Are there any portable players, of any type (e.g. disc-based, memory card, hard disk) which can play MPEG-4 AAC audio files ?

what exactly do you mean by 'mpeg-4' aac ?

I mean, a portable player which can play *.mp4 audio files like those created by the MPEG-4 AAC Nero plugin.

i hope this doesn't sound annoying.. but mp4 is only container.
in fact, there are at least 4 official ways to 'hold' AAC frames, and it is possible to convert between any of those formats without affecting its quality. some info can be found here :
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....&f=14&t=5419&s=

as for aac players, find info in the following thread :
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....&f=21&t=2319&s=

OMG!!! im so honored by the link ohh mighty dspguru posted to a thread i started .

BTW... i already got the expanium exp503 and i bet its the best Nero AAC compatible (only with iso export thingy, i. e. : aac extension files) already in the market

i own EXP501, and now encode my music exclusively with Nero's plugin.
Ivan is da-bomb

What is the bitrate or preset did you use with Nero's AAC encoder?

"normal".
around 160kbps.

Nero can also produce MPEG-2 AAC files with an *.aac extension that can be played by most Philips Expanium portables. You'd have to use the appropriate option in Nero for that called "ISO....bla compatibility" or something like that.

But you also have to watch out to buy the right Expanium, because I've just read another report from a EXP 431 user who confirmed that this portable with a new firmware upgrade can play mp3PRO files now, but no longer AAC files (although its website still doesn't mention this and keeps listing AAC as a possible format). So stick to the recommendations in this board if you consider to buy a Philips Expanium for AAC playback purposes...

firmware upgrade ?
i believe that Philips are using ASIC decoders, not gp DSPs.

http://www.mp3pro.com/forum/mp3pro/topic.a...are&whichpage=2

That's what he wrote... and that's the third user who reported this, so there must be some truth to it. Weird though that Philips doesn't seem to know what's going on in their company. But maybe this is a german-only release of EXP 431, because all three users who told this story were germans.

mpio DMGs can play AAC, very nice players - www.mpio.com

Hmm, neither the product page nor the search function can find "aac" or "mp4" for these players, so how do you know that they can play this format?

By the way, I've just edited the Audicoding Wiki for some new infos on hardware portables, so there are some more links to AAC portables (both CD and memory based) now.

They used to advertise it, do a search in google for DMG and AAC.

I personaly use the Normal High preset, its around 200kbps and it sounds perfect to me...

hum why use so hight biterate with aac ??? i mean that the '-internet- switch is also good to kip good sound ! and be better than mp3 files

all this format and container stuff is waaay to complicated for the ordinary user. it wont replace mp3 anytime soon.

Yeah, right... especially not on emule.soundforge.net...