Planetary
Junior Member
AAC is lossy. You may as well just go with high-encode MP3 files.
If you're going for the absolute highest sound quality to at least match what a CD delivers, go for (windows) WAV file format which at 44100 Hz, 16-bit stereo is exactly the same spec as standard stereo cd music. You could also go with Apple's (mac) AIFF format but WAV files seem to be easier read on a wider variety of storage to playback units. The downside of course is a WAV file runs about 10MB per minute, thus a 5 minute song is going to average around 50+ MBs.
My old setup was a 160GB iPod filled with ripped CD music to WAV files from thousands of cds and other sources playing thought the (Alpine) USB cable to a Alpine 9887 single DIN head unit. I had over 2,000 songs and about 50 different playlists and once I had it set up, I never had a need to play a cd again and the sound quality was outstanding. I could control the iPod through the head unit or even the head unit's remote.
Doing just the above with a pre-existing speaker/amp setup in the car will set you back maybe $500 if you need to buy both the iPod (or similar digital playback device) and the head unit (which is now one of Alpines older and discontinued HU) which can be had on places like eBay for about $250 tops. You could do the same thing with a number of other newer and even cheaper head units from Pioneer, Sony, etc but I personally recommend the mid/higher end Alpines for pure sound quality as well as versatility.
If you're going for the absolute highest sound quality to at least match what a CD delivers, go for (windows) WAV file format which at 44100 Hz, 16-bit stereo is exactly the same spec as standard stereo cd music. You could also go with Apple's (mac) AIFF format but WAV files seem to be easier read on a wider variety of storage to playback units. The downside of course is a WAV file runs about 10MB per minute, thus a 5 minute song is going to average around 50+ MBs.
My old setup was a 160GB iPod filled with ripped CD music to WAV files from thousands of cds and other sources playing thought the (Alpine) USB cable to a Alpine 9887 single DIN head unit. I had over 2,000 songs and about 50 different playlists and once I had it set up, I never had a need to play a cd again and the sound quality was outstanding. I could control the iPod through the head unit or even the head unit's remote.
Doing just the above with a pre-existing speaker/amp setup in the car will set you back maybe $500 if you need to buy both the iPod (or similar digital playback device) and the head unit (which is now one of Alpines older and discontinued HU) which can be had on places like eBay for about $250 tops. You could do the same thing with a number of other newer and even cheaper head units from Pioneer, Sony, etc but I personally recommend the mid/higher end Alpines for pure sound quality as well as versatility.
