Ipod enroute....AAC Question!

[ReedW]

Hello. This is a great forum, and I am quickly becoming sucked into the world...Anyways, my 15gb 3G ipod is on the way but I have a few questions first. I used to have a 20gb Creative Zen that I sold to get an Ipod. All of my cds are already ripped onto the cd after a multi-day ordeal-so i thought most of my work would already be complete.....Boy was I wrong. I recently read a blurb here that mentioned the AAC formatting that IPods support. Could someone tell me a bit more about it? I know it provides excellent sound quality, but about how big are the files? How much smaller than mp3s are they? Also what would be the best program to (sigh) re-rip ALL of my cds w\ this AAC ( I use windows XP)...Thanks alot!
Reed Williams

[ech3]

At a given bit rate, AAC files and mp3 files are the same size.

However, many people believe that AAC is able to deliver a better sounding file at a lower bit rate than mp3 thus saving space on the iPod.

I'm re-encoding my CDs at 128K AAC. I normally would have used VBR mp3 (which gives about a 192K average). You should do your own listening tests and decide for yourself.

I'm using Apple's own Quicktime 6.3 to do my AAC encoding.