OK, I looked at the sticky on help with getting Nero's stand alone AAC encoder setup with EAC. I will list every setting I have.
Parameter Passing Scheme: User Defined Encoder
Use File Extension: .m4a
Program, including path, used for compression:
C:\WINDOWS\system32\cmd.exe
Additional command line options:
/c C:\Program Files\Exact Audio Copy\Nero\neroaacenc.exe -q 0.5 -if %s -of %d && C:\Program Files\Exact Audio Copy\Nero\neroaactag.exe %d -meta:artist="%a" -meta:album="%g" -meta:track="%n" -meta:title="%t" -meta:genre="%m" -meta:year="%y"

Bit rate: 128 kBit/s
Options selected:
Delete Wav After Compression
High Quality

I can't seem to narrow down the problem. Everytime I try it, I run out of luck. I have EAC installed in the normal C:\Program Files\Exact Audio Copy directory. I then put a folder in that directory called Nero and I unzipped everything. I then moved the files from the win32 folder to the general C:\Program Files\Exact Audio Copy\Nero directory. So neroaacenc.exe and neroaactag.exe are in that directory. I am running EAC V0.95 beta 4.

I am doing all this on my Dell Inspiron XPS Gen. 2 notebook running a Pentium M 2.0GHz processor with 2GB of DDR2 533MHz RAM and I have the latest drivers and updates for Windows XP (including the latest version of DirectX).

I can get this to work if I don't worry about tagging and I just use the neroaacenc.exe as my encoding program (ie the option given for ripping to Nero AAC without tag support). As you can probably tell, my source for these rips will be my iPod.

Thanks

Your source? You meant destination, right?

Leave everything the same except do this with the command line:

/c "C:\Program Files\Exact Audio Copy\Nero\neroaacenc.exe" -q 0.5 -if %s -of %d && "C:\Program Files\Exact Audio Copy\Nero\neroaactag.exe" %d -meta:artist="%a" -meta:album="%g" -meta:track="%n" -meta:title="%t" -meta:genre="%m" -meta:year="%y"

notice the paths to the encoder and tagger are now in quotes because the names of the directories contain spaces (Program Files, Exact Audio Copy).

EDIT: typos.

Putting the quotes in the way skelly831 described, didn't work for me.

In my case I had to write the command line like this:



@ kornchild2002: so try both and find out what works for you.

And make sure that your User Defined Encoder is C:\WINDOWS\system32\cmd.exe
(or wherever your cmd.exe is located)

Here's mine. It works for me.

Yours is fine because your paths don't have spaces.

@ arpeggio, I think you are correct.

Thanks, that worked perfectly. The code from skelly831 didn't work either. I now see what I have to do. Put everything with spaces in quotation marks. The files are read just fine with my iPod and with iTunes. I now have to mess with the -q values in order to achieve my optimal bitrate-file size-quality ratios.

Thanks.

Glad it helped you.

I use -q 0.45 to encode for my iPod. This will produce files with bitrates 130 - 150 kbps and filesize 3.5 - 5.5 MB.
After encoding I apply replaygain with AacGain (from Rarewares) to get constant volume for listening.
Works perfect !

I am having some strange things happen though. With -q 0.45, I get bitrates that are fine but both Nero ShowTime and foobar2000 state that they are HE-AAC files. I didn't think that the Nero AAC encoder would activate SBR at such high bitrates but OK. I then added the -lc option to my command and it drastically increased the bitrate. With -q 0.45, the song came out to 160kbps VBR. With the -lc option, the resulting bitrate came out to 200kbps VBR. I then oppened the forced -lc file with Nero ShowTime and foobar2000 and they still showed it as being HE-AAC. I wonder if there is something wrong with this encoder in that it writes it into the AAC files that they are SBR enabled eventhough they aren't.

Additionally, I downloaded a command line program from rarewares that uses the Nero AAC encoder files that are installed with Nero 7. All of the files encoded with the command line program (and the latest version of Nero 7) are fine and neither foobar2000 or Nero ShowTime show that they are HE-AAC files.

Something is fishy. I will have to look into this further before taking the investement in AAC. Still, the files have great sound quality and a small file size to match. I am not used to having a 5 minute song take up 6.5MB instead of 7-8MB with -V 2 Lame 3.97b2 (then again, they are two entirely different settings).

Maybe your point about foobar reporting HE-AAC on your files is something similar to what is mentioned in this thread:

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=45984

Hope this shines a little light.

The files that I have encoded with "neroaacenc -lc -q 0.22" are reported as AAC-LC by the version of foobar2000 that I downloaded earlier this week.

arpeggio, I saw that thread, maybe my ID problem is the same, I don't know. I tried forcing the -lc option, I tried just the regular -q values, it doesn't seem to matter. No matter what I do, foobar2000 and Nero Showtime always reports them as being HE-AAC.

John, I am currently unable to download the latest version of foobar2000. I downloaded my version a couple of months ago. Maybe foobar added an update with this AAC ID problem with the stand alone Nero encoder. I will have to check it out. Still, it i strange that Nero ShowTime would report the files as being HE-AAC.

My dear kornchild2002,
I have at least two computers. One of them is still Foobar2000 0.8.3 machine, the other ones are Foobar 0.9.2. Believe me, the same file, that I'm sure is LC-AAC is reported in Foobar2000 0.8.3 as HE-AAC.
So, "Don't worry, be happy" and trust HA community!
And please don't trust in Nero ShowTime, especially that we don't know what is your version.
Please give us in the future more explanations.

OH, I trust the HA community and I have for a long time. That is how I first came across Lame back in 2003 with my 3G iPod. Ever since then, I have put my trust in HA and Lame.

Anyways, my version of Nero ShowTime is 3.0.0.1 which I think is the most recent version.

I trust the quality of the Nero AAC encoder and I trust the quality setting I have picked (-q0.45) it is just kinda bugging me that Nero's own software and foobar2000 are reporting the files as HE-AAC.

Eh, I guess it is time to start transcoding my lossless files.

Here's mine derived from all the good advice in this thread. I went with the " " as I didn't want to rename my folders without spaces



BTW what, if any, advantage does MP4 have over MP3 quality wise?

I noticed the nero aac encoder was slower than LAME even with the SSE2 version and dual Xeons.

I would like to know that, too (for the 150-200 kbit range)

Though it will most likely remain unanswered for a long time.