AAC doesn't offer a practical benefit to consumers of 2 track music...  mp3 handles it fine albeit at relatively higher bit rates.

Ultra lo bit rate 2 track music files don't seem to be a big priority for consumers these days.


AAC's chief benefit is for companies that own the data bottlenecks. It's more attractive to stream 3 96kbs AAC streams to 3 end users than it is to waste the bandwidth on a single user listening to a 320kbs mp3. The communications companies may charge by the bit but there economy of scale has a sweet spot and after that it get's expensive for them to offer additional bandwidth. They want everyone paying to be connected but they don't want to hog up the line. Indeed the original intent for mp3 was to allow for denser and more profitable multiplexing on phone lines... and then it leaked out to the music culture. 

AAC is also great for DVD and BluRay distribution where finite storage space and a low bandwdith make it desirable to squeeze the audio to the max so that the remainder can be used for picture. I get to see lots of barely compressed video... it looks worse when you go to mpeg 2 or mp4 and any xtra bandwidth you can devote to picture is taken from the audio.

AAC has some terrific potential for installed sound systems where there may be dozens of speaker drivers on a network... the multi channel streams can be used for all sorts of things.



iThink iTunes is promoting AAC music downloading as innovative technology because if it didn't... it probably wouldn't occur to the many consumers that are simply looking to buy a copy of their favorite song that AAC is anything more than an inconvenient format that doesn't play nice with their house and car full of mp3 playing appliances.



best regards,
mike

you know, the funky thing about all of this..

is that NO ONE is giving me what i REALLY want...

which is a way to listen to the highest fidelity available, without jumping thru hoops.

give me a audio dvd or file that has 24bit/96khz quality....or BETTER, if that is available!
that i can play in my ipod, dvd player, cd player, car radio, whatever....


throw 16 bit 44.1 in the trash, and move on.

we put a man on the moon in 1969.

Mike I think we've all since taken the time and got to the point where we've all worked that much out by now.  There's a list couple of posts up outlining the differences between AAC and mp3.
 
Thing is we have to live with it just now if we want our music to be disseminated over those existing networks as saleable items in that market.
 
I'm not using iTunes as a distribution option nor do I buy music from there, therefore it isn't a concern I have personally.  I encode to flac to save space for my portable players.
 
There is no need for anyone to adopt a lossy codec anymore, like you say nobody is counting the cost in bandwidth terms when it comes to streaming HD video, the amount of extra bandwith required by any lossless audio codec over a lossy one is negligable in comparison.
 
Currently though the reality is AAC for the majority of digital audio downloads do you reckon that you or I are going to be able to change that any time soon?
 
You alluded to the fact you enjoy entering mp3 tags more than writing on a cassette case, thank goodness we're still not having to listen to cassettes.
Many of us have also reported barely discernable differences given a high enough bit-rate with current lossy formats.  Those formats are pretty useless if you want to do any further processing though, maybe that's the reason major corporations like them better. 
 
 
Music consumers on the whole aren't complaing, quite rightly as there is little for a consumer to complain about in actuality with regard to the product, and the politics of corporate business practices is left out of the equation.
 
The guidlines show how content creators can produce the best possible product on the format is all.

batsbrew


you know, the funky thing about all of this..

is that NO ONE is giving me what i REALLY want...

which is a way to listen to the highest fidelity available, without jumping thru hoops.

give me a audio dvd or file that has 24bit/96khz quality....or BETTER, if that is available!
that i can play in my ipod, dvd player, cd player, car radio, whatever....


throw 16 bit 44.1 in the trash, and move on.

we put a man on the moon in 1969.

Exactly, a trip to a specialist supplier shows that it can already be done.  Like you say though it's a hoop to jump through and there's a limited range of titles available.

Just to further comment on my last post about Tunecore, they responded to me today with this:

Hey Danny,

Conversion is all done on the stores end and we have no idea how or what program they use to convert the wav programs. Each store I would assume is a bit different. There are no choices. The stores have their own conversion ways and bitrates. They have the same for everyone. Usually it's 256 kbps mp3 for all other stores except for iTunes which is a 256 kbps m4a file.

If this is in fact the case, no one in this thread should worry about bad sounding material if they use the guidelines we've all presented in my opinion. A 256 kb mp3 is pretty good even if you use "fast encoding" on my end with "variable bit rate" enabled. It's not quite as good as "slow encoding" and "constant bit rate" but it's good enough to where a well recorded, mixed and mastered file, should be really good quality for all of us. :)

-Danny