Audio CD to M4A

[anirban]

Can anyone tell me how to convert Audio CD/mp3 to high quality m4a files for playing in car audio with AAC support?

I have Pioneer 5950 Headunit. So AAC is written on it. Does it mean that it can play AAC files when written in a CD?

[tebasuna51]

Your Pioneer 5950 can play also mp3 then is not recommended recode a lossy format to other (you can save around 30% space but always with less quality).

Uncompressed format like Audio CD can save more than 90% space. You can extract the uncompressed format (.wav) from Audio CD with Nero (or CDex, EAC, ...) and convert to aac with Nero or CT (winamp) encoders in command line or using BeLight, BeHappy or Foobar. After you can write a Data CD with the compressed files (like with mp3).

There are many solutions search the more easy for you.

[anirban]

So which will sound better at 320kbps? MP3 or M4A?

[tebasuna51]

At this bitrate I can't hear any difference. AAC is better than MP3 at low bitrates.

[fibbingbear]

How good it will sound will depend on the encoder as well. For example, LAME mp3s typically sound indistinguishable from the original at ~192kbps (corresponds to -V2 --vbr-new).

For AAC, the Nero Digital Audio encoder is free to download and quite good. It sounds nearly transparent at around -q5, which corresponds to ~170kbps.

Unless you're a gigantic audiophile, you're almost certainly not going to be able to tell the difference after ~224kbps for either mp3 or aac. Personally, I can't really tell the difference for mp3 after ~192kbps (I have done multiple ABX tests).

Also, when encoding, it's almost never recommended to encode at a bitrate. Use the quality-based settings instead (like -V or -q). That way, all the music will be at the same "quality"

The hydrogenaudio forums will have more information about this. They're the doom9 for audio :p

[anirban]

Fine..thanX