mp3 vs aac

It's all about the equipment

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AlekseyKosygin
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mp3 vs aac

#1 Post by AlekseyKosygin » Thu Oct 14, 2004 5:50 am

I've been hearing from a lot of apple heads lately that aac is a better format for compressing wav files than mp3, that you get better quality with aac then you do with mp3 byte for byte, anyone know what are the pros and cons to each format?

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LindyChef
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#2 Post by LindyChef » Thu Oct 14, 2004 7:29 am

AAC does give you better quality, but I'll trade off space for being free of DRM. Any format that tries to limit how I can use music that I have purchased is something I will never use.

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GemZombie
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#3 Post by GemZombie » Thu Oct 14, 2004 7:37 am

There's also something to be said for a format that *everything* supports, versus a format that has huge limitations.

If you must have better quality than MP3 (and we've discussed the hell out of how to get MP3 to sound good: VBR High), then try one of the developing open standards like ogg. More and more things are supporting it.

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AlekseyKosygin
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#4 Post by AlekseyKosygin » Thu Oct 14, 2004 11:38 am

Sorry but what is DRM? I'll look up OGG because I know absolutely nothing about it...

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LindyChef
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#5 Post by LindyChef » Thu Oct 14, 2004 12:03 pm

Digital Rights Management - gives them control over how many times you can play a song, if you can burn it to CD, if you can transfer the song to another device, if it gets deleted if you unsubscribe from a service, etc. Big brother stuff.

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JesseMiner
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#6 Post by JesseMiner » Thu Oct 14, 2004 11:33 pm

LindyChef wrote:I'll trade off space for being free of DRM. Any format that tries to limit how I can use music that I have purchased is something I will never use.
*cough* hymn *cough*

Jesse

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CafeSavoy
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#7 Post by CafeSavoy » Fri Oct 15, 2004 8:09 am

Are DRM also an issue for songs you rip or is it only applicable when you buy from the itunes music store?

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LindyChef
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#8 Post by LindyChef » Fri Oct 15, 2004 8:21 am

Currently DRM is not an issue for songs you rip from CD, but you can bet that the entertainment industry is very interested in making sure that the only circumstances you can make a copy of a song are the ones they control. DVD-A and SACD have copy protection schemes and there have been attempts to make CDs unreadable in computer CD-ROM drives. But if you're ripping right now to MP3 or OGG you're fine.

And Jesse, interesting little link ;)

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Greg Avakian
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#9 Post by Greg Avakian » Sun Oct 24, 2004 9:05 pm

CafeSavoy wrote:Are DRM also an issue for songs you rip or is it only applicable when you buy from the itunes music store?
You can't edit songs from the itunes store without changing them to wave (or MP3) first. That sucks so i don't use aac.
Hey, my e-mail's changed, here's the new one:
SwingDJ@gmail.com
About me: www.geocities.com/swingboypa

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Zot
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#10 Post by Zot » Tue Oct 26, 2004 4:47 pm

It seems pointless to me not to use the superior AAC format for encoding your own collection simply for ideological reasons -- in what possible way will you be compromised in the future by using AAC for this purpose now? I've been using AAC (128k) to encode my stuff for a while now, and I'm glad I did. I get much cleaner encoding and it takes less disk space. DRM doesn't come into the equation at all.
"Take the worst of neo-swing and put it together with Glen Miller. The man thinks the Count is someone from a horror flick. Take pity on him and let him play two or three tunes. But be sure you have some errands to run." -- Bill Borgida

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LindyChef
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#11 Post by LindyChef » Wed Oct 27, 2004 8:27 am

Zot wrote:It seems pointless to me not to use the superior AAC format for encoding your own collection simply for ideological reasons -- in what possible way will you be compromised in the future by using AAC for this purpose now?
1) From a listener's perspective Ogg is just as good, if not better, than AAC. Higher bitrate MP3s also offer just as good quality, in return for a tradeoff in disk space (which is very cheap now anyways).

2) By using AAC I am supporting, indirectly, a format which has the possiblity of restricting how I use my data. The path DRM walks down is one where information in society is controlled and restricted and considerations like fair use or other reasonable propositions are thrown aside in favor of copyright holder paranoia.

If I've got a good alternative, which I do, then I'll use it.

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#12 Post by JohnDyer » Tue Feb 15, 2005 9:25 am

I looked at the Hymn site. Very impressive. However I'd like to have software to strip the DRM off my Napster2.0 downloads. Does that software exist? I would LOVE to not have to burn to CD before reripping to MP3.
John Dyer, Denver CO

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Bob the Builder
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#13 Post by Bob the Builder » Wed Feb 16, 2005 4:33 pm

Ok, it's getting quite obvious that MP3 is getting old and is “beginning” to be replaced.

Can we focus in on AAC vs OGG!

Can you fill us in using the following Headings?

Sound Quality,
Available compatible software (DJing, editing),
Available compatible hardware (iPod, iRiver ect)
Direction of industry,
Ease of transferring to other file formats,
File size,
Any additional features (Tags etc,)

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Brian
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Yakov
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#14 Post by Yakov » Wed Feb 16, 2005 7:59 pm

i'm still a fan of vbr mp3 with winlame...

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GemZombie
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#15 Post by GemZombie » Thu Feb 17, 2005 3:54 pm

Yakov wrote:i'm still a fan of vbr mp3 with winlame...
Preach it brotha!

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