Hello.

I was wondering what options were available these days for Portable Audio players supporting He-AAC. Last time I checked there were few, and development didn't seem to be growing in any way - once iPod said that they weren't supporting He-AAC it seemed like most other companies followed.

There is one glimmer of hope, though. It seems that cellular phones tend to support He-AAC to make them compatible with some of the ringtones being sold. Unfortunately this opens a whole new can of worms, ranging from proprietary headphones to only supporting raw AAC. It is quite difficult at a glance to know if a phone is going to support exactly what I want. Thus I have come here...

I would like some suggestions on a player supporting He-AAC. It doesn't really matter to me whether it is a phone or a portable player, as long as it covers as many of these as aspects as possible. Here are the things that matter to me, ranked by importance:

-> Plays He-AAC
-> Flash memory
-> Expandable memory (or 2 GB built in if not)
-> Uses standard headphone mini-jack (if phone)
-> Doesn't need to be connected to network to let me use DAP (if phone)
-> Supports MP4 container, doesn't need to be Raw AAC
-> Gapless playback this doesn't really matter
-> Drag and drop transfers, direct to memory card if possible

I'll add to this list if anything else jumps up as relevant. If you know a particular player or phone that supports these things, let me know so that I can investigate further.

Thanks!

Edit 1: Strikeout gapless playback

Unfortunately not. The closest you can get is Sony Network Walkman series, the NW series that is available only in Japan. They support HE-AAC. I don't know about gapless with AAC, but they are gapless with Atrac. The outside Japan versions, the NWZ series, do not support HE-AAC and is not gapless capable at all.

I don't think there are any cellphone that can play HE-AAC gaplessly.

Gapless is pretty low on my list for required features... it would be nice, but I can find ways around it.

Thanks for the input so far!

If gapless is not an issue, then check Sony Ericsson Walkman phones. You can buy a headset w/ mic for them that has a standard 3.5mm jack on it. Or, you can also use a BT stereo headset. Although I don't have their latest models, so far, they are drag-n-drop. They also have an airplane mode where you can use all the features, but the cell radio is turned off. The one I used to use seem to support .mp4, .m4a, and .3gp extensions. The downside is they use memory stick micro instead of the more standard SD cards.

So you do have to buy an attachment to use standard 3.5mm headphone jacks? Oh well, I can still live with that, but would prefer being able to go straight into the phone.

The airport mode also seems useful - this means I would not need to be signed up to a network to use the DAP part of the phone?

I'll be sure to check them out.

Some BlackBerry models could work for you also.

I have a 8100 model that supports all from your list except gapless and standard headphone jack.
Other models have standard headphone jack, so you might look into that (or buy a converter).
Also, it uses microSD cards.
Cell radio can be turned off, and you can use the DAP part even without SIM card in the phone.

The Airplane mode simply turn off the cell radio. I'm not sure if this has changed on the newer models, but on the SE phones I used to use, you still need a SIM chip in it, even if you just use Airplane mode. Although prepaid SIMs are cheap, and you can even use an expired SIM, this is something to consider if you only going to use the phone as a DAP and not as a phone at all.

Some Nokia models use a 2.5mm jack (not 3.5mm though). At least on the E series, you can use all the phone's features without a SIM chip in it. However, their music feature is just basic, not nearly as good as SE Walkman phones.

IMO buying a cellphone just to be used as HE-AAC DAP seems to be overboard. It's cheaper to just buy a regular DAP with much larger storage capacity and use LC-AAC/MP3 instead. HE-AAC is great, but its primary advantage (low bitrate+small file size) is less of a concern today.

Palm Treo with TCPMP 0.72 and the AAC plugin works (tested on a Treo 650, 680 and 700, but it would probably work on any of them). Gapless doesn't work, but if you use foobar2000 to encode as an album with chapters, TCPMP will recognize those index points.

On a related note, now that AOL Radio will be available on the iPhone and iPod Touch, we may finally see some official reaction from Apple! (AOL Radio has historically streamed their content in 64kbps HE-AACv1. Even if the iPhone can't technically do this in hardware, it demonstrates - assuming AOL hasn't switched codecs - that the device is powerful enough to decode HE-AAC via software, in realtime.)

- M.

I have a Sony-Ericsson W880i (I think a German market package). It came with a 3.5mm plug earbud/mike unit, but it needs an adapter to plug into the phone--the adapter was also in the box. Micro MemoryStick card, which is much more expensive than microSD. *Very* slim, but keys would be a problem if you texted a lot.

I will check into the blackberry's, they seem to cover most of the features I was looking for.


Thanks for the advice about the SIM cards. This is essentially what I meant by my "-> Doesn't need to be connected to network to let me use DAP (if phone)" point, meaning that I won't be using it as a phone, just as a music player.


This might be so... but I'm not sure. I was budgeting about $200.00 for the phone + $20.00 for 2Gb of memory. Let's say, just for figuring, that HE-AAC is twice as efficient as LC-AAC. This would mean that it is essentially the same as 4GB worth of memory. Last time I checked, 4GB nanos were about $150.00... so, yeah, my plan does seem a little silly. However, there's still some aspects of this plan that appeal to me...

Good to hear that iPod might finally be forced to look into supporting HE-AAC... It's long overdue. I would hang on for a bit and see where things go, but I don't think you should ever hold your breath waiting for Apple. It might be better for them to develop a whole new format than they can control than just opening up to whats already here... or if they do use HE-AAC there might be compatibility problems. I guess we'll just have to wait and see...

I paid 150 for an 8GB Sansa over a year ago. This is really a terrible idea.

BTW, expecting a 2x improvement over AAC-LC is pretty optimistic.



This really doesn't make any sense. The decision to use AAC-HE is Apple's. AOL is irrelevant. If AOL gives AAC-HE for Ipod owners, they'll just get the LC compatibility portion.