iTunes song bit rate

Unfortunately, you can't. 128 kbps AAC Protected is the standard format for all tunes purchased through the iTMS.

Actually, 128 is pretty much the standard for legal music download services, although there are some exceptions. For top-of-the-line audio quality, you might want to give these guys a look:

http://www.musicgiants.com/

So there is no way for the songs to download at 192 kbps as I have set up my iTunes? They will override that and only allow a download of 128? That is a serious bummer and another reason to buy the CD instead.

You're referring to import encoding rate; that can be set at anything you want, up to Lossless, as we discussed. He's referring to downloads from the iTMS, which is a constant 128 kbps. There is no "setting" for that.

He's referring to downloads from the iTMS, which is a constant 128 kbps. There is no "setting" for that.

True, but there are songs in the iTMS which have a higher bitrate than that. Not many, but a couple here or there.

The bitrate is basically set by the artist/uploader/encoder. This stuff isn't encoded "on-the-fly" at Apple. They don't set the bitrate at which people download the stuff. If some independant artist wanted to use a higher bitrate when putting their music on the store, I don't think there's anything preventing them from actually doing it.

Adrian although Ive yet to see any, Im sure I read an Engadget post saying various downloads now have 2 or 3 bitrates to choose from, sadly I cannot say which they are.

Take Care

Gareth

Thank you for the information. It is good to know and makes me think twice about buying music online now. I had no idea, actually. I can tell you that I will not audio books online as the book I bought my wife was encoded at 32 kbps, which sound horrible to the audio books that she buys on CD.

Riversen~ Audible allows you to select the type/bitrate on all books downloaded there . . . you CAN select the quality there. 🙂

I saw that, but I was told that quality of 4 was 32 kbps. What is there CD quality bit rate? Is it at least 64 or 128? I emailed their customer support to find out, since I could not find this info on their website. They said that their 4 quality the quality that I get from iTunes, which is 32 kbps. If you have any experience with them, please give me your feedback on their CD quality downloads. Thanks in advance, Robert

riversen: Bitrate is not a measurement of quality. Not really. In the case of audiobooks, I've encoded audiobook CDs using iTunes AAC at 48kbps, and you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference from the original. Speech doesn't require lots of bits like music does.

That's probably referring to Audible.com downloads.

Thanks... so the book we downloaded is probably just a poor quality book, huh? Bummer.

Thanks... so the book we downloaded is probably just a poor quality book, huh? Bummer.

Could be. I've heard some pretty low quality audiobooks. If you're putting a guy in front of a microphone and having him read an entire book for 4 or 5 hours, having top quality audio gear for recording isn't often a big concern.