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Use a high initial iTunes bit rate for music conversion Apps
I have a solution for those unsure on what bit rate to encode your AACs at -- always import at a relatively high bit rate; I use 192 kbps.

If you later run out of space and were wishing that you'd imported at a lower bit rate, you can simply select a lower bit rate in iTunes preferences and select "Convert Selection to AAC" in the Advanced menu. iTunes then downsamples your music to the lower bit rate and you can fit more into the same space.

[robg adds: The only downside to encoding at a higher rate, whether it be MP3 or AAC, is that you'll (obviously!) be able to fit fewer songs on your portable music device. That, and it will be a bit of a pain to re-sample 2,500 songs when you run out of space! Personally, I've chosen to encode at 192kbps, but I've also stored my library on a separate hard drive inside the machine ... if it ever fills up, I'll just buy a new, larger drive and move everything across.]
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Use a high initial iTunes bit rate for music conversion | 10 comments | Create New Account
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RE: Use a high initial iTunes bit rate for music conversion
Authored by: nick on Jun 20, '03 11:08:59AM

Be aware, that reencoding a lossy (as mp3, aac, ogg vorbis) audio file will decrease quality as each (re-)encoding-process is lossy.



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RE: Use a high initial iTunes bit rate for music conversion
Authored by: david-bo on Jun 23, '03 07:46:47AM

At least OGG (and I belive AAC too) supports 'peeling' = you can without any further loss due to reencoding remove data/decrease bandwidth of an already encoded file.

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Use a high initial iTunes bit rate for music conversion
Authored by: blacktide on Jun 20, '03 11:11:01AM

Why not use the VBR setting?



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Re-compressing is a BAD IDEA
Authored by: gidds on Jun 20, '03 11:15:44AM
If you recompress from a file that's already compressed, you'll end up with a worse-sounding result than if you'd compressed at that bitrate straight from CD.  The reason is that each compression is lossy; each compression introduces more artefacts.  When you re-encode, the encoder is trying to make the best match it can to something that's already different from the original.

As always, how much worse it is depends on the material, the format, the encoder(s) involved, &c &c.  You might consider that a price worth paying for not having to re-rip all your CDs.  But you should at least be aware of the problem.

Far better to pick the right bitrate in the first place!

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Andy/

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Use a high initial iTunes bit rate for music conversion
Authored by: figz on Jun 20, '03 12:56:25PM

Is there any way to re-encode the file and retain all the iTunes info like Play Count, Last Played, and Date Added in the new file?



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Use a high initial iTunes bit rate for music conversion
Authored by: rich13 on Jun 20, '03 02:44:58PM

...and it occurs to me that if you really are running out of space, you'd actually have a serious problem reconverting the files in this way.

If you tried to do this, you'd (temporarily) need to have both the old and the new files on your HD at the same time, which you obviously don't have space for, by a factor of about 2...

Unless you did a few at a time and deleted the old copies, you'd be screwed... and if you did, you'd be there until 2005 :-)



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Use a high initial iTunes bit rate for music conversion
Authored by: theokrat on Jun 20, '03 05:17:55PM

Also important to keep in mind is Quicktime streaming server, if you are using it. QTSS seems to play better at lower bit rates so unless you are going to copy your iTunes music Library over to your Webserver directory at a lower bit-rate it's hard to get anything over 96 kbs to play consistantly. Just another reason for lower bite-rate encoding.

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theo



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A better idea...
Authored by: Darukaru on Jun 22, '03 01:04:13AM

Better yet, scrap AAC and use LAME --alt-preset standard -Z. If you're serious about audio compression and ever plan to listen to your music files on anything besides the 10-cent internal speaker, never, ever, ever re-encode anything. Ever.
www.hydrogenaudio.org is the best source of information out there on audio compression.



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A better idea...
Authored by: david-bo on Jun 23, '03 07:48:19AM

-Z is not necessary anymore (since lame 3.90). See http://lame.sourceforge.net/history.html

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Use a high initial iTunes bit rate for music conversion
Authored by: TechStuff.ca on Jun 22, '03 10:14:59PM
What's the best way to rip your music? This was recently discussed on Ars Technica: "For the most part, I've been telling Windows users to use CDex, with the Lame encoder, and to rip at a Variable Bitrate (VBR) range that's comfy to them (I use 160 low, 256 kbps high)... Thoughts?" link: http://tinyurl.com/ezng

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Sandy McMurray, Editor
Technology in Plain Language
http://www.techstuff.ca/

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