I am new to AAC. As I understand it there are three different ways to encode AAC files:
-NERO,
-iTunes,
-FAAC.

I am left somewhat perplexed as to which is the recommended encoder (with mp3 it is LAME 3.90.3). There does not appear to be such a consensus with regards to AAC. Although, I do understand that Nero is favoured.

[1] Simply put, which is the best encoder and with which setting and average bit-rate?
[2] Furthermore, I am having trouble running the Nero AAC incarnation. Some guidance would be greately appreciated.

Kind Regards,
KS

It's difficult to tell; there is no clear answer as there is for mp3. Roberto's last AAC listening test had iTunes and Nero statistically tied, and further independent tests tend to put one ahead of the other, but that greatly varies depending on what bitrate, genre of music, etc are used. I suggest you try encoding samples of some of the music you listen to, and try to ABX it to determine which one does best on your music.


What kind of trouble are you having?

You may want to check out guruboolez's AAC listening test comparing Apple and Ahead's encoders. He only tested classical music, but the results should offer you some guidance.

All AAC encoders are of high quality -- which encoder you choose is basically a question of what is most convenient to you. Nero & FAAC currently have an advantage in that they offer gapless and VBR though.

Please qualify what bitrate range you are talking about :B

Claiming all encoders are of high quality at all bitrates is a little risky, and you don't want people throwing the dreaded TOS 8 at you, do you?

There is also Compaact which also offers vbr encoding and can be used via EAC, CDEX etc.

hehe.. (you're joking right? )

but it is an interesting question.. are there known bit-rates where some of the encoders really have issues? I haven't read such a thing (not saying that there necessarily isn't). I don't think it is out of place to say that the AAC encoders he mentioned are of good quality though, although I base that mostly on tests conducted here.

EDIT: an interesting quote;

You have been most helpful. I am looking to encode at a rather high bitrate, around ~256. But VBR and gapeless support in Nero and FAAC are significant drawcards for me.
- I guess that the only remaining matter is to ABX the two codecs.

I cant get the Nero codec to run. I downloaded NEncode and NAACenc from Rarewares.org, unzipped them in the same folder and nothing.
What am I doing wrong?

P.S. Sorry about the stupid question.

Regards,
KS

If you use foobar2000 have you tried the foo_nero plugin?

If you're encoding at such a high bitrate, why not stay with highly-tested LAME? To me, the benefit of AAC is that you get pretty good results at much lower bitrates than 256kbps.

Do you have Nero itself installed?

This simply isn't necessary with AAC (unless you have ears better then anyone on this forum and listen exclusively to really hard to encode files). After guruboolez's last test, I have personally been using the -Internet profile (with the "Encoder Quality" set to fast), but the only way to know for yourself will be to do an ABX Test.

For Mac OS X there is Popwire Compression Master which also supports a bunch of other formats (Windows Media, Real, MPEG-2, 3GP etc.).

/Pontus

Oh, please tell me you're not that dense, you're just making an effort.

I was replying to a guy that asked about a lame equivalent - that is, a well tuned encoder. And it is my heartfelt opinion that both iTunes and Nero are very well tuned.

That's VERY different than going straight for "All AAC encoders are of high quality" (my emphasis). Since I see no point of being polite anymore: that's a huge bullshit. Just look at ReallyRareWares. There you can find mbsoft, early psytel, homeboy... they are all AAC encoders, so now you go there and tell me if they - like all others, as per your post - produce high quality.

You're misinterpreting the semantics; "all encoders" refer to what he listed in the original post. To be honest, I haven't even heard of any of those you mentioned

I do not think that Faac is in the same quality range as Nero or Apple's encoders.

I've certainly had problems with FAAC 1.24 on some samples. It appears to to produce distortion at certain vocal frequencies. Specifically try encoding

Composer: Stephen Schwartz
Album: Godspell
Track: 02 - Prepare Ye
Cat. Ref.: CDTER 1204

with -q 150

and listen to the tenor part.

Faac also seems to put a bright "sheen" on strings that is not noticable with the iTunes encoder.

I used to encode AAC@192kbps using the Helix 10 encoder that comes with Real Player. After my hard drive crashed, I decided to start afresh using iTunes @ 192kbps after all that seems to be the "standard" AAC encoder. I have to say I was quite disappointed with iTunes: everything sounded so flat and lifeless especially when a harpsichord is involved (70% of my music is baroque or renaissance music). In particular the bass and its overtones seem too weak. I re-encoded some harpsichord music with Helix encoder and it sounded so full and fresh. The only thing I notice is that the bass is sometimes slightly exaggerated in volume.

I did this all by ear and without any analytical tools so it is strictly an opinion. But I think I'm going to switch back to Helix. I'm not sure why Helix is almost never mentioned as a viable alternative AAC encoder to iTunes or Nero. It is free and you only have to deal with the bloated Real Player interface while encoding.

You're violating TOS #8. It doesn't really matter if you call it an opinion. You are most likely experiencing the infamous placebo effect. The latest iTunes @ 192 kbps - I'd say it is transparent to most people. As always, if you claim it to be "dull" or "flat" etc. you have to show some ABX results to prove you can really distinguish the AAC-files from the originals.

Nighty night...

Wow, this was an old thread. I would have to agree with DigitalDictator. It doesn't matter if it is your opinion or not. It is kinda hard to get plausable audio advice from someone who hasn't conducted any official listening tests. Kinda like me telling you to not buy a car when I have only looked at pictures of the car and haven't actually driven it.

As for the 192kbps bitrate, I think it is too high for the AAC format. As others have stated, the main commercial reason to use the AAC format is that you can encode music at lower bitrates and still retain quality. Recent listening tests have shown other wise but still.

I have conducted ABX tests (can posts results if needed) and I don't really see an advantage of using the AAC format at the 192kbps VBR bitrate when compared to Lame 3.97b2 at -V 2 --vbr-new. To me, they both sound the same but the AAC files are, on avrage, about 0.5 MB smaller than the mp3 files. I just don't think that this small file size reduction and reduction in hardware compatibility (though I live in a iPod world my car CD deck supports mp3 CD's and standard audio CD's only so no AAC for me) just aren't worth using the AAC format at that setting (192kbps VBR).

It is amazing to see how little things change from 2004 to 2006. Nero and iTunes are still concidered to be the best AAC encoders and FAAC isn't even in the race anymore. I don't even know if FAAC is still being developed. I know the developers of FAAC moved to Nero and since then have been coming out with a quality encoder (except for a couple of times but those were fixed fairly quickly).

Helix? I am not sure. I *think* there was a recent listening test conducted with iTunes AAC, Nero AAC, and Real AAC (Helix) and I think that Real AAC had the lowest score out of the three. I will have to conduct a small search for that test as I am not sure if it was conducted here at HA or some place else.

There's also Coding Technologies encoder found in Winamp 5.2 (Dolby in pre 5.2)

Actually, no developers of FAAC moved to Nero - but developer of FAAD2, Menno He actually worked for Nero even before the first post on this topic was made in 2004

The reason for the same picture in terms of quality is that both Nero and Apple actively work on their respetive encoders, while most other projects are not developed quite as intensively - advantage of Nero, IMHO, is that it offers HE-AAC and HE-AAC v2, too.

And there will be a lot of new interesting developments for years to come