Hi!

I currently have my music stored in MP3 format at 192kbps but have just discovered that my RealPlayer Basic will allow me to rip CDs in AAC (.m4a) format! Which is best? Will AAC at 160kbps sound better/worse/the same as my current MP3s at 192kbps?

Which AAC bitrate will match my MP3 bitrate of 192kbps? Hope you can help me!

Thanks
Craig!

In my experience, I have found AAC to sound the same as a higher bit rate MP3 file. Another added benefit is the smaller file size, allowing you to fit more songs on your MP3 player/computer.

Also depends how portable you want them to be.

MP3 is a lot more universally recognised (standalone devices etc) than AAC.

A well coded MP3 will sound just the same to the vast majority of people. It's only audiophiles with fairly high end equipment that are likely to notice the difference.

(On the flip side, a badly encoded ANYTHING - aac, mp3 etc etc - will sound crap on any equipment)

Well, here's one test:
http://www.soundexpert.info/coders192.jsp

Could I tell the difference? Probably not.

One thought though - it's physically easier to convert a file on disk from one format to another than to re-rip from CD. Maybe if you might change your mind in the future, ripping to some sort of lossless codec (the low-tech way would be to a zipped WAV file) would allow you to change your mind later without messing about with CDs.

I'd keep it as mp3-much more common than anything else.