Nero Releases FREE Reference Quality MPEG-4 Audio Encoder, Nero Releases Command Line MPEG-4 & 3GPP AAC Solution Options

[Ivan Dimkovic]

I am pleased to announce the launch of FREE Reference Quality MPEG-4 Audio solution from Nero, in the command line form!

* First in the world FREE 2-Pass MPEG-4 AAC Encoder
* Support for mono, stereo and multichannel encodings
* Support for sampling rates up to 96 kHz, up to 32-bit Floating-Point PCM input
* Compression Ratios ranging from ultra high (58 CDs fit on one!) to High-End Audio (2.5:1), for absolutely perfect audiophile encodings
* Support for Embedded Album Art (Covers, Booklets, Lyrics!)
* Store Entire Audio Album in a Single .mp4 File with all the Features of an Audio CD embedded inside, but at a fraction of the space!
* Reference Quality MPEG-4 Audio Codec
* Fully Compatible with the Latest Version of the State-of-the-art MPEG-4 Audio Standard (LC-AAC, HE-AAC and HE-AAC v2)
http://www.nero.com/nerodigital/eng/Nero_Digital_Audio.html

This post has been edited by Garf: May 7 2006, 19:46

[br0adband]

No worries, didn't want my post to come across as "Oh the hell with that, stop being stupid and just use it." That's not the case.

A few years ago I made a pretty intense posting here explaining how I'd been using mp3 encoders since *before* they became anything Shawn Fanning ever heard of and created Napster. Audio quality is and always has been a big BIG thing to me, but after almost 8 years of dealing with it, encoding, testing, re-encoding, re-testing, redoing entire collections of CDs just because a "better" encoder came out, the whole cycle repeats, ad nauseum.

There comes a time when you have to make a decision, sorta:

Either listen and enjoy the tunes, or continue searching for perfection and that next step, which rarely if ever actually becomes a reality. Such is the nature of psychoacoustic audio compression, basically. I just got tired of preaching EAC + LAME for years and worrying so much about perfect rips, perfect sound, perfect etc... I finally gave it all up and said to myself, "Screw it, it sounds good enough to me.

So yeah, I understand the quest better than most, actually. I was there where you're at, could slip right back into it easily, but it works like this:

I was sitting down early this morning to begin using dBpowerAMP Music Converter and the iTunesEncoder plugin to change all my FLAC files (on DVD) into plain old VBR AAC files (128Kbps nominally) then add the album artwork for all of 'em and slap 'em on my new 30GB Video iPod I just bought a few days ago. Someone here in Vegas won two of 'em when his wife hit a bonus on a slot machine at a casino, so they sold the second one to me for $200.

Lo and behold, the tagging was becoming an issue of sorts, so I popped into HA this morning and was downright blown away by Ivan's announcement about the free MP4/AAC encoder and snagged it and started working with it. While iTunes is ok for the encoding, it's damned slow, so since I didn't get too far into the stack of DVDs, I just deleted the work I had already done and will be redoing all 100GB with this Nero encoder - and now that I've worked out the tagging issue with 0.8.3 (it's still there, I just mean that I'm aware of it now so I'm using 0.9.1 for all the encoding), I'm all set and ready to spend the evening encoding from DVD to M4A.

</hijack_off>

Thanks again to Ivan, Garf (forgot to mention him earlier) and the whole Ahead/Nero gang for their wonderful products and continued support.

bb

Garf: And yep, I understand the usefulness of 2-pass encoding for very specific situations, but for general purpose audio encoding (meaning portable playback on portable devices which is the most common reason for using audio compression in the first place, I think), 2-pass just seems like a waste of that much more time, but to each his own. My opinions on the matter aren't meant to sway anyone, heaven forbid.