leonski

Can someone tell me how big an mp3 track should be in itunes? Ive started putting albums into it but each track is between 6 and 10mb. Im just making sure that is right so that when i get my ipod and connect it there will be enough room. Just worried im doing something wrong and these tracks arent compressed to fit on ipod. dont want to have to do it all again.
cheers

Onan The Barbarian

You'll generally find that most mp3 tracks are about 4 - 5 meg. If they're consistently higher than that then you probably have your bitrate set higher than average. Which is not necessarily a bad thing. It means that playback will be slightly better quality

128 is about normal

leonski

Its on 192. Is this going to reduce my ipod storage massively? Looking through the avarage seems to be about 7mb. For instance if i got 1000 tracks normally how many will i get at 192? not excpecting an exact figure or anything just a rough idea of the differences. Is the quality much better at 192?

Mark Miwurdz

Not to the average ear but I'm sure someone will take issue with that. If you were listening to this stuff through top-end professional speakers, you may notice; unlikely through in-ear phones though.

I'm not sure how much space you'd liberate per track but it'll probably be 3Mb per track. Try reducing one and see what happens.

Cheers
Kav

leonski

i will be getting a car head unit to connect my ipod to so thats how i will be listening to it. Cant see me ever using the headphones really. Do you still think 192 is excessive and not worth the extra space? cheers for this by the way fellas

leonski

anyone?

Mark Miwurdz

This is difficult because hearing is so subjective. Why not wait until you get setup, then listen to 2 tracks; one at 128 and one at 192. You'll know soone enough whether it's worth keeping the 192 versions.

Cheers
Kav

messiah

192 MP3 will give you about 1.4 - 1.5mb per minute of music.

when listening through earphones I cant tell much difference between 128 & 192 - but I notice a big difference if I burn tracks to a CD to play in the car - all my stuff is in 320 AAC - about 2mb per 1 minute. 1258 tracks takes up 11.6GB. I'd basically go with the highest bitrate your storage device will allow and still get everything on - when I get a bigger HDD I might re-rip everything using Apple Lossless.

Personally, 192 is the lowest bitrate I'd go - If I'm downloading tracks I tend not to bother with tracks lower than that - but I also think the software thats been used to rip the track can make a big difference.

Hope this help - just found it in my itunes library

3 tracks - each 7.51 in length :
128 MP3 = 7.2mb
192 MP3 = 10.9mb
320 AAC = 18.1mb

leonski

cheers for that. So is that aac thing the one to go for then. i chose mp3 cos thats the only one ive heard of lol. If i put them on the ipod as aac could that cause problems with the head unit not playing them? Im getting the 30gb ipod anyway so if it holds a couple of thousand good quality tracks im more than happy. I dont want to connect it all up in the car and be dissapointed with the sound. Will it be like listening to a cd or not that good?

messiah

I dont think the format your music is in makes any difference to the head unit - it'll be the ipod doing all the decoding.

According to iTunes help file AAC is sort of like MP4 - it reckons a 128 AAC file is round about the equivalent of a 160 MP3 track. I personally find it a bit better than MP3 but as has been said - it's your hearing and you may think different. The difference in file size between the 2 is minimal, AAC is supposed to be slightly smaller.

Wikipedia has a fairly decent explanation of the differences if your interested - for all intents and purposes AAC was meant to be MP3's replacement, the clicky lists some of it's advantages, but most of it is jibberish unless your'e a Trekkie

Advanced Audio Coding - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

leonski

yep quite a lot of jibberish in there mate lol. cheers though at least i know im ripping my cds the right way now. going to try one in aac and see what i reckon.

Onan The Barbarian

To be honest, if you're buying a 30gb ipod then I wouldn't worry in the slightest. Just set the bitrate at 192. I can't imagine you'll come anywhere close to using all that space

Just as an add-on to this, if you're not going to use the ipod with the headphones as a personal music player I wouldn't waste your money just to use it as an in-car music storage device

I have a 20gb Creative Zen Mp3 player and an iPod Nano but I recently bought a car stereo that is USB ready. This means that you can just hook you stereo up to memory sticks and just read the music directly off them.

To me, this would be the best solution for you because it sounds like you're just planning to use your iPod as a storage device

messiah

Agree with you about filling it up - 30gb is quite a lot. even though I've 1200+ tracks in my library, there's a lot I could get rid off - but there's also a lot of stuff I'm looking to add.

Not sure I agree with you about not bothering with one if its just for car use - I found the better your speakers are the more the differences in track quality are apparent. I bought a set of Sennheiser ear buds off the Apple site and they are a massive improvement over the standard buds that come bundled with the iPod.

I've also heard good things about the Creative players but MP3 only puts me off a bit, i just prefer AAC. If was looking into getting a new player I think I might give Microsoft's Zune a bit of consideration - not as refined at the iPod yet but being 1st gen thats hardly suprising.

From I understand, if its sound quality first and foremost - Sony's ATRAC is hard to beat, only the soundstage software is a pain to use. I've got a Minidisc thats over 10 years old and I think it sounds better than my old 4th gen iPod did...