I have a few questions regarding the AAC format. While WMA and mp3PRO have never really been accepted by audio enthusiasts, AAC seems to have more luck (see these forums and RareWares). AOL Radio and iTunes use it, Nero has an encoder and now Winamp also. It's said to be used on mobile phones, too. So is AAC really the successor of mp3 we dreamt about for years? And how good is the quality of HE-AAC+SBR(+PS) really compared to other formats like MP3 (Lame), MPC or Ogg Vorbis? Are there any known issues like noticeable distortions with certain audio material? And at which bitrate can it be compared to "lame --preset standard"?

HE-AAC is designed for better performance at lower bit rates. At the target bit rate of APS (192kbps) you'd be better off using LC AAC. AAC was designed to succeed MP3, but it will be a long time before it really becomes mainstream outside of audio enthusiast circles.

i use LAME 320 kb CBR it is better to convert to aac as people said AAC the successor of mp3 maybe only at lower bit rates

but people are get more space in thier devices so 192 bit rate are not acceptable among consumer so what the format that really will kill mp3 at quality

i just see mp3 lame is nice

That is debatable IMHO. The past year has seen DAP developers pushing flash based players really hard, which tend to be inherintly small on storage space. Personally I'd still prefer a nice player with 60GB or more, and use higher bitrates (around -q5 for Vorbis for example) rather than high efficiancy codecs which are best suited for speciality applications (internet radio for instance). My Karma only holds 20GB, and even after redoing my entire collection at 96k, it's still getting to the point where I'm soon going to have to pick and choose what is on my player and what isn't. This brings me to the other reason for why large capacity players are preferable; I'd much rather be able to take my entire collection with me wherever I go. Plus it's less work to maintain.

AAC is the successor of MP3 in the MPEG Standard, which means that future MPEG producs will be using it(probably, in conjunction with MP3, not necesarily replacing it).
About the consumer market, the answer of Defsac is all that can be said for now.



As defsac said also, HE-AAC v2 is meant to be used for low bitrates. In these contexts, the quality outperforms all the current codecs ( see the Winamp 5.1 with AACv2 encoder thread for current users oppinions. A formal test hasn't been done as of yet).




HE-AACv2 is NOT meant to be transparent. This could be the first issue.
Next, some people here dislike the sound that the "SBR" part of the codec produces. If you are about transparency, you will probably don't like it either.



To be thought from the comments above, there is no comparable bitrate, but above 64kbps (HE-AACv1), you can get near-transparent quality. (even at 48kbps, with HE-AACv2)
Yet, if the aim is to compare directly with lame --preset standard, the best bet is plain AAC at 192kbps.

Well, at that bitrate it wouldn't make much sense to switch from MP3 to AAC. It would make sense, if equal quality could be achieved at 128 kbps and below. Just from listening I must say that I could hear no difference between the original, LAME (--preset 128), Winamp's aacPlus (64 kbps) and Winamp's MP4 AAC (128 kbps). But of course it depends on the material and the equipment. I hope there will be some real tests soon.