Which format is best for your music files: AAC or MP3?

Today, there are many digital music formats that are widely used in the market, with two of the most popular names being AAC and MP3.

Today, there are many digital music formats that are widely used in the market, with two of the most popular names being AAC and MP3.When you are downloading a song or playing music, you often cannot choose the format of the music file, but if you extract music from CD to digital, you can choose the format you think the best.So the question is, which format should you use?In fact, there have been many tests to determine whether a music format is capable of outperforming other audio quality formats.Let's find out later.

AAC and MP3

The Audiophile and compressed music
AAC versus MP3
1. Test items
2. 256Kbps
3. 192Kbps
4. 128Kbps
Conclude
File sizes by type and encryption rate

Audiophiles and compressed music

Which format is best for your music files: AAC or MP3? Picture 1

Audiophile is the term for a group of enthusiasts who love the "most realistic sound reproduction" process.Most Audiophiles often have superior hearing, own top audio equipment and are especially interested in sound quality as best as possible.Therefore, they tend to not use or underestimate compressed music formats (lossy) such as MP3, AAC and other digital audio formats because these music files have simply been compressed to create into smaller files, so the details and sound quality are also significantly reduced.

To compress a music file to optimize the size, one often has to trade off by cutting details in the highest and lowest sound bands.However, these sound bands are often very difficult to hear, so most people who listen to normal music will not be able to hear the obvious loss or difference.

What I want to say here is that for advanced audiophiles or often with many prejudices with compressed music, this article is not really for them.This article will be more suitable for ordinary music listeners, someone who is using an iPhone or iPod or any regular music device . not those who own the speakers or the ear Listen expensive.

Pros and cons of lossy and lossless music files, what is the optimal choice for phones?

AAC versus MP3

Which format is best for your music files: AAC or MP3? Picture 2

It is believed that AAC is the preferred audio format of iTunes and Apple Music because it gives better sound quality and takes up less memory space than MP3 when compared on the same song, whether this is correct or not?

In order to make comparisons and clarifications, any two songs have been encoded in a variety of ways: in 128 and 128-AAC AAC and MP3 files, in AAC and MP3 files 192 Kb / sec, in the form of AAC file and finally MP3 256 Kb / sec.In particular, the higher the Kb / second, the larger the file size will be, but the sound quality will be better, at least in theory.All of these music files are encoded with iTunes' built-in encoder.

Test items

Which format is best for your music files: AAC or MP3? Picture 3

The two songs selected in this test are The Mountain Goats' "Wild Sage" with a gentle but complex rhythm and "Leaving on a Jet Plane" by Me First and Gimme Gimmes with a lively and slightly fast tempo. little.

In "Wild Sage" is full of complex sounds, from delicate piano to smooth guitar notes combined with high, breathtaking vocals.The reason this song was chosen is because it is the complicated parts that will reveal what parts are reproduced or clipped in different versions of the compressed file.

On the other hand, "Leaving on a Jet Plane" has a fast, powerful rhythm with deep, deep bass and intricate drums.Hopefully this song will show us more 'dynamic' sounds and reveal other things that "Wild Sage" with quieter rhythms will not be able to show.

Both tracks are compressed from the CD to ensure the original sound quality at the best possible level.Below are the specific test results:

256Kbps

Wild Sage: Both versions of the song have excellent sound quality at 256 Kb / s.It is possible to hear every sound of guitar strings and the singer's breath without seeing distortion or distortion at any note.The MP3 and AAC versions sound very similar, so the clear winner cannot be identified here.The smaller sized MP3 version is 1.2MB AAC.

Leaving on a Jet Plane: Similar to Wild Sage.The song sounds great.The vocals are clear with subtle intonation and a general sense of brightness of each tonal range is great.Both formats are not significantly different.

192Kbps

Wild Sage: This version sounds a bit less detailed than the 256 Kbps version, just because it is in a smaller format, which means more compression.However, there are still no clear audio differences between AAC and MP3, and in terms of capacity, MP3 is nearly 1MB smaller.

Leaving on a Jet Plane: Still the same as above.The sound quality if listening carefully is not as good as 256Kbps but there will be no clear difference between both file formats.

128Kbps

Wild Sage: Finally there is a clear difference.In this version, the AAC format gives a clearer and slightly brighter sound quality than MP3, which is darker and there is no small separation between certain audio ranges.The file sizes are almost identical, so AAC version becomes the absolute winner in this category.

Leaving on a Jet Plane: At this time, AAC is slightly superior to MP3 in terms of clarity and clarity of bass, the rest, the song sounds quite similar and has the same file size.

Conclude

Which format is best for your music files: AAC or MP3? Picture 4

Although there are slight differences in the sound of all three comparison categories, these are not very clear and in general they still have the same sound quality.

Although there may be a bit more detail in the 256 Kbps MP3 version, it is indeed difficult for 'amateur' ears to be detected, while the file sizes are much larger than lower version.

Therefore, with the results of this experiment, it seems that the debate between AAC and MP3 can be fixed according to each person's interests, opinions or hearing ability.