Importing at 128kbps AAC is not working!!!!

320 isn't lossless or CD quality, it's just the highest compression rate iTunes offers. Converting from 320 to 256 isn't the same as converting from CD to 256. You're going to get some unwanted artifacts this way. My guess is as a person who has 256k AAC files, you like your audio to sound very clean.

I can't tell the difference between 256 and CD, so that's what I use, but I think for this encoder I will leave tracks ripped with it at 320 for the rest of it's life in my library.

Even now though at 320 I just imported some very minimalist electronica by Richard Chartier at that came in at 177 kbps!! There is a lot of silence in the track, but I really have never been keen on VBR music.

I think it's a quicktime 7.3 thing, whether it's a bug or a "feature" though I'm sure we'll discover in due course.

This is a follow-up to my earlier investigation:

I can now confirm that the real culprit to this problem is indeed QuickTime as Adge suggested. The problem lies with the version that comes in Leopard but also with QuickTime 7.3 update.

I couldn't live with this AAC conversion problem, so I downgraded my other Mac into Tiger. After installing the operating system and all the available software updates – but without new iTunes 7.5 update – and sure enough, I was now having this same problem with Tiger as well.

So I started everything from scratch again. Erased the hard drive, installed Tiger, but now I didn't install iTunes 7.5 nor QuickTime 7.3 updates. That seems to clear the problems for me.

This now makes perfect sense. iTunes under Tiger and Leopard have same version numbers. On the other hand, QuickTime in Leopard is different from previous versions. And when I think about it, of course it's QuickTime what does the actual conversion work. iTunes simply uses QuickTime engine to do its magic.

I'm hoping for another QuickTime update to correct these conversions problems.

What I'd really like to know is if it's ripping at the same quality as before and reporting a variable number OR it's ripping at a potentially reduced quality.

Hence my decision to rip whilst in this state at 320 kbps somehow hedging my bets and at least staying above my desired 256 kbps in the majority of cases.

Message was edited by: adge

I wrote to apple support and got the following reply:

+I understand that, after upgrading iTunes, your music is importing with random bit-rates. I apologize for any inconvenience you have experienced with this issue. However, the nature of your question falls outside the type of support provided via email by iTunes Store Customer Support. I can only answer non-technical questions about billing, customer accounts, downloading purchases, and iTunes Store content.+

All I want to know is if this is a bug or the now normal behavoir for the encoder?

Thanks for the info ZagFinn

It's indeed QuickTime 7.3, cause QuickTime 7.3 + iTunes 7.4.2 shows the same 'semi-variable' bitrate.

Very annoying, I really don't understand this decision (if it isn't a bug)... iTunes Store tracks and my pre-QT 7.3 imports still show a constant 128 or 256 kbps bitrate.

I ripped a 5-track cd with the standard AAC 128 kbps preset, bitrates:
130-128-127-129-125

Ripped the same cd with a custom AAC 128 kbps + +Variable Bit Rate Encoding (VBR)+ setting, bitrates:
127-134-134-136-137

Really confusing (and inconsequent) isn't it? I hope this will be fixed in QuickTime 7.3.1

I also tried to uninstall QuickTime 7.3 manually and re-install the previous version. No luck, the 7.2 installer keeps telling me I can't replace a newer version...

If this is the way things work now, then I'm happy to accept that and move forward. If however this is a bug I don't want the hassle of re-importing all the CD's that were ripped with this new method.

I just installed iTunes v7.5.0.20 + the included QuickTime 7.3 on my Boot Camp Windows XP disk. Imported the same cd with the standard AAC 128 kbps preset: *no differences between Mac and Win* bitrates.

If no bug, iTunes Store purchases should show non-VBR variable bitrates soon I guess.

If this is not a bug and things will work that way from now on, I will go back to Tiger when I want to rip a CD, seriouslly. I don't want my songs ripped in some kind of bizzare VBR, because VBR doesn't works for me and I'm really OCD with my music library. 😀

I will try to call Apple Care on monday.

I completely understand you Quaid, I am very OCD about mine too!!

I have an itunes library of 33,000+ (98.6 days of music) tracks all ripped from my own CD collection at 256 kbps, it took me months to rip and organise my digital collection and I don't like adding too it with random rates. I'm currently ripping at 320 to ensure my minimum rate is never less than 256 but worry that I'm going to have a batch of missripped stuff and when newer levels of QT come out they won't playback these songs ripped with a potentially flawed encoder.

I'd like to know one way or the other, please let us know how you get on with apple on the phone.

I think it's worth to wait a little until it gets solved. Re-encoding it's never a good idea when you look for high quality, unless you use loseless formats. So, if you need to rip more CD's until a new version solves that, you'd better use WAV format, for example. That's what I'm doing now. 😉

I really don't trust on the AAC encoder of QuickTime 7.3. 😀

Hi,

Until the problem is resolved, if you really need to rip a Cd, why don't you use Toast 8, you can do an importation directly to Itunes and you got to choose AAC 128, 192, etc... This way, you got your bitrate right... But you got to do a little bit of tagging. When I tried it, it only gave me The Name, The Artist and the Album, so I had to add everything else manually!!!

I am sure Apple will have an update soon but I uninstalled Quick Time and reinstalled an older version. Bit rate stays to what I set it as.
Here is the link for older Quicktime
http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/quicktime716forwindows.html

Thanks SLADE666, I'll look for the Mac version of QuickTime 7.2.