Skip AAC and go FLAC. Given HDD sizes now, there's no reason not to use FLAC For everything.

 

wma is **** no matter how you look at it.
You can't just say one compresses more or less then other. You have to look at the logic that is involed in the compression. MP3 blows wma out of the water when it comes to logic in relation to file size and audio quality.

Yes I know there is always lossless and monkey audio; however, in a stock IS stereo or even the ML you are not going to hear a difference (IF YOU USE A GOOD CODEC)

mp3's are universal and also transportable without having to add an extra step

mp3's have a vast source of different codecs (which is what makes all the difference in the world, NOT bit rate). I have tested this at my studio at my house. lame vbr vs any other codec (cept maybe fraun). Sounds great. Not as good as 44.1 pcm, but good enough. And this is on 3 different sets of monitors, tannoy, yamaha, and htd's. Also in 2 sets of headphones senn's and sony studio.

if you are saying you can hear the difference on a stock 2IS stereo between a good codec @ 160 and a good codec @ 320 that's pretty crazy. Maybe on the ML you "might" hear some hashing in the highs but I doubt it. ON a nice home setup I would agree, but then again at home you should be listening to 44.1 pcm.

 

Well being that I walk around with Sony Studio 7502s plugged into my ipod, I CAN hear the difference between 160 and 320. That's why most of what is on my ipod is 320k.

On my home reference system, I listen to FLACs from my HTPC or 24/96 DVD-A's that I've mastered. So a 160k track sounds like crap there.

In the car, I definitely can tell the 160 versus 320. Maybe it's years of sound editing but I can definitely tell.

 

I really would, it's just most of the stuff I download is obscure Finnish Metal and I can't find the flac's on newsgroups, only 320kbit mp3s.

Oh btw, you computer nerds, click the cancer link in my sig, join the Clublexus F@H team.

 

Yes the mdr's are the only good sony product they make other then their t.v.'s. however, this thread is not asking about ipod's and sony studio headphones. It's asking about a stock IS stereo. Which again you are not going to hear any hashing in a well ripped (good codec) mp3.

 

If you are grabbing mp3's from usenet like you said most people on there are pretty picky about what codec they use. I would say 90% use LAME. The only time you see it not , is if it's a NMR. Even in that case it usually comes from some group that is pretty picky about their codecs.

We run folding@home on our work computers after hours.

 

that's the give and take. If you want pure sound quality, go with CD.

If you want 300+ songs in 1 CD, go with mp3 and suffer the "distortion"

then this goes to the next question:
can ML system play HDCD/SACD?

 

Do you guys know if the player plays different bitrate other then standard ones? For example 205kBits? or 211?

 

if it's an mp3 , your stereo will play it. It's decodered doesn't care about bit rate.