Why is it that when I scan MP3s ripped from iTUNES, that EncSpot picks it up as FhG (fastenc or mp3enc) and has yellow bar for quality? I thought iTUNES used their own encoder.

I don't know any definite answers concerning iTunes but the fact is that EncSpot only makes an educated guess at the encoder used, so it can often be wrong.

nope, itunes uses fhg. thats why theres no vbr, only abr and cbr

Kool! Boy am I glad I didn't have enough money for an apple because if i had gotten it, I wouldve spent countless hours encoding with iTUNES without knowing its drenched with bad quality! thanks a lot!

I don't know how true the first part is (though it does seem likely that Apple would have contracted out such a specialized area to an appropriate third party) but my copy of iTunes claims to do VBR encoding.

I have been told iTunes and QuickTime uses SoundJam. Can't vouch for the accuracy of this information. I read somewhere about Apple buying SoundJam and the program developers going to work for Apple, but I can't find the article anymore.

I friend of mine uses ITunes exclusively to rip and encode.
I have had oportunity to check his files several times using Encspot and it always reported Fhg codec.(I believe is the Fast version).
At 192k or higher they sound decent to my ears.
(feces1223 mentioned the "yellow bar" in EncSpot, wich probably means the files are encoded at 128k only).

LIF

iTunes supports VBR with some basic options (min. bitrate, quality) at higer bitrates overall quality is good, i seldom hear difference with lame (i use iTunes-Lame)



Apple bought SoudJam from Casady&Greene, and built iTunes over it, some info HERE

to my knowledge QuickTime is Apple stuff 100%

I'm fairly certain they bought in the Quicktime AAC decoder though they may have tweaked it inhouse (or paid to have it tweaked) for their Altivec-enabled processers.

I am under the impression that they licensed the sources from Dolby and are improving the codec based on those sources. I'm just speculating though.