Im making a little program which already can do the basic sampletype/samplerate conversion on wav files, and also merge/append them together. But now it can output only wav's.

What i want to do is to use some external dll's or programs to convert the wavs to other formats. I want to support many reasonable popular formats. The problem is that i dont know what programs to use for each format. So i've made a list of the formats which i want to support initialy, and i hope i can get atleast one good program/dll suggestion for each format. I already tried to find info on a good mpeg layer1-3 encoder but even this was hard and i couldnt find a single best solution for this. So i dont have mych hope about the other formats . I can support several programs for each format, but only when there is a good reason to do so. I can support cli/GUI programs and even dll's, but i prefer cli. I can also support commercial programs IF i can get my hands on it (trial version) and if there is NO equaly well working freeware program.

So i hope this forum can provide me the best program/dll for each format. Im actualy only familiar with mp3 and dts, so some formats might actualy be very obvious.
My (updated) format list is:

(lossless)
APE-> Monkey's Audio 3.99
FLAC-> flac1.1.2
wavpack ->wavpack-4.2 cli

(lossy)
AAC-> nero aac dll (maybe with NAACEnc or fends or Naac)
DTS -> surcode dts cd+dvd
MPC -> mppenc 1.15v
mpeg1 layer 2 + mpeg2 layer 2 -> toolame
mp3 -> LAME 3.96.1
mpeg1 layer 1 + mpeg2 layer 1 + 3 ->?
OGG->OggEnc1.0.1

EDIT: i just saw the vote on the most popular used lame version ( http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=32176 ) and its 3.96.1 by far, so i think ill use that one.

Maybe other format on request

And please, no flaming on which specific program is best. If needed ill support several .

NB encoders only please, decoders might be added later!

AAC-> (that nero aac dll ?) SURE (or use faac)
APE-> (Monkey's Audio 3.99?) YES
DTS -> surcode dts cd+dvd SURE
FLAC-> (flac1.1.2?) YES
MPC -> (mppenc 1.15v?) YES
mpeg1+2 layer 1-3 -> ? (mp3 lame 3.90.3) YES
OGG->( OggEnc 1.0.1?) YES
wavpack ->(wavpack-4.2 cli ?) YES

always go for the latest version, if no serious regressions are found.
i.e.:
(lossless)
Monkey's Audio - 3.99
FLAC - 1.12
WavPack - 4.2
(lossy)
MPC - 1.15v
OGG Vorbis - 1.1
MP3 - LAME 3.90.3 or 3.96.1 (LAME is a layer 3 encoder)
AAC - I guess there are license issues with Nero/Ahead, aren't there? it's another thing if you rely on an already installed Nero, but I guess you have to ask for implenting only the encoder.
DTS - dunno
what about AC3?

edit:why not 1.1?

I downloaded vorbis-tools-1.1.0-win32.zip from the ogg vorbis forum faq, and this one has version number: "OggEnc v1.0.1 (libvorbis 1.0.1)". I thought if its in the faq it should be good. I guess its better to use 1.1?

My program will not include anything from someone else. So it can only use whats already available. But should i then have a licence to use nero's encoder dll? I mean im just using whats already available. Maybe ill ask it just to be safe. I looked at FAAC and it only supports LC Profile. Nero support both, but i dont even know if LC or HE is the most used one. Any comments about this?

AC3 whas initialy in the list, but i have removed it. The only free ac3 encoder is not very good, and the only commercial encoder (from sonic) has many many settings which i dont know the meaning of. So initialy focus on the other formats. Eventualy their might come some sort of support for this format.

The mpeg encoder is still open. I know mp3 is mpeg 1 layer 3, so i need a program/dll for the other layers and mpeg2. Is it correct that mp3 is the only (official) supported format of lame?

The implication seems to have been that the app will support it if a Nero DLL is on the system. That should be fine. There is a 30 day Nero trial. You can also get the encoder for free with the Yahoo Media Player, so you might want to try to support that setup as well.

HE is (quite) superior for low bitrates, but has worse hardware support for now. For high bitrates there is no point in using it.



Yes. But there is toolame, a seperate program, which handles layer 2.

sorry, oversight - thanx for pointing that out

later

Cross-platform application, or targeted to a specific OS?
Just had to ask since you did not mention that at all...

Yahoo Media Player might also be very interesting. If its isnt crippled i think i will add support for this one and not nero's dll. Is this a good idea?

EDIT

i searched it and this is what i found in the cache:
The Yahoo! Player is no longer available for download



i looked at toolame and these are the supported formats:
Allowable bitrates for 16, 22.05 and 24kHz sample input
8, 16, 24, 32, 40, 48, 56, 64, 80, 96, 112, 128, 144, 160

Allowable bitrates for 32, 44.1 and 48kHz sample input
32, 48, 56, 64, 80, 96, 112, 128, 160, 192, 224, 256, 320, 384

so can it do mpeg1 layer 2 & mpeg2 layer 2?



Surcode cd+dts implies its for win32 doesnt it doesnt it . Windows is still used by 95%+ so windows support is a must IMO. I might someday make it compaitble with wine, or make a linux release, but i dont think this is very likely.

Perhaps I've missed something, but that was not obvious to me.
I understand. Since you reach most users with a Win32 application.
** moving on to my own little Mac world... **

(The only mac i've ever seen is from tv and inet , never in "real life")

I found 2 frontends for aac: Nero Frontends (nero_fends) and NAACEnc. The last one is pretty old so i dont know about that one. Is it advisable to use one of these? Or would it better to just use encoder dll from nero myself? Also im not able to find any documentation on the nero site about how to use the aac dll. Is this for commercial programmers only?

You Kinda answered your own question there The low samplerates are the MPEG-2 layer II rates and the higher ones are the MPEG-1 layer II rates.

for AAC, I think its better to just bundle FAAC (because its free)

Using the encoder DLL in this way is unsupported...but people have gotten it to work anyway.

There is another frontend (outputs mp4s):

http://www.saunalahti.fi/cse/files/naac.zip

The Nero encoder is free with Yahoo Media Player and it's a lot better than FAAC. It don't see any sense in bundling FAAC - if you want to use AAC, that's certainly not going to be the encoder you want to use.

but it seems the player is no longer available
http://player.yahoo.com/

They changed the download URL, but the Yahoo! player is still available for download at the page:

http://music.yahoo.com/musicengine/

I told this yesterday but.... but somehow this is overlooked




I tried it:
"Yahoo! Music Engine requires Windows Media Player 9.0 or higher in order to install."Thats not good .

Since i dont have any experience with aac myself i dont know how good/bad faac is. To be safe i think ill just use the one from nero.

http://www.rjamorim.com/test/aac128v2/plot12z.png

FAAC was not improved since, Nero has seen continous development.

The following list will be the programs im gonna use:

(lossless)
APE-> Monkey's Audio 3.99
FLAC-> flac1.1.2
wavpack ->wavpack-4.2 cli

(lossy)
AAC-> nero aac dll with the help of one of the cli frontends
DTS -> surcode dts cd+dvd
MPC -> mppenc 1.15v
mpeg1 layer 2 + mpeg2 layer 2 -> twolame v0.33
mp3 -> LAME 3.96.1
mpeg1 layer 1 + mpeg2 layer 1 + 3 -> still no suggestion
OGG->OggEnc1.0.1

For every program i will make a GUI to configure the setting for that particular program.
Although i dont want to limit usefull options's, i dont want to add useless switches eather. Im busy with twolame v0.33 now and i dont know what switches can/should be ommited from the configuration GUI. So ill do a suggestion and i hope i get some usefull feedback.
From the switches i got from the -h switch the following seems usefull:

-m mode channel mode : s/d/j/m (dflt s)
-p psy psychoacoustic model 0/1/2/3 (dflt 3) (not really shure about this)
-b br total bitrate in kbps (dflt 192)

There will be an option to select mpeg1 and mpeg2, which will change the selectable values from the bitrate box.

(If anybody want to make a pic of how a good config dialog for this or an other format should look like thats good to. Even better would be a rescource script (.rc) which i can include directly in my program )

you still might want to consider using 1.1 instead of 1.01.

have a look here at BeLight. the MP3 tab was inspired by Gabriel's 'reference GUI'.

I have looked arround and i think ill use aoTuV beta 2

I've finished a beta release and i would appreciate it if some of the pro's on this board would check the commandlines used. Since i support 12 programs(8 cli programs), its a lot of work to check them all. If the pro's off each program will take a look at "their" program, im sure we can find all the bugs very fast.

for info, look on this page.


the programs supported are:
surcode cd (dts)
surcode dvd (dts)
twolame (mpeg 2)
ape (monkey's audio)
flac
wavpack
nero fends (frontend for nero aac)
MPC
lame (mp3)
Ogg
sonic foundry soft encode (ac3) new
DA's ac3enc new

If you want to check the commandlines, use the following insturctions: