MacUser has published an opinion by columnist Paul Nesbitt suggesting that one of the aims of the iPod Hi-Fi is to show up the poor quality of MP3s so ‘we all turn to AAC’.

As someone who has purchased a fair number of AAC tracks from the iTunes Music Store, I find that surprising viewpoint. It is well known that AACs sound better than MP3s at the same bitrate. But there is no way that the iTunes 128kbps AAC files sound better than the 192kbps MP3s that dominate my Mac mini’s music collection.

Case in point: Some evenings ago, my Mac mini decided to play Move This Mountain which I purchased from iTunes. I’ve played it on my Harman Audio Soundsticks and it sounds fine. My Mac mini is connected to my hi-fi. Let me tell you that Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s vocals on this track sound blackboard-screechingly awful through my hi-fi. It confirms that the relatively low-quality iTunes encoding isn’t suited to all types of music. This is why I prefer to buy CDs.

Indeed, if the iPod Hi-Fi can indicate that MP3s are poor quality, and that AACs are markedly better, then it can’t be a very good speaker system.