Here comes a question that I’m sure many are asking themselves. Is Ahead’s new MP4 encoder technically superior to MPC? Most of the files I encode in Nero with MP4 usually come out just slightly smaller than the same song encoded with MPC –standard. I don’t think my ears are sensitive enough to pick up any differences between the two.

I’m just wondering what I should be using for achieving CDs.. I’ve been using MPC for awhile and it sounds great to me. I know that could be considered reason enough to stick with it. But I’m curious about MP4.

Also, how come Nero’s naming structure is so limited. I like naming my files:
<track number> - <track title> - <album> - <artist>.mp4 or whatever..
Nero doesn’t seem capable of handling this naming structure, that could use some fixing.

Sorry to post something like this so early, I know Ahead MP4 has just been released..

Well, that's the old question about transform against subband codecs... you may search for many of those threads here if you're bored...

In my opinion it doesn't matter that much which technology has been used in a codec, but it's much more important how well it has been tuned at the different bitrates and by whom. Open source projects do not have an automatic advantage in this issue, as many readers here still seem to believe.

I noticed in my recent low bitrate tests that MPC and AAC behaved quite similar in bitrate usage, also with a little less bits on the PsyTEL side. Nevertheless I liked the sound of MPC's --thumb profile better than AACEnc's -radio preset, but I did not test a lot of samples, especially not the known "codec killers", only the files I know quite well.



Archiving audio CDs, you mean? If you can't distinguish between those two codecs at their standard/normal setting, then maybe the available hardware support could give you another argument for MP4 files, because you can also copy them to CDs or memory cards for a portable player.



Sorry, don't know anything about that, but probably Menno or Ivan will.

[edit]
I just noticed that you seem to use a character set with your browser that mine couldn't read too well. I had to change all apostrophes in your posting manually, because they were translated into weird numbers. Maybe this is the same problem you have with the file names in Nero?

Recorder -> save track

Then you'll see an option called "filename creation method"

That should do the trick, although I don't see an option for <album> there.

Menno

Thanks for the info guys... I've been using Mozilla 1.3a.. maybe that's why my posts looks weird?

again, thanks for the info..

Instead of using <album> you can manually specify the album's name but it sucks that you have to do this every time you encode an different album.

David

thanks for the tip.. works great.. I don't know why I didn't think of that.. :-)

I'm still unsure about which to choose: MPC or MP4... :-(

I'm only thinking in terms of quality/filesize here...

Actually to be a little more specific, I'm trying to compare the "standard" profiles of both encoders..