PCM Mp3 Or AAC

[phee Nom Tracks]

ive done my reasearch and it seems like i should never bounce my finished projects to Mp3 because they sound like but i really cant tell the difference betweeen AAc and Pcm unless im listening to it from my Surround Sound monitors apposed to a car stereo. What is the most beneficial compression method for pristine quality audio for you?

 

and does burning direct to a disc from logic provide the best sound?

[solaar]

What is the most beneficial compression method for pristine quality audio for you?

The most pristine compression is none at all. Why would you want to bounce a mix to anything less than raw aiff or wav format before mastering?

If it's just for a quick sound check of a rough mix on your mp3 player, all right then. Other than that it's basically a waste of time to bounce to a compressed format from your multitracker.

 

Myself and most music-producing people I know (pros and semi-pros) bounce their mix to aiff or wav 24bit/44.1khz. (Dithering the bit depth down to 16bit is not as critical and potentially detrimental to the sound as sample rate conversion, that's why most people stick to the final 44.1.)

This final mix is then handed over to mastering who do the rest, ie buff it up a bit, adjust loudness, make it Red Book compatible if it needs to get on CD, and also make all the distributable formats like mp3, AAC etc. from the mastered version.

 

The quality of the compressed file will largely depend on the algorithms applied (ie lame, fraunhofer etc) but also a lot on the quality of the master itself. In any case I wouldn't worry about compression until after mastering.