A user on the FAAC forum reports success.
http://www.audiocoding.com/phorum/read.php?f=1&i=841&t=830

I know the Philips EXP30317 eXpanium supports AAC. Does anyone have tested it, or knows if supports files encoded with psytel ?

I don't know this, but I'd be interested in finding out myself... PsyTEL would be great on a portable

In this propaganda they speak about AAC support
http://www.audio.philips.com/Downloads/PDF..._exp401_row.pdf

But the specifications don't mention anything
about AAC.

i just got a philips exp50317 that supports aac when i rma'ed my old exp10317 (talk about free upgrade! )... if someone would be kind enough to explain how to use psytel to encode files as that -h extension just flies by the screen and i have no clue what to do, then i would gladly post results of various aac codecs on the Philips EXP series

oh and i found some specs for the aac support on the philips line... and im a newbie to all this aac stuff so i dont really know what it means but here it is anyway:

"AAC format: ISO 13818-7 MPEG-2 (low complexity profile), stereo, ADTS and ADIF headers, AAC bit rate =<160 kbps"

I HIGHLY reccomend you try out Speek's EXCELLENT PsyTEL frontend:
http://home.wanadoo.nl/~w.speek/download/Ivan&Menno_1.3.zip

According to Amazon.com you're right!

Features:
MP3 and ACC playback with CD-R/-RW compatibility
100-second Electronic Skip Protection (ESP)
VBR (variable bit-rate) playback
15 hours' playback time with 4 AA batteries (ESP on)
Includes AC adapter and 3-key remote control

of course im right... im holding the manual and cd player in my hands

Well, now you all know what to get me for Christmas!
It's a pity it doesn't go over 160 kbps and only does LC. Oh well, it's a good start! Did you tryout Ivan & Menno yet?

im trying it out now... for some reason when i try to play it, there is no sound and the counter goes by about 3 seconds every second... :confused: guess i gotta play with the settings in Ivan...

*********** PsyTEL® MPEG-4 AAC Encoder V1.3 (build Dec 6 2001) ***********
Copyright © 1999-2001 PsyTEL Research
Copyright © 1999-2001 Ivan Dimkovic

This program is protected by copyright law and international treaties.
Any reproduction or distribution of this program, or any portion of it
may result in severe civil and criminal penalties, and will be
prosecuted to the maximum extent possible under law.

For further info please visit http://www.psytel-research.co.yu


usage: AACENC -switches
switches: -h Print help
-br <x> Bit rate in kbits per second (dflt: 128)
-if <x> Input file name
-of <x> Output file name
-qual <x> Encoder quality level (1-9) (dflt: 9)
-production Production (slowest) CBR encoding
-altcbr Alternative CBR mode
-ihsc Improved Human Speech Coding
-nh Disable ADTS header (raw ISO 13818-7 AAC file)
-noshort Disable block switching (debug only!)
-no_temporal Disable temporal masking
-lc MPEG-2 AAC Low Complexity (LC) mode
-profile AAC Profile:
0: MPEG-2 AAC Main, 1: MPEG-2 AAC LC,
2: MPEG-4 AAC LC, 3: MPEG-4 AAC Main,
4: MPEG-4 AAC LTP
-adif Use ADIF header
-vr Variable bit rate (VBR mode, good quality)
-vbrhi Total VBR mode (recommended, high quality)
-tape Preset: Tape VBR Mode
-radio Preset: Radio VBR Mode
-internet Preset: Internet VBR Mode
-streaming Preset: Streaming VBR Mode
-normal Preset: Normal VBR Mode (recommended)
-extreme Preset: Extreme VBR Mode
-archive Preset: Archive VBR Mode (best quality)
-ultra Preset: Ultra (transcoding) mode (highest bitrate)
-lfe Use LFE channel (only for 4 and 6 channel input)
-c <x> Cut-Off frequency in Hz (lowpass) (dflt: 0)
-ltq <x> Decrease Threshold in Quiet by n dB (dflt: 0)
-raise_smr <x> Increase Signal to Mask Ratio by n dB (dflt: 0)
-low_ath Use highest sensitivity hearing threshold
-no_ath Disable ATH
-no_tns Disable TNS coding
-artist <x> Artist Name
-title <x> Title Name
-album <x> Album
-year <x> Year
-use_tags Use Tags
-resample <x> Resample input to x Hz (dflt: 0)

try typing:
-lc -br 160
in the Switches: box

or if you're not in too big of a hurry:
-lc -br 160 -production

waahooooooooooo it works!

i kinda am in a big hurry considering im supposed to be either studying or sleeping for my calculus AP and physics exams tomorrow... so i just did -lc -br 128. oh well... at least it works:D

oh and btw... it runs on 2 AA not 4 like amazon.com and philips.com reports... its a typo on both places...

now i just gotta find out about WMA... if i tilt the cd player, i can see a spot on the LCD that says WMA right below MP3 and AAC, but it doesnt work :confused: oh well... time for sleep...

Who cares about wma??? It plays ISO AAC!!!

Hrmm.. this is pretty cool news. Can you try VBR? Perhaps the -extreme preset? If that works I'm seriously going to consider picking one of these up..

I wonder for how long.. wonder if Dolby & co know about this and are gonna do something about it?

I've got an EXP40117 (8cm disks) ordered and on its way from Amazon ($130). If I don't like it I can always return it.

ff123

I know, I saw that on there. It lists for $180 too. I wonder how hard it is to find 8 cm cdrw's for it?

I don't know about cd-rw's but I should be able to find the cd-r's pretty easily -- I have a couple from the last time I visited a computer swap meet, and probably Fry's (computer chain) has them.

ff123

ff123, they give the same specs for the eXpanium EXP401 as for the EXP503:

AAC format: ISO 13818-7 MPEG-2 (low complexity profile), stereo, ADTS and ADIF header, AAC bit rate ¡Ü 160 kbps

If you want to look over the user's manual you can download it here:

http://www.audio.philips.com/Downloads/PDF...401_usa_eng.pdf

www.audio.philips.com also says the EXP303 has AAC support.

One odd thing about the details for the 303 vs. the 503 is that the 503's amp section is only listed with an 82 dB S/N, while the 303 has a 100 dB S/N - can that be right?!

true... but why would they put wma on the screen (but not in the manual) and not have it supported?


well i dont think they can do anything about the players... just the encoders... i mean if you have the license for the encoder you shouldnt have to pay for the license on the player....

the 8cm one is the same price as the normal one, so if size isnt a problem, you might as well just get the 503 and have full capacity cd-r's and rw's

as for the 303 vs 503... i think someone mistyped one of them... they've got wrong info all over the place... i would think they have the same amp, but whether its the 82 or 100 i dunno...

Thanx for the compliment

I did a very minor upgrade, so now the link is: http://home.wanadoo.nl/~w.speek/download/Ivan&Menno_1.4.zip

If you're upgrading from v1.3 and want to keep your existing presets.cfg file, please remove "default" from the first line of that file.

Btw, AACEnc v1.6 is available - this version features more improvements in psychoacoustics, fixed M/S bug, dynamic window grouping (eliminates drop-outs and chirps), etc..

Hrmm.. this is cool stuff to hear Ivan. I'll have to check this out. Nice to see continued improvements to your great encoder... keep up the good work!

Me too. Glad to see that you (Ivan) is working on the audio encoder again.

Awesome news! You ROCK Ivan!!! Maybe you'll be able to make a deal with Phillips to pay off Dolby and distribute aacenc with Phillips CD players. Hey, a guy can DREAM, can't he?

I sure hope Roberto gets his hands on the 1.6 encoder...

where would i be able to get that?

oh and so far, it works with vbr's on normal... encoding an extreme right now to test it out.

So it works with vbr? Cool! If it exceeds 160 kbps, extreme probably won't work but... WHO KNOWS?

extreme works! :eek:

man... now im gonna have to re-encode all 3 of my mp3-cds....

heres something interesting i just noticed...
mp3 cbr 128 for a 9:30 song- 8816 KBs
same 9:30 song in aac cbr 128- 6591 KBs

i knew it was supposed to be smaller but i didnt know it was that much smaller

Wow.. this is great! Gonna have to pick one of these up now

I would have expected a 128k aac file to be around the same size as a 128k mp3. Also, when you encoded in extreme did you still use the -lc switch or are you saying it plays main profile too?

Looks like you've actually got a 96 kbit/s AAC file.

ff123

Do you have the aac plugin for winamp? With it you can use the File Info feature to determine the profile and average bitrate of your files (and play them too of course).

If not, you can grab it here:
http://www.inf.ufpr.br/~rja00/

extreme i still used the -lc switch... havent tried it without it yet, but i will do that soon

it could have been a 96, im not really sure... i thought i encoded that particular file with 128 but i could be worng (and probably am) and winamp reports all aac files as 160kbits:confused:

That's odd, the file I just encoded using -lc -extreme shows approx 192 in winamp. Are you using a recent plugin?

yup

Yup! It's already there.
http://www.inf.ufpr.br/~rja00/

Regards;

Roberto.

Roberto - You DA MAN! Thanks again for all your efforts keeping youe page updated and for having the cajones to stand up to corporate bullies.

No problem. That's a pleasure.

By the way, I have already received a very scary e-mail from Dolby. The same stuff as always - I wiil be prosecuted to the maximum extent possible under law, blabla, blabla. They probably don't know they can't reach me in Brazil...

But i'm afraid they'll try to scary the sysadmin - and, then, she'll probably shut my page. So, you'd better enjoy while it last.

Regards;

Roberto.

And they sent me the mail with attachments! Since I explicitly say in my page "Please, text-only e-mail without attachments.",
I choose to solemnly ignore it.

Am I wrong or psytel could encode files in the LC or LTP profile? Does psytel encodes with the Main profile?It would be nice to see also if the expanium supports files with the -archiving setting...

Yes, PsyTEL can encode in the LC profile or Main LTP. After talking with Ivan, I believe he feels that LTP is a better solution than just Main, since apparently it allows for lower overall bitrates (through using fewer frames) while maintaining quality.

I too for that matter am interested in seeing if this player will work with a non LC profile encoded AAC. It'd also be kind of cool to see some very high bitrate CBR and VBR tests (up to 300kbps and beyond) to see just how high this thing will go, since apparently it is able to go over the 160kbps stated in the literature.

Yeah, have to remember that LTP (long term prediction) is for MPEG4 audio only.

According to Ivan, LTP is also faster and not so sensitive to transmission errors like Main-profile's backward prediction.

LTP prediction showed similar performance (quality) as backward-adaptive prediction.

BWP prediction (Main Profile) is based on long prediction sequences ('P' frames) - this casuses problems with:

- Seeking (you need to find the first frame after the last predictor reset in order to reconstruct all frames)

- Problems if packet is lost in transmission (error is propagated in the following frames until the predictor reset is sent)

Also, Main profile prediction is very complex, taking 40% of the decoding time.