which is better?  I thought AAC WAS Apple’s Lossless.  What are the pros and cons of each?

Apple Lossless sounds very good, but my 3G iPod paused occasionally with this format (file sizes are so large that the buffer management is an issue, and will pause).  So, I now use 320 and cannot tell a difference with my setup.  I would suggest 320 with an iPod.

AAC is advanced audio coding. Apple doesn’t own that. It’s a file compression format, and it is lossy.

Apple Lossless, obviously isn’t lossy. It retains all the sound of the original content, just in a smaller file size. However, the file size is MUCH larger than an AAC file.

i’ll stick wiht mp3 :D

[quote author=“antman22”]i’ll stick wiht mp3 :D

Diito^^  :D

I use AAC’s now. The sound is so much better at the same bitrate!

^^^^^agreed.  AAC is better sounding that MP3 (at the same bitrate)

I find this to be the case, as well. 

But, this is a hotly debated topic on many boards.  If one is happy with mp3, stay with mp3.  I am happy with AAC and plan to stick with it.

converted a bunch of songs to acc. to me i dont notice in any sound quailty gian or loss bewtween mp3 and acc. Acc is smaller in size tho whihc is a + in my book   😊

Dont convert from lossy to lossy (ie MP3 to AAC). You probably arent noticing a difference because you just re-encoded a compressed file into another compressed format. That is never good.

AAC is only smaller if you choose a lower bitrate. I find that a 112 kbps AAV sounds better than a 128 kbps MP3.

you will never get a better sound out of a song once it is compressed to an mp3, without using very expensive hardware to artificially recreate the original (to some extent). to trully compare aac and mp3, take a favorite cd of yours, encode with each one (at different bitrates if you want even more comparisons) and listen for details…

if you plan on using an ipod, be sure thats the platform you use to test for differences…higher quality speakers will make differences much more apparent.

the only time i really noticed an obvious deteroiration was running the sound for a dance concert. when you burn a cd (cds use wav files, uncompressed) from an mp3, it will still be the quality of the mp3. when you put that thru a professional sound board and large speakers…you will notice a good bit of quality is lost in the compression. however, most is in the extreme frequency ranges that “regular” speakers cant produce, so listening to your mp3s at home shouldnt be a problem (at least with any average computer speaker system…)