Does LC-AAC support 24bit encoding and decoding?

I've tried encoding 24bit samples with Nero, but decoding them produces only 16 bit output (with the winamp plugin)

regards
-mustafa

The AAC specificaion (as well as MP3, Vorbis, most if not all lossy transform-based formats*) makes no reference to any bit depth. It completely operates on arbitratily real-valued samples as encoder input / decoder output.

It's the encoders and decoders implementing LC-AAC that have to support 24 bit samples.

(* for me everything that employs coding of mapped scalars is a form of transform-coding. This includes subband coders)

the aac-format doesn't depend on samplewidth
either nero or the decoding plugin is to blame

[edit]
Sebastian was faster