> AAC is clearly better quality, but are there
> any disadvantages? Do all the players we
> have purchased play AAC?
Tim,
Yes there are, and no they don’t.
But it’s even more complicated than that. I prefer AAC as a file format. However, I tend to use mp3 far more often. I’m hoping to shift completely to Ogg Vorbis as long as the compatibility gets up to scratch – and my collection is a mixture of all three. I’d say about 85% of them are mp3s, of which about two thirds are encoded at 128kbps and the rest are at higher rates (mostly my new default, 192k)..
I also have WAV files that I use for certain things, I try to avoid WMA files – and FLAC scares me a little bit – though the audophiles seem to really like it (it’s a lossless codec). So I’m watching to see which way these things are going. Ogg Vorbis is about to get interesting. AAC works best with Macs – and there are a lot of (mainly PC) based players that can’t deal with AAC.
WinAmp and iTunes are the most freely convertible players. iTunes has the better search and database functionality – important for large collections.
AAC+ really impresses me (the ‘plus’ is the next gen version – very good for streaming high quality at low bandwidths), but mp3 is the one thing that everything can do without fuss. Sony tried to go without it and opted for their proprietary ATRAC format (that nobody uses) and entirely lost the portable music player market to Apple. Not because AAC was better (though it is) but because iPods can do mp3s (and the interface software is a work of genius).
Mp3s are particularly handy for dragging and dropping into multitrack software. AAC files won’t do that for me in Audacity or in Cool Edit. Not sure about ProTools. I have my doubts.
I used to encode at 128kbps (okay for making radio shows and the single most common encode rate), but that was when drive space was a real issue. Anybody who enjoys listening to music will tell you that 128’s too low. I’ve gone up to 192, which is fine for most listening purposes and is still a major space saving.
It bugs me that my music files aren’t all in the same format. I shouldn’t even notice, but I do think about that. Digital cameras could all settle on JPEG – why can’t music players settle on something?
For the radio shows I make, a 128kbps mp3 is still way better than what the output of an FM processor sounds like, so from a purely production perspective, I’m okay with the fact that most of my music is less than perfect quality.
I can hear the problems with 128k when listening by myself in a quiet room or on good headphones – but on the bus with earbuds, or with other people around and wine being consumed, I can’t tell the difference at all.
So – the advice:
If you’re just going to play back off your Mac and swap files to the laptop, or listen on your iPod, then use AAC. For most of your purposes, you’re going to be fine with 128kbps AAC (the iTunes default) – or better yet, chage the settings to 192kbps – and I challenge you to hear the difference between that and a CD. You might, but you’d have to work pretty hard at it in comparison tests.
However, if you think you might do something else with your music – like share with PC users, use a different portable player or serve media through the house on anything other than the Apple AirTunes product, then stay away from AAC, even though it’s clearly the better of the two.
Some portable players won’t do AAC – and the wireless players are a problem. My Phillips Streamium can’t do them and nor can your Netgear MP101.
I have a lot of AAC files that I can only listen to via iTunes (one of three main music playback software programs I regularly use) and that won’t stream wirelessly to my stereo. I’m considering running a conversion overnight just for the streamium compatibility thing. Then again, I might be doing a mass convert to Ogg Vorbis on the forthcoming version, if it turns out to be as universally wonderful as promised – so I’m a bit bewildered.
Fed James again today. He came around for a few hours this afternoon to celebrate and finish off last night’s successful wireless setup. To talk me through the process, we used Skype again, which I’m completely sold on – and it’s just been incorporated into Motorola’s newest phone (there go the Telco monopolies). Better than phone or text chat – James was able to talk, type and show me solutions on the go as we worked, and we could wander away and do stuff we needed to do without feeling rude. There’s a research project in Skype just waiting to happen.
Anyhow, having marvelled at our cleverness at sorting the wireless networking thing (we actually had to hack my broadband router at one point – BT had literally broken the device’s functionality to make ‘ordinary’ use fairly easy, wireless access impossible and their own proprietary software mandatory), after lunch we got to work on trying to make the Phillips streamium thing work properly.
The media server software that it comes with is complete shit. It’s supposed to be a background piece of software, but it uses all the system resources, regularly freezing and crashing the machine. It’s not just me either – this is on all the media-server discussion boards online, but Phillips don’t acknowledge it as an issue.
So we looked for other options. The next one was a UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) media server called Allegro – which was good, but could not read iTunes databases as big as the one I have. 14 songs, fine. 26,000 songs – “invalid database”. Only found that out after restoring IP addresses in the unhelpful Advanced Settings part.
Ended up with a piece of free German software called TwonkyVision Music Server. Stupid name. It’s not intuitive to set up either. It doesn’t have browse buttons so you can find the folder the music lives in. You have to type in the directory path. That said, it more or less works, though you have to pay for an upgrade (around 15 Euros) to the full Media Server version if you want it to be able to allow iTunes playlists to be selectable from the Streamium box.
That sounds like the ideal solution. Scrolling in alphabetical order one artist at a time is no more help than a shelf full of CDs. As things are, these wireless audio boxes are for people with 20 discs in their collection.
You can tell it’s a technology designed to make way for video delivery (which it is apparently absolutely fine for) – and isn’t really that good for music. I’m pretty taken by the idea of the AirTunes after all this. If interacting with the device is going to be such a pain with the teeny screens and the slow alphabetical drudge through the list of artists, then just take that all away and let me make playlists in advance in a bit of software that I know works..
None of this stuff – the wireless networking, the media serving or even choosing the correct file types for personal music libraries – is within the grasp of the average user. We really are getting on board at the beginning and striking all of the teething problems. I haven’t been to bed before 1am for a week, just trying to get compatible media interoperation with two XP machines, a router and a streaming music box.
This should not be this difficult. I have several blog posts to compose out of all this. It’s just a matter of separating out the issues.
Paul Long loaned me a cassette. I marvel at its simplicity.
Cheers,
Dubber
