Comments on: AAC can’t compete with Wav or MP3 in sound quality

By: Fraser

Fraser — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 22:10:05 +0000

Wow, quite a lot of ill informed information posted on here.

Lossy compression does NOT effect the dynamic range of a recording! Dynamic compression and lossy compression are 2 completely different things. Dynamic compression occurs in the studio when the person mastering the audio wants to make the track louder, he/she does so by reducing the differences between the quiet sounds and the louder sounds, which then allows him/her to increase the overall volume of the track without causing any digital clipping.

Lossy compression on the other hand looks at individual frames of the track and using a set of rules (an algorithm) does it best to remove sounds that it does not expect the human ear to hear because they’re being masked by other sounds.

Both Mp3 (LAME) and AAC do a spectacular job of this.

Anybody that tells you that they can spot an obvious difference between a well encoded lossy file and a lossless file because the dynamic range has been altered, is talking absolute nonsense.

By: Sergio García

Sergio García — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 15:42:12 +0000

I first prefer wav or flac or alac, then I prefer aac vs mp3 (I enjoy a 160 vbr aac and a 320 mp3 equally) If space is not a problem, wav. If you go portable and have tons of tracks, go aac. And one very important thing: music of iTunes store is NOT the same quality as you’d get compressing the real cd at the bitrate the store uses by yourself. Try it please and don’t say aac sounds bad but music from the store sounds bad (imho)

By: Nick

Nick — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 08:54:41 +0000

So you can spend a couple of extra dollars and get a studio cd that obvious its going to be better its a studio press, that’s like arguing if a tape recording off a turntable is as good as the studio LP. What I’m wondering is if the music it’s self doesn’t have much dynamic range, does it matter so much to download an acc iTune album? Would a garage band with noise anyway loose as much quality as to a symphony that is void of white noise on acc or mp3? Not because one is better in quality I just mean the amount of noise and diffrent pitches. Myself if I really like the artist I always get the CD, sometimes I download from iTunes and I listen on decent equipment and I notice but I still ENJOY the music. I hate the people that get the most crappy bit rate to cram songs but at higher rates it’s not so bad it’s like record to tape recordings. Truth is you can usually order the real CD cheaper used, and sometimes new than you can from iTunes anyway. And yes most people are dumbells that couldn’t give two turds if their music has quality sound as long as they can bob their heads to Justin Beiber and Lady Ga Ga who don’t have a sound to REALLY listen to anyway.

By: yes

yes — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 10:51:11 +0000

yes, formats formats formats. yes sir, formats compared with other formats. doodly doo.

By: David

David — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 05:54:09 +0000

By design, MP3 is not transparent at even its highest bitrate. AAC is a superior algorithm and achieves transparency at around 160kbps. And 128kbps AAC vs 128kbps MP3 – AAC wins hands down.

By: George

George — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 23:39:35 +0000

Herc, in future perhaps you could make more of an effort to understand the topic in discussion so that you don’t waste your time making such an ass of yourself. Everyone here knows that compressed music isn’t as good as the original source. The topic in discussion is which compression format is superior. So thanks for your patronising arrogant tirade, but it’s completely irrelevant

By: Herc

Herc — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 11:01:54 +0000

Ok lets set something straight here. for those of you who have never heard music played on an old Krell CD player or the Old Famour Linn sondek turntable via a decent $200,000 Valve amp or a powerful Class A amplifier, fed to something like a set or martin Logan speakers, then everything you write here is absolute rubbish.

Millions of dollars are spent by studios to ensure that musical integrity depth width and height is maintained in the music. You simply CANNOT get this from listening to any compressed music through headphones.

Do you know whay your ear has the shape it does? because sounds emanating from diferent locations in space around your hear bounce off differnt bits of flesh on your ear and this gives them a subtlke and distict “colour” to the sound. This lets your brain identifu that ther sounds are coming from above, below and behind your head.

Good musical engineering uses these varioations to and fakes them on a recording, so when the sound comes out of speakers your ear can be fooled into developiong a 3D image of the soundstage. These subtle varioations are heavily distorted or losty in a format that uses a lossy codec.

The cm=mpression algorithms today are designed around the masses, ie, how much data can we lose that wont be noticed by the majority of listeneers, or those who dont care.

For me I will only listen to REAL recordings on CD or PCM audio for video recordings.

Everything outside of this scop is a PORTABLE FORMAT, with definite compromises and it is what it is, convenience.

You can records the intensity and dynamic impact of a concert on a cd with a massive dynamic range, you simply CANNOT do this on a mp3 or aac without losing information.

Some like to view art in person up close and about a metre away, to view the artists strokes, where pressure was applied, and all the nuances of what they were trying to communicate, others are happy to look at the same artwork as a picture in a magazine. Surely this is not the same thing, and neither is music recorded on a compressed format

So I hope that puts an end to this conversation,

By: J Mart

J Mart — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 04:51:39 +0000

Also I would like to add the fact I used to be a huge nut about being able to put a ton of songs on to a cd. It was so bad I downloaded “anything” above 128. And it wasn’t until recently (past 2 years) I really noticed a difference, and at that point I started caring a lot more of the quality of songs I put on my computer. It was in my CAR that I noticed small imperfections in the music and the pure degradation of songs. And if you are not careful in the selection of quality of the music that you play on any speaker you could risk the possibilty of damaging the speakers. Because in a lot of cases these imperfections in sound can be registered as distortion, and we all know that distortion can f things up including ears.

By: J Mart

J Mart — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 04:23:29 +0000

Very good read. I agree with some info and don’t agree on the rest. I did learn a new thing today (440 mhz vs. 432), in which I am going to experiment with. The couple of instances here that bug me are… With the technology that we have today in so many things are incredible! The fact that we can put a ton of music on a 1gb is awesome. But with storage space on these small audio pieces getting bigger and bigger. Why waste that much space on “low quality”, “compressed” music? Then the fact that almost all “car stereos” now will play almost every single format of music, wether it be wav, mp3, wma, or acc. Even stock car radios are on this band wagon. Also depending on the radio you can even hook up a portable hard drive to them. My point is , we all want more music with us at all times, but why settle for a million crappy recordings when we can have a few hundred GREAT recordings? Who is gonna listen to or get bored with more than a hundred songs during a car ride or a jog?
Thanks for the small rant.

By: Gary

Gary — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 18:45:43 +0000

Without debating whether or not AAC, MP3, and WAV really do have noticeable differences in sound quality, I’d like to point out that even if they do have differences, it’s not like most people could hear them. Most people listen to music on crappy iPod headphones or inexpensive computer speakers played through a soundcard that is so-so at best, and don’t really listen closely to the music. So if they can’t hear the difference, should they waste the extra hard drive space with WAV? No. So they go with MP3 or AAC. And those people make up the majority of Apple iTunes Store users, so guess what format the store’ll be using? The one that pleases the greatest # of customers. The smaller filesize also allows people to fit more songs on their harddrive–which Apple believes will translate to people buying more songs from them.