Very high quality iTunes AAC files now at Magnatune

All the AAC audio files at Magnatune are now downloadable at very high quality.

Previously, we'd been using a quality=3 settings, which yielded audio files that were about 150 kb/second in audio quality. Here is a typical file:

Now, all Magnatune files are available at quality=7, which yields a file around 260 kb/second, and a significant boost in audio quality. These files are pretty hard to distinguish from lossless.

Now, the ZIP files of the albums encoded at this higher quality are larger, but with disk space being plentiful these days, and the stack of emails I have from people asking for high quality iTunes AAC files, I thought this move made sense.

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LOSSLESS? Speaking of lossless, I just recently figured out how to make "Apple Lossless" files, with full metadata, so this will be an alternative download format in a few months, as part of the new rewrite of Magnatune.

-john

Comments

[ruediger]

I am pretty satisfied getting now those 258kb/s files, ... thank you john.

[panzi]

Have you taken a look at Opus? I know right now it's not supported by many players (it *is* supported by recent versions of Firefox, ffmpeg, GStreamer, VLC, foobar2000, Mumble...), but given the fact that even Microsoft (via Skype) was part of the development team and the WebRTC IETF standard includes Opus I have high hopes for it to be widely supported eventually. And they claim it is even better than AAC most of the time:
http://www.xiph.org/press/2012/rfc-6716/

Btw. Firefox's Opus support announcement shows an example that uses a song from Magnatune (Paper Lights by Ehren Starks)!
https://hacks.mozilla.org/2012/07/firefox-beta-15-supports-the-new-opus-audio-format/

[John from Magnatune]

Good point about Opus, and yes, it's on my list of formats to support.

Right now, we're busy doing a complete rewrite of Magnatune, which will also give us new servers and more disk space. Right now we're at 91% full on our music servers, so Opus needs to wait until the new year, when we have more disk space (and time) available.

-john

[Bill Stewart]

John--
I'll just be glad to be able to plug the downloads into iTunes with a lot less tweaking. A CD with, say, 30 tracks, can take maybe 10 minutes to process into iTunes and often has no artwork. So-- will I want to re-download older CD's to capture the artwork? I use the WAV files, but maybe that's going overboard.
Thanks,
Bill

[Robert Yannetta]

Referring to offering Apple Lossless with full metadata... THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Robert Yannetta]

When can we expect to see the file types? I can't wait to start upgrading my music library from 256kVBRs to Apple Lossless!!