Typically to create high quality MP3 files from a CD, a program such as EAC is used to first create WAV files, and then an encoder like LAME is used to create the MP3.
What is the best way to create AAC files? Should you simply copy the CD with a program like Itunes? Or should you first create WAV files with a program such as EAC, and then encode them to AAC? If so, what are the best AAC encoders? Or should you just let Itunes do the encoding from WAV?
Would like to hear some of your recommendations and opinions on this.
Creating a WAV is a completely unnecessary step if you're going to then encode them to AAC. You can go straight to a AAC with no quality degradation minus the huge amount of quality difference between AAC and the CD: CD to WAV to AAC is no better than CD to AAC. Of course, you could use an alternative codec such as FLAC and save the audio completely losslessly without having too terribly large a file.
That being said, Itunes will convert the files to a 256kbps AAC file; not the highest possible quality of AAC. Other programs however, such as foobar2000, with the right plugins, will create a 320kbps AAC file.
Thank you for your input William. I wasn't aware of that. Can you shed any light on why WAV creation is unnecessary for encoding AAC? If this is the case it makes you wonder why people go through all the trouble with EAC/LAME/MP3 when they could just encode in AAC and have a better sounding audio file anyway.
Itunes will rip at 320 Kbps AAC. Maybe previous versions didn't but I can assure you it does now. I ripped a CD today at 320 Kbps CBR AAC.
It's simply an unnecessary step. You're basically taking loseless audio on the CD, converting it to a different loseless file type (WAV) and then doing the conversion to AAC, making the audio lossy, when you could go from the loseless CD straight to the lossy AAC. The conversion to WAV is unecessary because it is possible to go from the CD straight to AAC. Furthermore, it also doesn't matter that the conversion to WAV doesn't take place because the CD's audio is loseless and you are creating a lossy file from it. Converting to WAV won't increase the quality in any way and it is not a prerequisite to making an AAC file and so therefore it is an unnecessary step.
To get the very best quality: use the CD itself or rip it to a WAV file or any other loseless audio codec.
Thank you for clearing that up. I assume the same must apply to MP3 then too.
I may try and find myself a decent AAC encoder for EAC. I think Itunes will more than suffice in the mean time though.
I may also look into FLAC, as you mentioned. What slightly puts me off FLAC though is the lack of portability and compatibility. Quality wise, would a MP3/AAC created from a WAV file be superior to one created from a FLAC file? To your knowledge. As if I were to create lossless copies of my CDs I would like them flexible in regard to encoding them to other formats.