Can someone explain itunes to me?

[joshwa]

I understand the basics - but what about the file - will I get it as an mp3? and can I burn the file to a cd using nero etc? and what quality will it be? (comparable to cd / vbr mp3 192+?)

Thanks

[herulach]

Youll get (what i assume youre talking about as in d/led music) as a DRMed AAC at (IIRC) 128k, you can burn it to a cd 5 times using itunes and can copy it to an mp3 player, but only one that does aac drm, so basically an ipod, but only a certain number of different ipods (not times to the same ipod)

[joshwa]

hmmm that's pretty poor compared to getting an mp3 (from a CD you own) at higher quality ...

[herulach]

hmmm that's pretty poor compared to getting an mp3 (from a CD you own) at higher quality ...

Yep, and exactly the reason why i dont use it, its also no cheaper assuming you want albums rather than single tracks.

[Spud1]

you get CD quality tracks, i've bought a few tracks off iTunes with no problems, quality is great maybe you can tell the difference with super none human ears, but if your human you wont be able to tell the difference between and iTunes purchased song and a CD ripped one.

As for the protection thats not hard to remove - legally (i think )

Burn it to a CD (as your allowed to) and then re-rip it as a none-DRM mp3 simple

[Dougal]

Burn it to a CD (as your allowed to) and then re-rip it as a none-DRM mp3 simple

But you still can't get higher then 128KB.

It may say a higher value when you rip it, but due to aliasing and clipping (study physics if you want to know the details) it will still be lower

[StoneNewt]

Spud1; what, may I ask, are you listening to your music through? I ask cause my mini plumed through on old battered Sony stereo 128kbps mp3s are fine, on my Haffler studio monitors they are awful...

[Spud1]

listening through a hi-fi separates amp/speakers, pretty decent but by no means top end. tonnes better than any PC speakers though

I know that you cant get more than 128kps but you cant compare AAC and MP3 bitrates, just like you can't compare WMA and MP3 biterates iirc, they dont work out the same quality becuase of the compression methods (correct me if i am totally wrong)

[herulach]

listening through a hi-fi separates amp/speakers, pretty decent but by no means top end. tonnes better than any PC speakers though

I know that you cant get more than 128kps but you cant compare AAC and MP3 bitrates, just like you can't compare WMA and MP3 biterates iirc, they dont work out the same quality becuase of the compression methods (correct me if i am totally wrong)

True, but i can still tell the difference between a 128k aac and a 190k mp3 (this is on my grado sr60s) above around 190 the differences arent noticeable enough to worry about the huge file sizes (at least for me, i cant be arsed re encoding my library to fit on my mp3 player, although i am tempted to rerip to flac now i have the new hard disk in)

[EvilWeevil]

I don't generally buy music off iTunes, only the weekly freebie. Only if I'm really unable to find something or just really impatient do I even think about purchasing.

[StoneNewt]

True, but i can still tell the difference between a 128k aac and a 190k mp3 (this is on my grado sr60s) above around 190 the differences arent noticeable enough to worry about the huge file sizes (at least for me, i cant be arsed re encoding my library to fit on my mp3 player, although i am tempted to rerip to flac now i have the new hard disk in)

Though there's the whole apples & pears (pardon the pun) comparison going on here, I can hear the diffrence between 128kbps ogg/mp3/wma/aac to >190kbps of the same format. I will say that I run a tri-amp Haffler configuration speaker setup which makes the whole system much more sensative to acoustic inacuracy in reproduction, for this reason my music collection is in Apple Loss-less Audio format.

[bsodmike]

Excuse me, but have you guys missed the 'change codec' option? I rip (if I must) as mp3 @ 192KB/s or 320KB/s (overkill) if it is an album I really treasure.

[herulach]

Excuse me, but have you guys missed the 'change codec' option? I rip (if I must) as mp3 @ 192KB/s or 320KB/s (overkill) if it is an album I really treasure.

No, but you cant do it on things downloaded from iTunes store, as they have the drm on them, also, have you ever listened to somehting transcoded from one format to another? It sounds hideous.

[bsodmike]

Well for starters I do not use the iTunes store... so DRM doesn't affect me really. Still manually ripping discs as MP3s with a high enuff bitrate sounds great.

[Jonny M]

Why rip to mp3 when you could rip to AAC?

[herulach]

Well for starters I do not use the iTunes store... so DRM doesn't affect me really. Still manually ripping discs as MP3s with a high enuff bitrate sounds great.

Well yeah, but since the entire point of the thread was to ask about Itunes store then i thought you would be talking about it