160 gig iPod Classic best Bitrate

i think the best bit rate for mp3 is 320kbps, not sure about aac

For albums I really care about, I use Apple Lossless encoding.

For others, I use AAC @ 256 kpbs.

Good question though, does anyone know if AAC @ 256 kbps is as good as or better than mp3 at the same bitrate?

Cheers

I just found this:

"AAC files are generally higher quality and slightly smaller than MP3 files of the same song. The reasons for this are fairly technical (more about the specifications of the AAC format can be found at Wikipedia), but the overview of the reasoning is that AAC was created after MP3 and it offers a more efficient compression scheme, with less quality loss, than MP3s."

Source: http://ipod.about.com/od/introductiontoitunes/a/aacmp3choice.htm

Message was edited by: Woollers

Also found this, which seems to further support AAC over MP3. This one actually shows spectral analysis of the different sound signals and shows MP3 cutting off more frequencies in the compression process compared to AAC.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/mobile-music,489-7.html