AAC 320 VBR question Options

[SpyGuy]

I'm looking at buying a new head unit for my car, a Kenwood Excelon KDC-X896. According to the specs it can handle AAC-LC format from 8-320KBPS.

Here's my question. I'm using Foobar2000 to convert my lossless songs into VBR AAC at q 0.76 which is roughly 300KBPS. The thing with VBR though, is that it swings, on tough passages it might go as high as 340 or maybe even more.

So here's my question. On devices that say they can handle 320 VBR, do these spikes show up as pops or artifacts, are they just not played back for that millisecond? Do I need to find a q setting low enough so that any spikes stay below 320? Or by saying that it can handle 320 VBR, Kenwood is saying it can handle any spikes at 320 (which can go as high as nearly 380 according to some googling I do).

Apparently iPods have this same specification, 8-320kbps VBR, but I'll have to get my hands on one to see how they handle it.

[eahm]

You may want to ABX, you may even not be able to hear artifacts at 96kbps and may save a lot of space and copy more music on your device. Again, AAC achieves transparency at 128kbps and your car (any car) will NOT play music better than computers, hi-fi stereos, headphones...

Nero also is no longer the best way to encode AAC files, I suggest you to configure qaac with foobar2000. With qaac and Apple libraries you can achieve the highest quality AAC files, you can also create them with True VBR setting and qaac is configurable in a portable way (no need to install any Apple software like iTunes or QuickTime).

This post has been edited by eahm: Nov 16 2012, 02:57