[D-Dub]

Lately I have been converting everything to m4a, is anyone else finding the quality to be better then the standard mp3?. I notice the difference alot on my Ipod the songs just sound that much better.


In case you dont know what m4a is its supposed to take over the mp3, but have better compression and higher quality. They state that a 96kbps song in m4a is supposed to be Equivalent to 128kbps in mp3. With sampling rates of 96khz the sound is extremely clean and vivid.

So whats your take on the future of music?

If you want to read up on it check this out m4a read up

[SL8RZZX3]

Sweet! the deck i just bought can play Mpeg4, but i had no f'ing clue as to what the hell it was!

New deck

nothing fancy, but it'll be sweet in my winter beater B)

[euro_zx5]

I've been reading on this on and off a couple months ago... looks promising, but it might take a while for the format to take off... depending on people's willingness to perform the conversion.

[darkpuppet]

Doesn't itunes rip to m4a by default?

I remember when everyone was talking about Dolby AAC (Advance Audio Codec).. offered surround sound at mp3 compression.

[FocusGuy7476]

itunes default is to rip cd's into m4a it can be changes to a couple of other options.

since i have been ripping all my music with itunes everything sounds 10x times better then regular mp3.

[D-Dub]

Yes it does but you can also convert your mp3s also. Since most of my music is live sets I find that converting to m4a retains the quality yet I can save a good 60 megs. Steve your right is does offer souround sound also. The codec was made by the orginal maker of the mp3(that German guy), but Dolby and some others have had an input also. Personally I hope this takes off, but alot of the content on the net is still in mp3 format.
The thing is you have to have a decent processor to compress the file, I find that a 200meg set takes about 10 min to re-compress in the m4a codec.

One thing Im starting to notice is that Apple is really moving towards the future and Microsoft is starting to play catch up.

[Aka]

Gooooo FLAC!!

:)

[D-Dub]

Whats FLAC?

[paolo]

here's something you guys should know. Converting your MP3's to a M4A or VQF or AC3 or whatever format. does not automatically make the quality higher... whatever the origional source was in quality is what your new file's quality will sound like. To have higher quality, you need to record right off a RAW Audio source or an AIFF/uncompressed wave. All these new formats are garbage, I just stick to MP3, which is the universal format.

[D-Dub]

paolo,Nov 1 2005, 12:06 PM Wrote:here's something you guys should know.  Converting your MP3's to a M4A or VQF or AC3 or whatever format. does not automatically make the quality higher... whatever the origional source was in quality is what your new file's quality will sound like. To have higher quality, you need to record right off a RAW Audio source or an AIFF/uncompressed wave.  All these new formats are garbage, I just stick to MP3, which is the universal format.
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Are you for real?
A song thats compressed to 320kbps versus 128kbps obviously the quality of the 320 is better. What this format is doing is saving you space yet still having retaining the same quality. Like I said in my previous posts "a 96kbps song in m4a is supposed to be equivalent to 128kbps in mp3". I dunno about you, but to me saving say 400 megs on my 4 gig ipod is quite a bit and if you transferd that to your computer say 6 gigs saved from 25gigs worth of music thats quite a bit too. This technoligy isn't bullshit its by far the future and if one of the largest music stores in the world (Itunes) is using it for all there music...........well then I guess the technoligy must be crap. I stated in my posts also that you dont gain better quality from converting to M4a from mp3. but you can save space.

[Aka]

I think what he meant was. If you take that 128 kbps file and then encode it as a 320 kbps you're not going to gain any quality, infact you'll lose some. I think he just meant upconverting and converting from format to format will not give you anything more, it will only take away. Unless the source file is lossless.

So converting your MP3s to M4A is not a good idea, unless 1) You have to for it to work in your player 2) you're converting to a lower bitrate. Converting 128 kbps MP3 to 128 kbps M4A just degrades the file more as the different codecs remove different information to compact the file.

FLAC = Free Lossless Audio Codec

Files are huge, but half the size of WAV files. All my music is encoded in FLAC so that I can convert it to ANYTHING with best results. Also it's all ripped using EAC so it's as close to perfect as I think you can get.

[D-Dub]

"128 kbps MP3 to 128 kbps M4A just degrades the file more as the different codecs remove different information to compact the file."

True but why would you do that ?, 128kbps mp3 is equivilant to 96kbps m4a and you gain space. Thats what Im saying..........


A 10 meg m4a song will have better quality then a 10 meg mp3. The 10 meg m4a song is encoded in a higher quality, but the compression is done differently.

[paolo]

D-Dub,Nov 1 2005, 06: Wrote:"128 kbps MP3 to 128 kbps M4A just degrades the file more as the different codecs remove different information to compact the file."

True but why would you do that ?, 128kbps mp3 is equivilant to 96kbps m4a and you gain space. Thats what Im saying..........


A 10 meg m4a song will have better quality then a 10 meg mp3. The 10 meg m4a song is encoded in a higher quality, but the compression is done differently.
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ya but then once you convert your entire mp3 library over, you need compatible software and hardware to play it, right? all my DJ stuff uses the most common file extensions, ie: mp3, wav, aiff, riff, ru, xm, etc... so it would be pointless for me to waste all the money i spent on my dj and audio software if it wont read my music library, secondly, my headunits in my cars and my dvd player in my living room reads data cd's with mp3 files stored on it, thirdly, all my cellphones recognize MP3, WAVE and AMR file formats only, so now im going to have to buy new DJ/Audio mixing software, a new head unit, for my car, a new cellphone that doesnt exist in the market yet that plays m4a and a new DVD player for my entertainment room for what, just to save an extra 10 megs of free space on my CD?

[Raine]

Is M4A a copyrighted format? MP3 sure is.

What ever happened to Ogg Vorbis?

[paolo]

Raine,Nov 1 2005, 07:41 PM Wrote:What ever happened to Ogg Vorbis?
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It died along with the VQF file format craze too, remember the VQF? was suppost to make the mp3 format die? never happened.

[Aka]

died? hah!

I'm using it right now (seriously, listening to Elgar - Enigma Variations 08 Theme - Andante.ogg). iRiver players support it, the Cowon iAudio M5 I want plays it (along with FLAC)... OGG is far from dead.

I know of a few games that use ogg aswell, for the ingame music.

MP3 is old old technology, it's only popular because it was there at the right time (Napster?)


128 MP3 to 128 M4A was just an example. But again 128 MP3 to 96 M4A degrades quality one step further. The file doesn't get smaller for no reason, they ARE removing more information/sound. An M4A file may sound higher quality at 96 if, and only IF encoded from the original source (say the CD), if you convert 128 MP3 to 96 M4A it's going to lose quality no matter how you look at it and wont sound as good as a direct rip to that bitrate and codec.

I personally still use MP3 on my iRiver SlimX-350 (3 years old? 4? fairly old MP3 player now), but only because I have to, as they never released the OGG codec for it like they claimed they were going to. They do however support OGG on all their new players.

[D-Dub]

if you convert 128 MP3 to 96 M4A it's going to lose quality no matter how you look at it and wont sound as good as a direct rip to that bitrate and codec.


Im sure it does but honestly you cannot notice the difference its so minimal.


Paolo obviously a technoligy needs to grow and Im sure if you were to buy newer stuff then it would support the format. My friends a DJ and his cd decks support m4a, his car DVD player supports it too.............I guess its just a case of your stuff is pre m4a technoligy and your limited to certain formats.

[Aka]

True the difference is minimal. But anything encoded to 128 kbps sounds like crap anyway (unless it's strictly voice, like an audio book, then you can go much lower).

[D-Dub]

yeah I was just mentioning that because that pretty much the standard........it actually all depends on the type of song. Some 128 mp3's sound damn good, most of the sets I download are usually in 192

[Aka]

I've never heard a song encoded to 128 kbps sound good. Sound alright, sure, but never good. The lowest I'll ever encode or download something is 192 VBR. Sound mostly decent, takes up a pretty small space.


Also, this is the same reason I'll never use a site like iTunes.. I'm not paying full price for a song that's missing 80% of it's sound information. Then the whole DRM crap... but lets not get into that.

Oh, and yes there are sites that offer FLAC/APE download without DRM, however they charge you even more, and it's just cheaper to go out and buy the CD, plus you get the booklet and stuff, and a pressed CD (better quality than a burn generally).