Just curious here; I'm not a big audiophile, but quality is of course good thing. I've ripped all my CDs as 160kbps AAC thinking that was a good balance, but now that there's a VBR option the geek in me is wondering just how much of a difference it makes in quality.
Anybody aware of any commparison tests? Somebody with really good ears able to tell the difference? I haven't found anything so far, and in truth my ears (and/or sound gear) aren't good enough to notice any issues with the CBR files I've already got.
Since even the VBR files have a constant average bitrate, I doubt it's going to be a big difference, and I doubt with my crude ears it's going to be worth re-ripping, but then it'd be nice to know since there might be that one song hiding somewhere that's such that the compression artifacts are obvious in CBR but VBR smooths it out.
Anybody aware of any commparison tests? Somebody with really good ears able to tell the difference? I haven't found anything so far, and in truth my ears (and/or sound gear) aren't good enough to notice any issues with the CBR files I've already got.
Since even the VBR files have a constant average bitrate, I doubt it's going to be a big difference, and I doubt with my crude ears it's going to be worth re-ripping, but then it'd be nice to know since there might be that one song hiding somewhere that's such that the compression artifacts are obvious in CBR but VBR smooths it out.
