is it better or equal to or worse than MPC ?

s8n

In the interest that someone may later do a search for "ACC MPC" and have this thread come up in the search results, and because it is your first post, I'll attempt to take a stab at an answer a little more useful than just a simple "do a search".

Your ultimate best bet would be to do your own listening test (also known as ABX tests) and decide for yourself. See:
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=16295

In general, another "good bet" would be to search the forums and/or Google to see if there have already been tests comparing the two (although I just did a quick search and didn't find anything). Also, just skimming through the specific AAC and MPC forums may reveal some useful information.

In general, also read the FAQ. See:
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=7516

Considering that you are a newbie, as am I, and that my initial quick searches didn't reveal an exact answer to your question, you are basically left with the option of performing your own listening tests which, as a newbie, are not that easy to do. Only very recently have I gotten the my personal best methods of performing listening tests down pat for myself.

Assuming that it will take you a while to get used to performing listening tests, I'll dare to go out on a limb and state what I generally believe based solely on what I've read on these forums (i.e. repeating what other members have found - but only when substantiated) and what I've found with my own listening test (which is based entirely on two or three tracks that I tested with and may not reflect overall results that can consistently be expected when using a larger sample set) :

Based on what other people have said: MPC seems to be superior to AAC.
Based on my own listening tests: MPC seems to be superior to AAC.

One of my results (showing that I was able to ABX this track when comparing the original WAV file to an iTunes/QuickTime encoded AAC file at 192 bitrate):
WinABX v0.42 test report
07/10/2004 01:45:41

A file: D:\abx\03 Brand New Heavies Featuring N'Dea.wav
B file: D:\abx\03_192.wav

Start position 00:00.0, end position 05:09.2
01:46:42 1/1 p=50.0%
01:48:01 1/2 p=75.0%
01:48:40 2/3 p=50.0%
01:49:04 3/4 p=31.2%
01:49:19 4/5 p=18.8%
01:50:05 5/6 p=10.9%
01:52:08 6/7 p=6.2%
01:52:28 7/8 p=3.5%


* Notes: Disregard the start and end positions since I was starting and stopping manually and was able to ABX it within the first few seconds of the song.
* For the same song, I was not able to ABX it when using MPC so that it averaged out to a comparable bitrate (since I was not able to ABX the MPC file, I didn't bother to save those results).
* My tests of MPC were extremely limited (again, just a handful of songs) since none of my portable devices play MPC files so the tests were done just for "fun" / curiousity.
* The song I used in this example is not one of those "problem" tracks or anything. It's just one of many songs that I know that I'm able to ABX when using iTunes/QuickTime AAC format (albeit, I have to concentrate EXTREMELY hard to ABX most AAC files encoded at 160 or higher).

** You're post will most likely be moved to the Recycle Bin anyway since it is so "newbie" of a question but don't be discouraged and don't be afraid to use the "search" feature, read the FAQ's, etc.

Oops. As I said, I'm a newbie too. And as one, I think I didn't post my ABX results with all the necessary info that I should have also included.

The song was:
Spend Some Time (Extended Version)
by The Brand New Heavies
from the Divas of Dance Volume 5 (my wifes CD)

using this hardware:
Toshiba Satellite Laptop computer headphone jack
Sony MDR-7506 headphones

under these conditions:
No background noise of TV, appliances, etc.
All kids (and wife) asleep

That's a very general question. Firstly, it depends on what bitrate your comparing them at. Secondly, it depends on who is comparing them. On average, at 128kbps, according to Roberto's last Multiformat test (here) MPC is slightly better then AAC. However, the test only used 18 samples of music. With a different set of samples, the scores could have been different. Furthermore, you cannot extrapolate these results to other, untested bitrates. There is no diffinitive answer to your question. Your best bet is to either,
a) pick entirely on features (portable support, gapless support, etc.), or...
b) perform an ABX test.

An ABX test is where you get serveral samples, encode them into one or more formats, and try to see if you can tell which track is an encoded track and which track is the original. These tests are performed blindly (in other words, you don't know whether you are listening to the origianl or not, the computer doesn't tell you). In your case, you could encode a number of 30 second long clips in MPC at "--quality 4.15 --xlevel" and iTunes at 128kbps. It is important that the tracks be PCM audio (in wav files) and have been ripped off a CD.

This is a very limited overview, I suggest you search and read around the forums for some more information on these subjects.