Sometimes, it’s good to experiment with different audio codecs to see which ones fit you.
Some prefer MP3 or AAC, but others like OGG.
), it all boils down to your personal perference.
So we’re sort of talking about two things here: Converters and codecs.
Let’s start of this article by explaining what codecs are.
All this will determine which codec to use.
A codec compresses your songs to a smaller filesize.
And what differentiates each codec is the quality of the sound it produces for the same bitrate.
The list ofaudio codecsis endless.
Ok well, not endless but quite long.
As an audiophile myself, I personally prefer to have my songs uncompressed or encoded in a lossless format.
If you would like to find out your sensitivity to music quality, check outABX Testing.
Unfortunately, our very dear iTunes music player recognizesneitherof the two.
So, cue the role of audio converters toconvert these files into formats which iTunes does recognizei.e.
AIFF, MP3, AAC, etc.
Two of the most prominentfree audio converters areMaxand XLD.
I decided to try them both out and see which rises to be more superior.
Let’s go with XLD first.
The interface is simple and the preferences aren’t confusing at all.
Max
Next up isMax.
You’ve probably heard about it.
It’s one of the more popular CD-ripping utilities for Mac.
In addition to that, it is also a pretty decent audio converter.
Like XLD, it supports all of the popular codecs (FLAC, APE, AAC etc.)
and about thirty more.
Because of that, setting up the output format is pretty confusing.
Max will decode the files in all the formats selected resulting in one file but with several different formats!
Where XLD fails, Max triumphs.
In conclusion,
Max is:
However XLD is:
Seems like Max is the obvious winner here.
For those who need their songs to be configuredexactlythe way they want it, thenMaxis the way to go.
