Can Anyone Please Walk Me Through This?

Cwlondon,
I have been an audiophile and a DIYer since 1972. Over the years I have learn not to worry about hair splitting differences anymore. If my lady friend or I cannot consistently hear the difference, I would rather just enjoy the music and not worry about what was supposed to be better. Maybe you are right about the iPod’s internal amp and DAC limit, or maybe my old ears are just not sensitive enough anymore. But in either case, iPod playing MP3 encoded at 320kbs VBR sounded every bit as good as wav to me. That is why I encourage you to give it a try. If you can hear a difference, god blesses you. If you can’t, why waste the disk space?

Ultraviolet,
You can tag Apple Lossless. On average, it is about 50% smaller than wav and about 50% larger than 320bps MP3 VBR. If one really wants to be perfect, Apple Lossless is a good compromise. One down side is that you will be stuck with iTurn and iPod, nothing else can play that format.

OK - maybe we can simplify this for everyone:

1) MP3 algorithims have improved dramatically, but they are still compressed, digital files and let's face it: they ain't high end.

Their limitations and artifacts may be obscured by the signal chain, or be less relevant with certain types of music or lesser quality recordings, but otherwise should be audible to any self respecting audiophile -- even on a high end car stereo which is what led me to start this thread.

2) WAV files are probably a better audiophile solution, but you cannot easily "tag" them with track information. This, unfortunately, defeats one of the chief purposes of computer based audio -- convenience.

In addition, there are buffer issues when using WAV files which will rapidly drain battery life on portable devices and also cause audible skips in your music. Not to mention of course, that they take up massive amounts of hard drive space, which dramatically limits the amount of music one can store on their hard drive based device.

So in the end, portable devices including the iPod dont really "support" WAV files, any more than an all wheel drive Porsche 911 Carrera 4 "supports" driving on unpaved surfaces. OK, you can sort of drive off road, but not with the results that you wanted or were expecting.

3) Until this is all improved, Apple's proprietary "lossless" format may be the best solution, as it takes up less storage space than a WAV file and also can be easily "tagged" with track info, just like MP3 files.

It is unclear, however, how good Apple's format really sounds. And since it only works with Ipods, this is difficult to test.

It is likely,however, that this, too, may not be up to the high end standards of this forum for uncompromised playback through the best associated gear.

Do we all agree?

No we do not all agree. Not as a personal attack, but you seem overly rigid in your position, so much so that I question why you're even bothering with an iPod.

I agree that MP3 style compression is not high end audio, but I still argue that for certain types of music (modern pop/rock/country) the sonic losses are quite small. Also, it's not unreasonable to argue that due to their high background noise levels that any car system is not high end. If the car system can't be high end, then why quibble over whether the source is high end enough?

I use an Apple computer with my iPod and primarily use AIFF type files. AIFF is Apple's version of a WAV and it uses no compression whatsoever. iTunes automatically tags the files with album/song data and that info is easily transferred to the iPod. I have never experienced any buffer or skipping problems with my iPod and this includes the playback of several single songs that last more than an hour.

Regarding battery life -- yes, using uncompressed files will shorten usable battery life due to the greater use of the hard drive. I've read that the battery in 3 series iPod can sustain approximately 400 charge/discharge cycles. Obviously you're better off not letting your iPod fully discharge. At home you should always leave it plugged in. In a car you should use any of the readily available third party supplied lighter adapter chargers. There are also add on battery packs that claim to more than double the usable discharge time of the iPod. Worse comes to worse, Apple will replace dead batteries for $99 installed.

With a 30Gb iPod using AIFF files I typically achieve 5-6 hours battery life and can store 650 songs. When I really want to load up a lot of music I copy the selected files to AAC (192kbps, mono) and then can store nearly 4,000 songs on the iPod. Mono works for me since I would only listen in the car and stereo information just isn't important
to me in such an environment.

Your next to last paragraph perplexes me. By design an iPod is not a high end oriented device. It's a convenience, lifestyle oriented product. I know that there are some audiophile who use their iPods with expensive cables and there's probably somebody out there contemplating how they can cryo theirs, but I still maintain it's not being entirely realistic to hold the iPod up to high end standards. For what it is the iPod is a great product, but you have to accept it for what it is. If you require true high end sound quality in a digital portable playback system you might want to consider one of the various Nagra products.

I disagree on a few points. First, read this article here:

http://www.geocities.com/altbinariessoundsmusicclassical/mp3test.html

Realize that 1.) To claim that your hearing is superior to some of these folks, while certainly possible, is unlikely. And if you're going to be straining like they were in a critical listening session, the ipod is not for you. 2.) The -alt preset mp3 encoding suggested in this thread is far superior to the mp3s used as test samples in this article.

Also, Apple's lossless compression is...lossless. I'm not really sure what you're going to add to lossless in any setting to make it sound better.

And, forgive me, but aren't you looking for a format for an ipod? You're not sitting in an anechoic chamber. You're going to be listening to headphones (and if it's the Apple earbuds this whole thread was for naught). You're probably not even going to be using a portable amp and I can guarantee you this, without an amp, any headphone straight out of the ipod jack is utterly incapable of resolving any difference in what may, or may not, exist between -alt present mp3s, Apple lossless and wavs. Even with an amp, my Shure e5's (while they might not be the ultimate headphone, they're pretty close) and Senn 600's made my VBR mp3s sound pretty fantastic--every bit as good as the original wavs.

What this all boils down to (and correct me if I'm wrong) is that you haven't even tried these formats yet. As always, trust your own ears. And while I am very thankful for a great deal of advice gotten from A'gon, I have come to the point where I realize, based solely on my hearing (which as a musician isn't shabby) that a lot of it is crap posted by people that must feel that they own the best. If possible, do some ABX testing so you can be honest with yourself. I think you'll be shocked. But regardless, I'm interested in hearing the results

I'm sure there are situations where there is an audible difference between mp3s and wavs. After all, mp3s are a lossy compression format. However, the ipod is not one of those situations. But for this reason, if your sole interest in this project is to make digital backups of your music, then obviously do not use the mp3 format. Personally, I have backups in FLAC (a lossless compression format) and those same cds in -alt preset standard mp3s for use on my ipod. Even if you have a thousand cd's, this solution isn't going to cost you more than about $100 in hard drive space. You'll have the peace of mind knowing that your music is backed up in a perfect format and you'll have the added benefit of enjoying a boatload of great sounding music and battery life (as good as the ipod gets at least).

Edesilva, you might be interested in the last post on this thread on hydrogenaudio regarding the -alt presets. By the way, Dibrom is the author of those presets.

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?showtopic=3155&st=0&&