Hello all,

After hearing about MP4 as a successor to MP3 and stumbling on this site, I have been trying to find a good MP4/AAC encoder/decoder. It seems the more I learn about this format the more I get confused about it. It reminds me of the early days of MP3 before the multiple polished apps when you had to use separate rippers, encoders and players. I currently use Audiograbber 1.8.2 for most of my ripping and mp3 and ogg vorbis encoding needs. I also have the latest copy of Exact Audio Copy but haven't gotten around to installing it yet. I'm looking for suggestions for a good, easy to use encoder/decoder for MP4/AAC. Ideally I'd like one that I could use with AG or EAC.

My second question is what is the difference between MP4 and AAC?

Thanks,
Kevin

MPEG-4 is a container format - might contain eg. video and audio streams.
AAC is audio compression method.

I'd say, get AACEnc and use PsytelDrop as a GUI. Just drag your files onto the running encoder like with OggDrop.

Use a ripper of your choice to get the uncompressed wavs onto your harddisk first - most people here use EAC. Edit: If you prefer it the direct way, you can select AACEncoder as external compressor in the compression options in EAC. Make sure you select 'Pytecl AAC Encoder' in the parameter passing scheme and use the additional command line option '-normal'.