An iTune A Day

Apple has finally opened iTunes in Canada. Songs are just 99 cents each and albums are $9.99 each. I opened my account yesterday.

I have migrated most of my CD collection to a media server and I carry about 200 albums on my iPod. I burn to AAC using 256kbps at 44.1KHz. The resulting output is approximately 8MB per song. I have tried a number of approaches to compressing audio and, prior to the iPod, I had pretty much stayed with 192kbps VBR using MP3. With the iPod I moved over to AAC. AAC at 256kbps seems fine to my ears. I cannot reliably differentiate between source and copy.

I’m not too sure about the iTunes standard which is 128kbps AAC. I will need to do some listening tests to see if I can live with it. Otherwise, despite the convenience of the iTunes music store, I may still purchase CDs and rip to a better standard than 128kbps AAC.