Hi guys,

I have the same CD Title in two formats:

1) .mp3 VBR 192 J-Stereo
2) .m4a

The .m4a I can play with WMP 10

My intent is to create an Audio CD, therefore I'd like to know which of the two formats is best.

I'm not familiar with .m4a, usually I use Feurio or Nero to burn my CDs, will I face any issue with this format?

Thanks
Alex

depends on which audio you have in m4a. if you are using aac then aac is technically superior than mp3. However mp3 still remains king with the most hardware and software support.

Well, the only information I can see in WMP 10, properties, is Audio codec: AC3Filter.

I you tell me how to get more info, I'll be glad to do so.

Thanks
Alex

In order to answer that I will need to know how you are creating your m4a files? But in most cases m4a has raw aac files in it.

No idea how it was created, the files have been downloaded from the net, however, if I play them in Nero Show Time, I can see:

CurrentAudioConfiguration: AAC

Maybe this helps??

Alex

They're probably AAC's encoded in iTunes. If you open them in quicktime or itunes, you'll see which version of the encoder and bitrate that's used.

The simple answer is: Whichever one sounds best to you.
If you don't hear a difference, it doesn't matter which one you use.

If it's a LAME -alt preset standard mp3 versus an iTunes or Nero m4a, they'll both be of high quality. At similar bitrates m4a *should* be better, but there's no guarantee.

dBPoweramp provides complete popup info (all tags, codec, encoding software, etc) in Windows Explorer for almost any format imaginable. It's what I use to view tag info.

I used to use dbPowerAMP, but was only wanting it to display info as a shell popup. Problem for me was that it wouldn't display FLAC info. I found AudioShell. It's only function is to provide the shell popup.

Actually, dbpoweramp displays flac tags fine. You just need to install the codec from the codec central page on its website. Also, I have used both and prefer dbpoweramp over audioshell because it gives you more information about the file.

I have FLAC installed, but it wasn't in the dbPowerAMP directory. I never used the program for anything, other than to show the shell popup. Yeah, it might show a couple extra bits of info, like size both before and after compression, as well as compression %, but I can get that in fb2k if I want it.

The thing I really liked about AudioShell is that it gives the ability to change tags through the "properties" window when you right-click on the file. If you select a whole set of files, there are "next" and "previous" buttons to move from file to file too.

The one thing I did like with dbPowerAMP's popup, was that it did show the contents of m3u playlist files. So you could get a pop up that displays the play order. AudioShell doesn't have that.

You have to install the corresponding codec plugin from dbPowerAMP's website for the the software to display the tag info. Thus, if you want to see FLAC tags, you need to install the FLAC plugin from dbPowerAMP's website in ADDITION to the FLAC codec itself.

I understand that. Frankly, I think it is ridiculous to have to install two different codecs. So I got rid of dbPowerAMP. I wasn't using it for converting files.....fb2k does that just fine.

It probably would be best to get the thread back on topic now.

Here's what I'd suggest:

Use the format your preferred software and hardware support natively to avoid transcoding issues (time, possible quality loss). That said, if you have native support for both MP3 and AAC, then:

- Download either dBpowerAMP + the its AAC plugin or AudioShell so that you can see the properties of the files in Windows Explorer. I recommend dBpowerAMP because of its conversion features which come in handy when transcoding can't be avoided.
- Do an ABX comparison of the two tracks with Foobar2000, and choose the file that sounds better to you. If you can't tell the difference, choose the one with the smaller size.

Hardware compatibility, transcoding loss and filesize are hardly an issue here. He wants to create an Audio CD (no compatibility problems), which means transcoding to 16 bit PCM (no transcoding issues) and the endresult is going to be hundreds of megabytes either way.

The only important thing here is the quality of the source. If the AAC is made with a decent encoder (recent Nero or iTunes, not FAAC) and the bitrate is the same for either formats then quite probably the m4a will have better quality. Listening is king though.

I assume he's not just going to discard the downloaded file and might want to play it back on his PC/some other device in the future. I guess I was just being longsighted.