Hello.

First and foremost, thanks to everyone who participates on this board. I've learned quite a bit about audio encoding just by lurking. There's a wealth of information here.

I plan on re-encoding my music library using iTunes @ 192 Kbps. I know that QT7 is set to be released with Tiger (I'm on a Mac), and I'm wondering if it would make more sense to hold off my encoding efforts until QT7 is released. (I'm looking at encoding 150+ CDs...)

I've heard that QT7 may (will?) include some sort of AAC variable bit rate, but I'm curious as to whether CBR encoding could improve with the newest QT release. Should I wait and see whether iTunes CBR is "tuned up" for better quality/performance? Or should I just go ahead and start ripping.

Thanks for any information you can provide.

why dont you try lossless? Then you can experiment with any lossy you want, wheather CBR, VBR, FBI, CIA, whatever...

192kbps with iTunes 4.7 should give ample quality headroom, so I'd just go ahead and rip now.

QT 7 will be released sometime next month, but you need a new version of iTunes as well to do free VBR encoding. I think April 28th is a likely date, as that is the 2 year anniversary for the iTunes store.

Wheter CBR encoding will see substantial improvements is anyones guess, but I would think they focus more on AACPlus, multichannel and VBR at the moment.

Thanks for the replies.

@ alfa156

I'm not really looking to go lossless at the moment. For one, I don't have the HD disk space. And two, my ears really can't tell the difference between CD and AAC 192.

@ Busemann

Thanks for the information. I'll probably just start encoding. I didn't know I'd need a new version of iTunes to take advantage of QT7, but that makes sense.

MR

then you probably cant tell between an ACC cbr, a good LAME preset nor an mpc. Choose a quality format that suits your needs and start encoding. AAC vbr vs cbr is for "Karajan" ears IMHO....