Skip to main content ↑ ↓

Notice

Please note that most of the software linked on this forum is likely to be safe to use. If you are unsure, feel free to ask in the relevant topics, or send a private message to an administrator or moderator. To help curb the problems of false positives, or in the event that you do find actual malware, you can contribute through the article linked here.
Topic: Sensible HE-AAC bit rate for personal audio player (Read 2753 times) previous topic - next topic
0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Sensible HE-AAC bit rate for personal audio player

Hi,

My personal audio player supports HE-AAC (aacPlus v1 from Coding Technologies).

I have been using aacenc32 with the Nero DLLs to encode WAV files ripped from CD to HE-AAC, with the "-vbr extreme" setting, which gives an average bit-rate of around 100-130kbps (varies depending on the track). Is that a sensible rate for HE-AAC? The "-vbr normal" argument seems to output files averaging around 90-100kbps.

I know that at higher bit rates HE-AAC isn't supposed to be much (or at all?) better than plain LC-AAC. The -vbr extreme HE-AAC files sound pretty good to me, but perhaps the extreme setting is overkill?

[Aside: is "LC is better than HE at high bit rates" an intrinsic property of the AAC specification, or just dependent on the encoder used? In other words, could an intelligent encoder automatically use less SBR at higher bit rates, thus meaning HE-AAC output would "always" be at least as good as LC-AAC, even at high bit rates?]

Has anyone tested the Nero HE-AAC codec at various VBR settings? I'd like to encode tracks at the optimal rate, i.e. for which almost all tracks are nearly as good as the original.

Also, can anyone recommend a cut-off frequency for the low-pass filter? So far I have disabled filtering using "-k -nofir" in the aacenc32 settings, but if filtering allows a lower bit-rate with no noticeable quality loss, I'd like to try that (my player uses SD cards, not a hard disk).


-- M