Should i start using AAC? Can you notice a better quality? Options

[Bahamut2]

I have read everywhere that it is better than MP3, but will i be able to notice the difference?
I encode all my files to VBR -V0 and i don't know anything about AAC, what would be the equivalent encoding settings for AAC?

Can you people really notice that theyre is a reall difference in quality? I want to test it by myself (encoding always it max quality off course) but first i want to ask here.

[Stillbruch]

Hi everyone,

This is my first post in this forum, and I "accidentally" found this thread on Google. However, I find your discussion quite interesting, that's why I'd like to join in.

First, I have a small recording studio for mostly private recordings. I do not use expensive equipment, but still I think that the setup is pretty decent (Yamaha HS80M, DYNAUDIO BM5A MKII, AKG K 601 and AKG K 701). So much for my equipment - I'd like to place emphasis on the reason why there are Lossy Audio Compression Codecs at all. Well, nomen est nomen, they make your audio tracks smaller. I know a lot of people with decent or expensive equipment who compress their audio with a Lossy Compression Codec using a very high to highest quality setting (e.g. LAME MP3 -V0 or Nero AAC -q > 0.8). In my honest opinion, this doesn't make any sense.
Let me explain: Every Lossy Compression Codec makes use psychoacoustic models to omit parts of a sample, which are irrelevant to the human ear (I do not explain this any further, as most of you should know that). The downside is: There are so called "problem samples" (as already mentioned in another post above) - and I'm talking about samples and not necessarely entire tracks - which cause the compression algorithm to fail. Failing in compressing a problem sample is, most importantly, less a matter of the bitrate or the quality you are using, but more a matter of the algorithm itself. So, for example, if a LAME MP3 -V2 compression fails to return a clean sample of such a "problem sample", it is most likely that it will also fail at -V0. Same applies to other Lossy Compression Codecs.
The question is: Does your audio track contain such problem samples? I can't know, but in a well produced and mastered mainstream audio track, problem samples occur very rarely. I encourage you to give LAME MP -V3 or even -V4 (or equivalent "medium" settings with other codecs) a try at ABX (but please, do it correctly). The reason behind those kinds of compression is, as I've already mentioned, to significantly reduce the size of your audio tracks. If you encoded a track with a lot of problem samples at -V0 (or equivalent in other codecs), you'd be busted and could have used a lossless compression instead, since the difference in size wouldn't be that big anymore.

Back to the topic itself: The Nero AAC or simply AAC codecs are very powerful on lower bitrates compared to MP3. Any 96 kbps MP3 almost always sound horrible, while AAC-files with a similar size does very well. If you've got plenty of space (and battery on portable devices), it doesn't make any significant differences whether you use LAME or any kind of AAC, as long as the settings are decent.

Have a nice day!

[mjb2006]

Any 96 kbps MP3 almost always sound horrible

I feel more info would be needed to support that claim. In my experience, as long as the input is sufficiently lowpassed, 96 kbps MP3 as produced by FhG or LAME sounds great. No high end, of course, but rarely (if ever?) any artifacts. So...careful with generalizations