses a blocksize of 1024 or 960 samples, allowing more efficient coding than MP3’s 576 sample blocks)
* Higher coding accuracy for transient signals
(AAC uses a blocksize of 128 or 120 samples, allowing more accurate coding than MP3’s 192 sample blocks)
With all of this being said, why do many people still prefer to use MP3 file formats? I would have to answer that mainly with the how easy it is create and also from the popularity it had gained from peer-2-peer applications. The first large peer-2-peer application was Napster which came online in 1999 – 2000. This gave thousands (if not millions at the time) of music fans access to download (illegally) all of their favorite songs and albums from just about every artist.
My Recommendation:
If you have a PC or a Mac, and also have a iPhone or iPod, I would recommend using the AAC file format. As an end user you can convert the AAC file to a MP3 file if desired, or if you wish to play a particular track on a device that does not support AAC. In the long run you will be able to store more music, while still obtaining a high quality sound. Please take a moment to vote on which file type you prefer.
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John works in the public IT sector focusing on network security and system admin/monitoring.
John, I voted, but I am not sure that my choice is the smart one. I have a lot of music on my touch, some of it I have purchased from iTunes, but a large portion of it are my cd’s that I have imported to my iTunes. I like the transportability that my touch affords me, but I have not burned any of the music I have purchased to cd’s. Should I be?
Thanks for this post, who knew that I needed to think about this!!
Hi Kat,
It probably would not hurt to at least copy the actual songs to some type of external media (CD, DVD, External Hard Drive). I have ran into cases where I forgot to back up some songs I’ve purchased, and when I reformatted my machine I lost those songs. The one thing I do not like about the iTunes Store is you do not have the ability to re-download songs that you already had purchased…unless someone knows a trick I don’t.
Hmmmm, I’ve been using the mp3 but you have convinced me I should switch to the ACC from now on.
Excellent, informative post.
….I am so tired that should be the AAC, not the ACC. Please excuse my tired typo.
If you accidentally lose one or more songs that you had purchased through the iTunes store, you can petition them through Customer Support and they generally will let you redownload your purchases (at least once). That said, you really should invest in backing up your music. You can burn your iTunes library to audio CD if you want, but I would burn it to data DVDs. I haven’t done this in a while but I know iTunes used to support that function from within the software. If not, you could do it manually or use commercial disc copying software.
I use a PC and have an Ipod. I have ripped all of my music to FLAC which is lossless. (equivalent to Apple Lossless but open source and supports correct meta data specifications) Then from there I can transcode from Lossless to any format I want. As standards change, its much easier to go from the lossless to a lesser format and not have to do the CD thing all over again. It doesn’t take up as much space as you might think.
Cheers for this informative article. I am always searching for knowledge on particular subjects and it’s seldom far away on the internet. I’ll be coming back soon.