I was pretty excited s couple of years ago when I completed the import of my 225 CDs into iTunes. I finally had my complete audio library on the computer. I set my network up so that anyone could listen to the tunes from any machine.
Of course, when I imported the tracks, I used the default compression. The compression type was AAC and it was at 128 bit. I then proceeded to purchase hundreds of tracks from the iTunes Music store.
I also purchased several iPods and wore headphones while working in the yard, driving in the car, etc. No matter what I tried it always seemed like the audio quality was not up to par. Once, after I had purchased a track from the iTunes Music store,I became so frustrated with the quality that I went out and purchased the CD that contained that track just so I could compare the quality to make sure it wasn't me.
That is when I discovered that I could genuinely tell the difference between 128 bit AAC and CD quality encodings. My heart sank. I didn't want to have to reencode all of those CDs. What was I going to do about all of the tracks that I purchased from iTunes?
A couple of months ago I began purchasing music from AllOfMP3. I only purchased the tracks that I had downloaded from iTunes. That was my way of circumventing the DRM issue. That debate can be had again at a later date.
The straw that broke the camels back was when I started to focus my efforts in Ubuntu. iTunes does not run on Linux. The MP3s I had downloaded from AllOfMP3 could not be played either. Ubuntu does not support MP3 out of the box. I had no music.
I figured that I would have to determine the best solution to migrate my music to Ubuntu.
The first issue was how to convert the MP3s to something Ubuntu could understand? I figured that I would have to purchase an encoder to convert the file formats to the format I choose. But what format?
The bigger issue was what was I going to do about the CDs? Well, I have decided to reencode them using the Ogg Vorbis encoder at the CD quality level. It is still a lossy compression but I can not seem to hear the difference. I'm just going to encode a few at a time.
Now off to find an MP3 to Ogg Vorbis conversion application.