Best Music Format and Bitrate?

Subject: Best Music Format and Bitrate? November 16th 2008, 2:14 pm

What would be the best format and bitrate to rip music in for it to sound the best? I have an iPod Touch 2G with enough space to double the size of all the music, but I wanted to know what was best. I've read about ACC that it sounds better than MP3 and also takes up less space, would anyone agree it sounds better?

Looking for some opinions cool

Administrator From : England OS :  Leopard 10.5.6

FLAC is the best but the file sizes are huge.

Subject: Re: Best Music Format and Bitrate? November 17th 2008, 6:27 pm

yeah aac format stil keeps the sound quality with a nice compressed size over MP3. you could also try lowering the bitrate on the mp3 files to something around 128. i think anything lower would decrease sound quality.

Regular Visitor From : Florida OS : XP Pro

Why dont you just go 256 bit rate encoding with AAC.

Music with 128 bitrate is not really that good, specially if you want to use it on your PC (if you have good speakers) or listen to it on a stereo system (you'll notice the quality)

But if you want the BEST of the best then you might wanna go with FLAC or ALAC, both are lossless formats, so its like listening to the music straight from the CD but the downside is that it takes alot of space.

If you want to stick with MP3s then encode in higher bitrates than 128, trust me.

Subject: Re: Best Music Format and Bitrate? November 18th 2008, 9:34 pm

Cash Eye wrote:: Why dont you just go 256 bit rate encoding with AAC.

Music with 128 bitrate is not really that good, specially if you want to use it on your PC (if you have good speakers) or listen to it on a stereo system (you'll notice the quality)

But if you want the BEST of the best then you might wanna go with FLAC or ALAC, both are lossless formats, so its like listening to the music straight from the CD but the downside is that it takes alot of space.

If you want to stick with MP3s then encode in higher bitrates than 128, trust me.

Right now I keep 95% of my music 192kbps or above and prefer VBR bitrates. I've been using MP3 for a long time, so I was just wondering which format/bitrate would be best for listening on iPod

Regular Visitor From : Florida OS : XP Pro

That should be fine if is for your iPod ^^

Subject: Re: Best Music Format and Bitrate? November 19th 2008, 12:15 pm

Yeah FLAC is the best. Losless FTW! lol. 192 bitrate smile

Senior Member From : England OS : XP/Ubuntu

Unfortunately FLAC aint supported by ze iPod, on my old 5G with rockbox you could use FLAC and OGG. MUSIC ORGASM tongue

Administrator From : England OS :  Leopard 10.5.6

Most of my tracks are either 256 or 320bpm. Anything less than 128 would be poor.

Regular Visitor From : Portugal OS : vista home premium

flac is the best or 320kbps

Subject: Re: Best Music Format and Bitrate? November 24th 2008, 7:30 pm

dongolo wrote:: flac is the best or 320kbps

Now how about this - 320kbps or 224 VBR?
I always tend to find that the VBR sounds MUCH better than just 320kbps, or is it just me?

Regular Visitor From : Seattle, WA OS : Windows Vista

CBR 320 is the best quality you can get without getting into the formats that won't go on your iPod. Second best is MP3 V0, slightly smaller size, and a little less quality (not a noticeable amount, don't worry)

To conclude that, MP3 V0 is the best "overall" format.