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: iTunes Settings for High-Quality AAC (Read 24076 times) previous topic - next topic
0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

iTunes Settings for High-Quality AAC

I am somewhat inexperienced with ripping and encoding music.  I spent a lot of time reading articles and Hydrogenaudio forum posts last winter in an effort to come up with a procedure for ripping and encoding that would best suit my tastes.  I posted some questions in the forums, and from the answers I received it sounded like the AAC encoder that comes with iTunes will create top-quality lossy audio (depending on the settings).  I never quite nailed-down what encoding settings would be the best for me and am only just now looking into it again.

About CVBR and TVBR, one person who replied to my post said, "CVBR is an Apple (iTunes) AAC phenomenon and it stands for Constrained VBR.  It is necessary (for iTunes) if you plan to use HE encoding (typically ~64kbps).  TVBR stands for True VBR and is somewhat difficult to actually get iTunes to do (if you select 'use VBR' in iTunes, it will use Constrained VBR regardless of format, you have to do something special to get True VBR).  The most recent listening test at ~96kbps suggests no statistical significance between the quality of CVBR and TVBR, (at least at that bitrate)."      (Thanks for that info, buklau)

However, he also said "It's probably better to get True VBR if you can", suggesting that TVBR might be better than CVBR in some way, which is odd because he had just told me there was no statistically significant difference between the two in the listening test.

So my first question today is, why might TVBR be better than CVBR?  Does the potential advantage lie with something other than output sound quality, such as output file size?  All I know about the difference between the two is that "CVBR is constrained VBR which prevents the VBR mechanism from going extremely low with bitrate."      (Thanks for that info, halb27)

Secondly, I would just like some input on other encoding settings for AAC.  iTunes has an AAC preset called "iTunes Plus" which consists of the following settings:  "128 kbps (mono)/256 kbps (stereo), 44.100 kHz, VBR, optimized for MMX/SSE2."  (I don't know what MMX and SSE2 are.)

I have the option to customize the stereo bit rate, sample rate, or number of channels, as well as enable/disable VBR, High Efficiency, or "Optimize for voice".

I assume I do not need to worry about "Optimize for voice" if I am going for higher-bitrate audio (but I would be interested to know what this setting does).  I have also read that High Efficiency is for lower-bitrate audio, so I shouldn't need to use that.  I have read that VBR is good, so I should leave that enabled.  Number of channels should probably be left on "Auto" so I don't constrain the number of channels in the output.

Is 44.100 kHz a good sample rate?  ...Is that the standard and/or best sample rate?  Because it doesn't allow me to select any other sample rates except "Auto".

And as for the 128 kbps (mono)/256 kbps (stereo) bitrate, in your opinion, is that overkill for lossy music; or is it worth going for a higher bitrate?  I know it all depends on the listener and the amount of storage space, but I would just like opinions and ideas.  If I remember right, 256 kbps is on the high end of the bitrate spectrum for lossy audio, but I've never compared music at various bitrates.  I do want to make sure that I can get the best possible quality that I can fit on my iPhone, so I want to start with a bitrate that is considered to be very good quality lossy audio, convert some albums to AAC with that bitrate setting, estimate how many albums I could fit on my iPhone at that setting, and then lower it if necessary.  Is 256 kbps a reasonable place to start, or should I go with one of the other presets in iTunes and/or a custom bitrate setting?

Lastly, are there any reasons why I might be better off encoding outside of iTunes?  For example, it sounds like I would need to use something other than iTunes if I want to use TVBR encoding (but as of now I don't know the benefit of TVBR over CVBR).  I plan to use FFMPEG with EAC to immediately encode my rips to ALAC as described here: http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=EAC_and_ALAC , and then I was thinking I would just drag the ALAC files into iTunes, right-click on them, and create AAC versions of them.  Would I be missing out on anything by not using some other program to encode to AAC?  Would I benefit by using something like foobar2000 to pass some command-line arguments to the encoder?  If so, what arguments do you recommend?

Thanks!  I appreciate any input.

iTunes Settings for High-Quality AAC

Reply #1
If you are on windows you'll want to use QAAC to encode AAC: http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=85135
MMX and SSE2 are just processor extensions that can be used for faster encoding (which is pretty pointless for iTunes since last time I checked it was single-threaded...).

iTunes Settings for High-Quality AAC

Reply #2
If you are on windows you'll want to use QAAC to encode AAC: http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=85135
MMX and SSE2 are just processor extensions that can be used for faster encoding (which is pretty pointless for iTunes since last time I checked it was single-threaded...).


MMX and SSE2 very much predate any multicore/multithreading CPUs. They are just extensions of Pentium instruction set for multimedia. Without those, your CPU would pretty much encode like just a hyperfast Pentium I so leave those on.

iTunes Settings for High-Quality AAC

Reply #3
I thought I remembered QAAC being a recommended encoder in my reading last year, but I'm wondering if it just uses the same encoding process at iTunes.  Does it?  What are the benefits of using QAAC vs. iTunes, other than that it provides a way to encode AAC outside iTunes?  I assume it would give me the option of using TVBR, but what is the benefit of TVBR over CVBR?  Thanks for the replies.

iTunes Settings for High-Quality AAC

Reply #4
I thought I remembered QAAC being a recommended encoder in my reading last year, but I'm wondering if it just uses the same encoding process at iTunes.  Does it?  What are the benefits of using QAAC vs. iTunes, other than that it provides a way to encode AAC outside iTunes?  I assume it would give me the option of using TVBR, but what is the benefit of TVBR over CVBR?  Thanks for the replies.


With QAAC you can do just about everything you'd expect from a codec converter.
https://github.com/nu774/qaac/wiki/Command-Line-Options

iTunes Settings for High-Quality AAC

Reply #5
Quote
And as for the 128 kbps (mono)/256 kbps (stereo) bitrate, in your opinion, is that overkill for lossy music; or is it worth going for a higher bitrate? I know it all depends on the listener and the amount of storage space, but I would just like opinions and ideas. If I remember right, 256 kbps is on the high end of the bitrate spectrum for lossy audio, but I've never compared music at various bitrates. I do want to make sure that I can get the best possible quality that I can fit on my iPhone, so I want to start with a bitrate that is considered to be very good quality lossy audio, convert some albums to AAC with that bitrate setting, estimate how many albums I could fit on my iPhone at that setting, and then lower it if necessary. Is 256 kbps a reasonable place to start, or should I go with one of the other presets in iTunes and/or a custom bitrate setting?

Lastly, are there any reasons why I might be better off encoding outside of iTunes? For example, it sounds like I would need to use something other than iTunes if I want to use TVBR encoding (but as of now I don't know the benefit of TVBR over CVBR). I plan to use FFMPEG with EAC to immediately encode my rips to ALAC as described here: http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=EAC_and_ALAC , and then I was thinking I would just drag the ALAC files into iTunes, right-click on them, and create AAC versions of them. Would I be missing out on anything by not using some other program to encode to AAC? Would I benefit by using something like foobar2000 to pass some command-line arguments to the encoder? If so, what arguments do you recommend?


In my opinion LAME -V5 is a good place to start for portable usage. Try to ABX. Keep in mind it will be much more difficult to spot encoding artifacts in noisy environments. As long as you have lossles files, you can always transcode with foobar if you change your mind.

If you are dead set on bitrates around 256kbps, again I would just stick with LAME for ease of use. Sounds to me Apple AAC is a pain to work with. If you really must have AAC, why not use Nero--again for ease of use.

iTunes Settings for High-Quality AAC

Reply #6
In my opinion LAME -V5 is a good place to start for portable usage. Try to ABX. Keep in mind it will be much more difficult to spot encoding artifacts in noisy environments. As long as you have lossles files, you can always transcode with foobar if you change your mind.

If you are dead set on bitrates around 256kbps, again I would just stick with LAME for ease of use. Sounds to me Apple AAC is a pain to work with. If you really must have AAC, why not use Nero--again for ease of use.


... If your devices all support AAC which most do, then you won't want to use MP3.
Setting up QAAC into Foobar2000 takes around 1min and a few more mins to create a couple of different profiles if desired.
If you really don't know how to read or are just hopeless following guides/tutorials ect then there are programs that already have AAC encoding using QAAC built in. Don't need to look far either since this: http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=98327 was on the forum's front page.

iTunes Settings for High-Quality AAC

Reply #7

On the QAAC homepage ( https://sites.google.com/site/qaacpage/home ), it says "qaac is a command line AAC/ALAC encoder frontend based on Apple encoder".  Does that mean it just uses the exact same encoder that comes with iTunes, providing a frontend for it, or is it actually a modified encoder?  If it's the same encoder, is there any reasons why I wouldn't want to just use iTunes, since I will have to manage my music in iTunes anyway for my iPhone?

iTunes Settings for High-Quality AAC

Reply #8
When the identical setting is used, the resulting AAC bitstream is the same.
Although qaac allows you a bit wider configuration (TVBR mode or something), you don't have to worry about the quality of iTunes AAC.

If you want a secure ripper, or want to archive your songs to FLAC + cuesheet or something which iTunes doesn't support, qaac will be useful since it is a CLI encoder and works well together with other softwares such as fb2k.
If you don't need them, sure you can use iTunes.

iTunes Settings for High-Quality AAC

Reply #9
Thanks, nu774.  I was thinking I would use Exact Audio Copy along with FFMPEG to get ALAC rips, and then just use iTunes to transcode them to AAC.  Maybe you could tell me -- I'm wondering why someone might prefer TVBR over CVBR (or vice versa).  Is there an advantage in terms of quality or file size?  (Though the listening test I referred to seems to suggest there is no advantage in sound quality.)

iTunes Settings for High-Quality AAC

Reply #10
Actually, I've been reading the QAAC homepage and it says it encodes ALAC also, so I could use QAAC instead of FFMPEG.

Here are the command-line arguments for FFMPEG from the "EAC and ALAC" article.

-i %source% -metadata "ARTIST=%artist%" -metadata "TITLE=%title%" -metadata "ALBUM=%albumtitle%" -metadata "DATE=%year%" -metadata "TRACK=%tracknr%" -metadata "GENRE=%genre%" -metadata "ALBUM_ARTIST=%albuminterpret%" -metadata "COMPOSER=%composer%" -metadata "DISCNUMBER=%cdnumber%" -metadata "COMMENT=CRC:%TRACKCRC%" -metadata "TOTALTRACKS=%numtracks%" -acodec alac %dest%

How could I modify this for QAAC?

iTunes Settings for High-Quality AAC

Reply #11
To my knowledge,  TVBR has no practical superiority over CVBR in quality wise.
In theory it could be better since it is not constrained... but as you say, listening test has not shown statistically significant difference on them (or even slightly better result on CVBR).

Personally I'm using TVBR and it's also default of qaac simply because in case of TVBR you don't have to care about or specify bitrate, which is dependent on number of channels, sample rate, etc.


iTunes Settings for High-Quality AAC

Reply #13

Thanks for that link!  I read the "Using Exact Audio Copy with qaac" Word document as well as the documentation on your QAAC site and cobbled together some command-line arguments for QAAC, partially based on some arguments I came up with for FLAC in the past.  (In the example in the Word document, these arguments are actually passed to cmd.exe, which passes them to qaac.exe.  I'm curious to know why they can't just be passed directly to QAAC from EAC.)

For ALAC rips in EAC  --  arguments for cmd.exe:
/c C:\Program Files (x86)\qaac_2.08\x86\qaac.exe  --alac %source% -o %dest% --artist="%artist%" --title="%title%" --album="%albumtitle%" --date="%year%" --track="%tracknr%/%numtracks%" --disk="%cdnumber%/%totalcds%" --genre="%genre%" --band="%albuminterpret%" --composer="%composer%" --comment="Ripped Using EAC (Secure Mode), CRC: %TRACKCRC%" %haslyrics%--lyrics="%lyricsfile%"%haslyrics% %hascover%--artwork="%coverfile%"%hascover%

For AAC rips in EAC  --  arguments for cmd.exe:
/c C:\Program Files (x86)\qaac_2.08\x86\qaac.exe  --tvbr 110 %source% -o %dest% --artist="%artist%" --title="%title%" --album="%albumtitle%" --date="%year%" --track="%tracknr%/%numtracks%" --disk="%cdnumber%/%totalcds%" --genre="%genre%" --band="%albuminterpret%" --composer="%composer%" %haslyrics%--lyrics="%lyricsfile%"%haslyrics% %hascover%--artwork="%coverfile%"%hascover%


Did I use the correct syntax for QAAC in the above examples?  Any other suggestions?  One thing I am specifically wondering about is the use of the slash in the commands for the "track" and "disk" options.

I plan to only rip to ALAC in EAC, and then use foobar2000 to transcode to AAC with QAAC.  By default, does QAAC include tags, lyrics, and album art from the source in the output?  Or will I have to specify those tags in the arguments from foobar2000?

If QAAC will automatically take all the tags, etc., from the ALACs by default, then will these arguments work in foobar2000 to convert ALAC to AAC?:

--tvbr 110 - -o %d


My final question:  Is TVBR 110 quality a good place to start for someone who wants to err on the side of quality over file size?  Would anything higher be overkill for someone who plans to put music on their iPhone?  I just chose 110 as the quality because that is what the author uses in the "random example from [his] setup."


Lastly, I answered a question from my intial post:

-- 44.100 kHz (16-bit, 44.100 kHz per channel, 2 channels) is the standard sample rate on an audio CD according to Wikipedia.

....Probably everyone on Hydrogenaudio knew that except me.  (I'm sure I've read that before, but it's been a while since I've researched this stuff and it's taking some time for it all to sink in.)


iTunes Settings for High-Quality AAC

Reply #14
In the example in the Word document, these arguments are actually passed to cmd.exe, which passes them to qaac.exe.  I'm curious to know why they can't just be passed directly to QAAC from EAC.

I don't know why since it was not written by me. (Personally I'm too lazy to setup EAC for tagging. I'd rather just use cuesheets, or use CueRipper).

Quote
Did I use the correct syntax for QAAC in the above examples?  Any other suggestions?  One thing I am specifically wondering about is the use of the slash in the commands for the "track" and "disk" options.

Just try and see if it works. It doesn't eat your babies. IIRC EAC would capture and show error message of CLI encoder. If it finishes without error and tags are written as you want after encoding, it's fine.

Quote
I plan to only rip to ALAC in EAC, and then use foobar2000 to transcode to AAC with QAAC.  By default, does QAAC include tags, lyrics, and album art from the source in the output?  Or will I have to specify those tags in the arguments from foobar2000?

If you use fb2k as frontend, tag is written by fb2k (not by qaac). As far as I know, album art is not preserved.

Quote
My final question:  Is TVBR 110 quality a good place to start for someone who wants to err on the side of quality over file size?  Would anything higher be overkill for someone who plans to put music on their iPhone?  I just chose 110 as the quality because that is what the author uses in the "random example from [his] setup."

Only you can choose what setting is appropriate for you. -- but probably you won't need that high.
I recommend you to try first at much lower setting and see if you can tell the difference.
If you keep ALAC archives, it won't hurt you much even if you found some artifacts in AAC encodings later.


 

iTunes Settings for High-Quality AAC

Reply #15
(Personally I'm too lazy to setup EAC for tagging. I'd rather just use cuesheets, or use CueRipper).


Ah, cue sheets are another thing I need to learn more about.  It is my understanding that cue sheets are created from the contents of a CD, indexing the tracks, track names, etc.  How does one use cue sheets for tagging, and how is that easier than setting up EAC for tagging?  Because most tagging information cannot be found on the CD itself, and must be downloaded from a database or manually entered, correct?  (Or is that not true?)

Does CUERipper rip CDs as accurately/securely as EAC?  I was just looking at the CD rippers comparison chart here ( http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?ti...n_of_CD_rippers ), and based on this chart, it looks like CUERipper has every feature that EAC does.  It also says here ( http://www.cuetools.net/wiki/CUERipper_Settings ) that is has a "Secure mode".  I have spent way too much time reading about how to use EAC...  Maybe I should try CUERipper, but the most important thing to me is to get accurate rips.

iTunes Settings for High-Quality AAC

Reply #16
How does one use cue sheets for tagging, and how is that easier than setting up EAC for tagging?

Since EAC doesn't know how to write metadata to audio files and lets encoder do that job, you have to manually set CLI encoder option for each tag you want.
On the other hand, EAC writes cue sheet by itself. It's self-contained. Therefore, if cue sheet is enough for you, you don't have to tweak around CLI encoder options for tagging. In case of CUERipper/CUETools (or fb2k), they know how to write metadata to audio files, so you don't have to configure CLI encoder option for that purpose.

Quote
Because most tagging information cannot be found on the CD itself, and must be downloaded from a database or manually entered, correct?  (Or is that not true?)

Correct.

Quote
Maybe I should try CUERipper, but the most important thing to me is to get accurate rips.

Go on as you like. EAC has been (kind of) defacto standard anyway.
CUERipper is super easy to use (compared to EAC), so in case you want to try it, it will not be that trouble.


iTunes Settings for High-Quality AAC

Reply #17

Thank you.

"Super easy to use (compared to EAC)" sounds really nice!

I've been reading, trying to figure out the difference between EAC's and CUERipper's accurate ripping ability.  If I am reading things correctly: both have offset correction, both have the ability to defeat drive caching, both read the CD twice to verify accuracy, both reread multiple times when errors are found, and both use online databases to verify rip accuracy.  So from an accuracy standpoint, is the only real difference between the two the number of times they re-read when errors are detected?

In addition, CUERipper comes with CUETools Database compatibility built-in.  I read that this database provides the "ability not only to detect, but also correct small amounts of errors that occurred in the ripping process".  Would anyone be able to comment on this feature?  I like the idea that I can somehow perfect my imperfect rips, but what are the chances that the database provides data from an imperfect rip and screws up my own rip?

Very interesting.  ...I think these are the last of my questions.  I hope I didn't wander too far off-topic.

iTunes Settings for High-Quality AAC

Reply #18
I use CUEripper, which provides EAC-like logs. For me and my HP laptop it set up correctly on its own (matching both EAC and dBpowerAmp's offsets on my HP laptop, and a PC with a JLMS DVD-ROM drive and a Sony DVD+/-RW drive) and was ready to use.

I use it in Burst mode, which is still secure if anyone has ripped the disc before, unless I have a problem CD because like EAC and dBpA it has AccurateRip support to validate your rips. This is also likely to reduce mechanical wear on the CD drive's parts. Also, having two database matches gives added confidence in the rip.

Better than that, and just like EAC with the CTDB plugin, it also accesses the CTDB to verify the rip. If the rip has fairly simple read errors and has been securely ripped before, it can also fix a lot of them using about 200 kB of error correction codes per disc which it will download for you and attempt to fix the errors, reporting its success. If I ever have unrecoverable errors, I'll first try another drive, and then switch to secure mode.

If the disc isn't in AR or CTDB I'll switch to secure mode. If it's in AR but not CTDB, I might stick to Burst if I need the speed, or I'll use Secure to help populate CTDB with the correction record for the benefit of the community.
Dynamic – the artist formerly known as DickD

iTunes Settings for High-Quality AAC

Reply #19
So from an accuracy standpoint, is the only real difference between the two the number of times they re-read when errors are detected?


Possibly, but with both AccurateRip and CTDB confirmation, you still know whether it's securely ripped or not.

Quote
In addition, CUERipper comes with CUETools Database compatibility built-in.  I read that this database provides the "ability not only to detect, but also correct small amounts of errors that occurred in the ripping process".  Would anyone be able to comment on this feature?  I like the idea that I can somehow perfect my imperfect rips, but what are the chances that the database provides data from an imperfect rip and screws up my own rip?


Don't worry - you can easily check with CueTools, which will verify it against the Accurate Rip database too. Then it should be correct in both. Also, CTDB requires secure ripping to accept data from another rip and the correction information is independent of the offset used, so even a wrong offset should be OK.

Also CTDB, not having so many options, is hard to set up wrong. EAC, by contrast, has plenty of options that can screw up your ripping if wrongly set (e.g. wrong cache size, use drive's flawed C2 info), and having a CTDB plugin it can submit rips to CTDB, which I guess could be the result of a bad setup. Nonetheless, AR and CTDB will be pretty good confirmation.
Dynamic – the artist formerly known as DickD

iTunes Settings for High-Quality AAC

Reply #20
Thanks, Dynamic.  It sounds like CUERipper is a lot easier to configure (though possibly less custom-configurable) than EAC.  I decided to go with EAC for now just because I compiled some very thorough notes in the past for configuring it, and I didn't want to try to learn a new program.  I just wish I had known about CUERipper before I embarked on that extensive note-gathering project last winter....

I just wanted to provide an update on my ALAC-ripping configuration for EAC for anyone reading this who is trying to do the same.  In a previous post I pasted some commands to be passed to cmd.exe, which would then pass them to QAAC, as I was instructed to do in that Word document I read.  However, when I tried it, EAC displayed an error from the external compressor.  I couldn't readily find information on this error, so I tried configuring EAC to pass the commands directly to QAAC without going through cmd.exe, and at first glance it seems to have worked.  I didn't try to append any lyrics or album art via EAC, so I don't know if that would have worked (I suppose if ALAC allows those things to be appended, and if I got the syntax right, it should work).  But QAAC did produce an ALAC .m4a file with the correct metadata as far as I can tell.

So anyone interested in ripping to ALAC may want to try this instead of the commands from my previous post:

--alac %source% -o %dest% --artist="%artist%" --title="%title%" --album="%albumtitle%" --date="%year%" --track="%tracknr%/%numtracks%" --disk="%cdnumber%/%totalcds%" --genre="%genre%" --band="%albuminterpret%" --composer="%composer%" --comment="Ripped Using EAC (Secure Mode), CRC: %TRACKCRC%" %haslyrics%--lyrics="%lyricsfile%"%haslyrics% %hascover%--artwork="%coverfile%"%hascover%

In the EAC Compression Options:
-- Check the box next to "Use external program for compression"
-- Set the "Parameter passing scheme" to "User Defined Encoder"
-- For "Use file extension", type ".m4a"
-- For "Program, including path, used for compression", type or paste the path to qaac.exe
    ( Example:  C:\Program Files (x86)\qaac_2.08\x86\qaac.exe )
-- For "Additional command-line options", paste my commands from above, or come up with your own.

iTunes Settings for High-Quality AAC

Reply #21
Now you have EAC set up properly, you can still benefit from the CTDB error correction by installing the CTDB plugin for EAC. Having said that EAC + AccurateRip out of the box was brilliant already and I was happy to use it in Burst Mode unless AccurateRip showed an inaccurate rip.
Dynamic – the artist formerly known as DickD

iTunes Settings for High-Quality AAC

Reply #22


UPDATE:
I changed the comment and band tags in my arguments for ALAC encoding:

--alac %source% -o %dest% --artist="%artist%" --title="%title%" --album="%albumtitle%" --date="%year%" --track="%tracknr%/%numtracks%" --disk="%cdnumber%/%totalcds%" --genre="%genre%" --band="%albumartist%" --composer="%composer%" --comment="CRC: %trackcrc%" %haslyrics%--lyrics="%lyricsfile%"%haslyrics% %hascover%--artwork="%coverfile%"%hascover%

%albuminterpret% refers to the contents of the "CD Performer" box in the main interface of EAC, whereas %albumartist% refers to the contents of the "CD Artist" box, and it seems the "CD Artist" box is more likely to get filled in when you download metadata from an online database.  So I replaced %albuminterpret% with %albumartist%.

I probably won't actually utilize EAC's ability to embed album art in each track via these commands, since the artwork can simply be included as one separate file in the same folder as the ripped tracks.  But I still left the necessary commands in place so that I have the option of doing so.

See here for a more detailed discussion about the similar arguments I plan to use for FLAC encoding:
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=98422



iTunes Settings for High-Quality AAC

Reply #23

I removed the album art tag from my ALAC qaac arguments because I want to be able to use EAC to download album art and put it in the folder with the ripped tracks without having it added to each file as a tag.

--alac %source% -o %dest% --artist="%artist%" --title="%title%" --album="%albumtitle%" --date="%year%" --track="%tracknr%/%numtracks%" --disk="%cdnumber%/%totalcds%" --genre="%genre%" --band="%albumartist%" --composer="%composer%" --comment="CRC: %trackcrc%" %haslyrics%--lyrics="%lyricsfile%"%haslyrics%

iTunes Settings for High-Quality AAC

Reply #24

I am wondering what I should put for "Highest BPS mode supported" when setting up foobar2000 to use qaac for encoding AAC.
I did a Google search and saw some things suggesting 24, but the Nero AAC encoder that comes with foobar seemingly supports 32, leading me to wonder if qaac does too.  I tried converting some FLAC files using either setting and at first glance the output seems to be identical.

Thanks.