Hello,

I am very interested in AAC and Orb Vorbis. I listen to virgin classic rock using the AAC streaming feed, and I've noticed that they also have a feed in Orb Vorbis format.

I've listened to both, and I cannot tell a major difference with the sound coming through my laptop and my earbud except that the AAC is louder, but that might have something to do with the fact that the stream is Real Networks as compared to Winamp for the Orb Vorbis, but I'm sure their are bigger differences.

Does someone have links to websites that compare the two technologies?

Thanks,
-Scott

http://www.rjamorim.com/test/

So in viewing the test results, it appears that Vorgis does generally better than AAC. WMA does very well, but since it's a windows product, I won't even consider it.

WMA was one of the worst codecs in that test?

BTW, if they are not using the aoTuV Vorbis encoder, I would expect AAC to be at least as good.

aoTuv beta 2 was used for latest multiformat test. It's near identical to current Vorbis CVS.
On the other side, AAC encoders have improved a lot - it isn't the case for vorbis.

"Generally better" may be an overstatement. Not saying it's untrue, just that the test was a narrow bitrate range to say "generally".

On this test, WMA seemed pretty good, better than AAC in many of the tests. However,like I said, since it's a Microsoft product, I won't consider using it in my personal use.

What test are you looking at??

What test are you looking at??
(there are several listed on that page)

Please note that the oldest tests are from 2003 and that is a century ago speaking in terms of AAC development.

Perhaps I may also point to this aoTuv beta 3 vs. Nero AAC listening test. It exclusively dealt with classical music at around 130 kbps, but still...

Thanks. I suppose more recent tests are needed. I wish there was a sticky thread somewhere that kept us novices up to date on the latest versions of each encoder and test results when comparing

BTW - I just purchased the newest Nero software last week. I assume it will have the latest Nero AAC encoder or can I download the latest from Nero's website?

Yeah, I was looking at a test from 2003. BTW - I've noticed that in this test:

http://www.rjamorim.com/test/aac128v2/results.html from 2004, that iTunes did a better job than Nero.

Is that still the case?

When I start converting my FLAC files to AAC, I want to ensure that I have the best encoder.

This one was featuring WmaPro, not Wma. They are different things, not compatible between each other.

Thanks.

I'm really a novice at this, but nonetheless, I want to preserve my audio collection. This site has been a big help.

BTW - Until I saw the title below your avatar "L.A.M.E." I thought that people were calling MP3 Lame, "lacking needful or desirable substance" because it was of poor quality.

Why not just keep them FLAC and save yourself the headache of choosing.

Well, I do plan to keep DVD backups of all the FLACs, but I want something more compressed so I can use them in an iPod.

I would say the answer is easy then as the ipod only will play either mp3 or aac. If you ever will buy another player than an ipod it might be worthwile encoding to mp3, otherwise stick to aac. I personally find that if I encode to a good quality in both mp3 and aac, the mp3 files will be about 25% bigger. (I encode to 160 Kbits average using nero when using aac.)

Still, I have the impression that decoding aac files takes a bit more cpu power, giving me small skips when using the pc with other more intense applications.

Also, when sending your aac files to friends you will undoubtedly get the response 'I cannot play these files' from some of them.

I personally have not yet found the definitive answer

Can iPod play OGG Vorbis format?

nope

I guess 'as the ipod will only play either mp3 or aac' would have been more correct grammatically...

" OGG VORBIS 500 Kbps Vs HE-AAC 448 Kbps "

For my part, I find that the resonant quality of the codec HE - AAC is more defined and better restored that the codec OGG Vorbis.
It would be well to make a test of monitoring to this bitrate, to judge the performance of the codec audio HE-AAC.

To soon.

Is that sarcasm or trolling?

It would be interesting when Apple releases iTunes 7 with VBR AAC. Then the ABR/CBR versus VBR ambiguity in interpreting the listening tests wouldn't exist anymore

I don't think we'll have to wait until iTunes 7 to have VBR-AAC support. iTunes 5 will suffice.
(I know you probably meant Quicktime 7)

>>Is that sarcasm or trolling?
A joke, perhaps.
Didn't get it either...