Problem sample for Nero AAC
Reply #8 – 2007-09-13 06:35:03
Very interesting, as common opinion says that HE-AAC isn't useful at moderate or high bitrate. There has been this discussion with the special listening tests on www.soundexpert.info where high bitrate HE-AAC came out surprisingly good though in theory shouldn't. I think such an example and behavior of an encoder demonstrates how people feel about things. Practitioners feel 'usually things are very fine with a good encoder and the usual settings at moderate bitate - with few exceptions'. And they're right. Perfectionists say 'Well, I'd like to go a bit beyond that' and use a very high quality setting which usually is overkill, maybe CBR/ABR instead of VBR at very high bitrate, special features like HE-AAC, or whatsoever seems promising, and their way is right as well. The most important question to everybody is 'Am I a practitioner or a perfectionist?', accept either way, and choose an encoder and setting accordingly. After all we want to be happy. That's why it's so useless when for instance a practitioner tells a perfectionist 'use setting xy, it's fine in nearly any circumstance, and if you want more: go straight lossless'. That's the practitioner's view, not very valuable to a perfectionist (only in case he hasn't heard about lossless). The other way around the same of course. Unfortunately we read many discussions here that are useless cause their background is just this. Moreover they have a tendency to be very long and emotional just because two incompatible worlds meet.