What audio format should I choose? Highest quality music format Part 2
AAC or MP3: audio quality and file size
To explore the differences between formats, let’s compare The Mountain Goats’ Wild Sage song encoded in each format at three different speeds: 128 kbps, 192 kbps, and 256 kbps. The higher the kbps, the larger the file, but the better the quality.
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Format Encoding rate file size
MP3 256K 7.8 MB
CAA 256K 9.0 MB
MP3 192 thousand 5.8 MB
CAA 192 thousand 6.7 MB
MP3 128K 3.9 MB
CAA 128K 4.0 MB
256KBIT / S AAC or MP3
The MP3 and AAC versions sound pretty much the same. The MP3 version is 1.2 MB smaller.
AAC vs. MP3 at 192 Kbps
These versions sound a bit confusing compared to the 256 Kbps versions. However, there is no clear distinction between AAC and MP3. MP3 is almost 1MB less.
MP3 or AAC A 128KBIT / S
The AAC file is a bit cleaner and brighter than the MP3 file, which suffers from a bit of haze and some mixing of sounds. The file sizes are almost the same.
In what format does the music sound with the best quality?
The most popular is the lossless FLAC format, and one of the most widely used CD to FLAC conversion programs is EAC (Exact Audio Copy).
Of all the parameters of digital audio, it is necessary to pay attention first of all to the following indicators:
sample rate (precision of digitizing an analog signal in time), bit rate (the amount of information contained in the file in terms of one second).
Sample rate is the rate at which digital audio is processed. The most common sample rate for quality audio formats is 44.1 kHz.
It is generally accepted that a high bit rate guarantees the best quality; this is true, but only if the source file is of good quality. A high-quality MP3 should have a bit rate of 320 kbps, but a high-quality FLAC format generally has a bit rate of 900 kbps or more.
