Open up iTunes U, Apple

Penginkun, two words for you: Q-Tip. :)

Kidding, but seriously, everyone has their own listening perception, it's true, but spend a few minutes in Google and you'll find almost universal disdain for iTunes' native MP3 encoding when compared to LAME or AAC.

Believe me, if I hadn't noticed immediately how crappy iTunes MP3 encoding was after ripping my 300+ CDs and putting them on my shiny new iPod 3 years ago, I wouldn't have gone through the trouble to rip everything again (and believe me, it was a lot of trouble). I found it so bad that I almost suspected Apple intentionally sabotaged it to steer people to AAC (hmm...).

Unless Apple has improved their MP3 encoder in later versions of iTunes (which they may have, I don't know), I would stay far, far away from iTunes-encoded MP3s. LAME and AAC are great. Lossless, even better (psychologically at least). :)

"AAC 192 vs. MP3 192 using the default iTunes MP3 encoder (or the default MP3 encoder in many other audio apps)? Heck yeah I'd hear the difference, and so would you."

No, I wouldn't. Believe me-I've played around with the settings. I've got a nice pair of headphones. I've done a lot of playing around. In the end I don't hear any difference between AAC and MP3, no matter the encoder. And I'd be willing to put up good money that says most people can't either.

Since enhanced Podcasts crash the iPod (see http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=1617093 here for details), I too think it would be better to go MP3.

Or fix the iPod bug, but that seems to take Apple years (witness the aeons it took them to fix the clock-battery bug in the 1Gs, and the Smart Playlists not updating on the 4Gs)

For more on the great AAC vs. MP3 debate check out:
http://www.firstpr.com.au/audiocomp/aac-mp3-vq.html

It's only 6 years old, but still pretty relevant. Some songs sound really bad in MP3, with a wind or flanger type effect...

If Apple is paying the bandwidth cost to offer a free service like podcasts of university professor lectures, then why should they have to offer the audio in MP3 format for non-iPod owners? Buy a friggin' iPod. Its as simple as that.

Now, should Apple license the FairPlay DRM to a select few manufacturers of audio products so they are compatible with the iTunes Store and Apple prevents a near-future antitrust claim? Certainly. But that's not what we're exploring here.

penguinkun, this is not true:

"Apple can cause the iPod to reject AAC files not encoded with their tools though. Witness the whole Real thing."

Real "tricked" iTunes and the iPod into believing that its DRM was FairPlay. It had nothing to do with a standard AAC file. Any AAC file can play. What cannot be played is someone else's DRM or someone else's DRM pretending to be FairPlay.

"AAC is not "superior" to MP3 though, at least not sonically. It's all compressed audio, so it's all lossy."

That's completely wrong. Just because they're both lossy doesn't make them equally lossy. AAC has broader and more dynamic sound ranges and is a much better reproduction of the original depending on the codec.

"But if I sat you down with some headphones and two copies of the same song, one encoded with AAC at 192 and one with MP3 at 192, you'd never hear any difference."

AAC 192 vs. MP3 Lame 192? Nope, I wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

AAC 192 vs. MP3 192 using the default iTunes MP3 encoder (or the default MP3 encoder in many other audio apps)? Heck yeah I'd hear the difference, and so would you. I'm no audiophile, but I learned the hard way that ripping an entire CD collection to MP3 in iTunes is a big mistake. After many, many hours of re-ripping to multiple formats, I finally ended up with Apple lossless for archive and AAC 192 for daily listening. AAC not because it's better than MP3 Lame, but because it encodes far faster on a Mac.

But I digress. You see all these "iPod killers" floating around out there that play every format under the sun but AAC. And why is that, since AAC is not an Apple-proprietary format?

So I think it's disingenuous to criticize Apple for building iTunes U around AAC when you could just as easily criticize Creative/et al for ignoring the AAC format. Unless there's some aspect of MP3 vs AAC licensing that I'm not aware of.

MP3 is no more "open" than AAC (but of course it's more ubiquitous). Both involve royalties, and neither involve royalties to Apple. If Mr. Udell is a proponent of "openness," as he states, he should be fighting for OGG support, not MP3 support, from both Apple and device makers, no? If he's arguing "commonality," then by all means argue for MP3.

I'd just love to see an end to these misleading "MP3 & the world vs. Apple & AAC" arguments.

Apple can cause the iPod to reject AAC files not encoded with their tools though. Witness the whole Real thing.

AAC is not "superior" to MP3 though, at least not sonically. It's all compressed audio, so it's all lossy. AAC has nice extra features-chaptering, for instance-that give it an edge over MP3. But if I sat you down with some headphones and two copies of the same song, one encoded with AAC at 192 and one with MP3 at 192, you'd never hear any difference. Oh, I know-you're a golden ears and of COURSE you'd hear a difference. But most people wouldn't. I sure can't.

It drives me nuts that people who should know better continue to imply (by not clearly pointing out otherwise) that AAC is proprietary to Apple. It isn't. FairPlay is, AAC is not. So as the original entry says, device manufacturers need to start adding AAC to their devices. It's better than MP3, it's better than WMA, so there's no excuse not to.

The creators should have just called it "MP4" so everyone would understand it was the natural successor to MP3. At least that would have negated all this "AAC = Apple" nonsense.

Well, I have an iPod but definitely it's my last one and thus I'd really appreciate if iTunes would be more open. OTOH there are other aggregators which I can use and some might even be better ;-)
(problem with iPod is just also that it's too closed. It's just very uncomfortable if you have many computers and want to put music onto it from all of them (or even back from the iPod to the cmpt) I also broke my content when trying to put some music from within Linux onto it which meant loads of lost music which wasn't in itunes anymore).