AAC or MP3?

Dempsey

My Phone supports AAC and MP3 formats. I've never used AAC, how does it compare to MP3's. Which should I use on my phone and what bitrates?

MrPinK

Although it only gained mainstream popularity in the last few years, MP3 has been around since 1987. It's pretty old, and has been surpased by the more recent formats like WMA, AAC and OGG. 96k ACC is roughly the same quality as 128k MP3, and would be my choice for a phone or other portable player.

Bruce Fan

For the purpose of your phone, I'd go with OGG.
As far as I know it can compress songs better than mp3 or aac (which is ideal for the small memory on your phone), while keeping the quality.

Dempsey

My phone doesnt support OGG

theothernt

Hi,

Dempsey - What phone do you have? and are we talking about AAC/MP3 for music or ringtones (or maybe both) ?

- Neil

Bruce Fan

If your phone supports Symbian based applications, then you can install an ogg application on your phone (Nokia 6630 & 6680 suppost Symbian).

Dempsey

theothernt, its a Samsung D500 and its for music and ringtones.

Is there any point in converting 128/192 kbit MP3 into AAC?

PiE

If space is an issue on the phone, then yes converting would be a good idea. You're hardly gonna be using high-end headphones with the phone anyway, so 192k MP3's would be overkill.

Dempsey

What Quality AAC?

theothernt

Hi,

AAC should be better quality, but only with a good encoder and at a high birtate (192kbps or above). So, if you have a whole load of MP3s already I'd stick with them.

As for quality, I agree with PiE. Keep the bitrate at around 128kbps as it will save some space plus you're not going to notice the difference when using cheap earphones.

For ringtones I recommend converting them to a lower quality (try 96kpbs) and from stereo to mono as the speaker on mobile phones isn't great. In the end, it may turn out to be a lot of work to convert lots of songs especially for ringtones so you might end up just using your regular music tracks

- Neil

Bruce Fan

As mentioned earlier 96k AAC (or as its also know: .m4a) is roughly the same quality as 128k MP3.
In other words you can convert a song to AAC at 96k and it would be around the same size but have better quality than mp3 at 128k.

Check out apple's own write up here.

You can convert any mp3s (amongst other audio types) to aac using iTunes.
All you have to do is right click on the song and then click "Convert Section to AAC".
Your new file will have the extension .m4a

Hope that helps.

BopNiblets

So converting to AAC is better for size then?
Might do it for my Sony Ericsson K750, the 64MBs filled up fast with MP3s at 96kbps. I'm getting a bigger memory stick soon.

dBpoweramp also has a AAC codec on its codec page.

http://www.dbpoweramp.com/dmc.htm
http://www.dbpoweramp.com/codec-central-mp4.htm

rogue-entity

Go with aac, the nokia 6680 from vodafone does not accept mp3 files as ringtonse because VF disabled it.

rogue-entity

rogue-entity wrote:

Go with aac, the nokia 6680 from vodafone does not accept mp3 files as ringtonse because VF disabled it.

I got a Nokia 6680 on Wednesday from a store in Newcastle West in Co. Limerick. It has Vodafone firmware 3.04.11 (14-04-05) and it does allow me to use an MP3 as a ringtone! Here's the proof, this file was actually on the phone already:



I was gonna send it to wolfman to get it debranded but I'm not sure I need to now, lol. Already asked VF for the unlock code, just waiting on it now.