ran into many many problems with nero aac, and so am thinking of moving to apple aac as it is actively developed. how to do this? I use mainly 0.45, and some 0.55 on works that need it (recent beatles remasters are a great example)

Why don't you post your problems and maybe people can help you with those before blasting nero like that... that'll get you cut around here.

Anyway, nero is in active development, no you can't use foobar with apple aac, and what are transcoding from, on what os, blah, blah, blah... you didn't give anything to work with.

As previously stated, you can't directly use QuickTime/iTunes AAC with foobar. It was once possible through iTunesEncode but that no longer works with the latest version of iTunes (it hasn't for some time) and the developer behind that tool stopped working on it a while ago as well.

The only way to use QuickTime/iTunes AAC is to actually use either QuickTime or iTunes. However, Nero AAC is actively developed. I am not sure where you got your idea that it wasn't from.k A new release of Nero AAC is just around the corner as well. You should wait and see how it performs when stacked up against the competition. Perform some ABX tests and see which setting is right for you. You can always go with QuickTime/iTunes AAC and the easiest way to go about that would be to transcode your lossless files to ALAC, import them into iTunes, and then encode. Mac OS X is the only OS to have easy access to QuickTimes true VBR AAC encoding scheme. Windows users are pretty much stuck using iTunes and its constrained VBR settings unless you feel like spending about 4 minutes of your time to encode each track (you will have to manually enter track tag information).

my problem:

http://www.zunescene.mobi/forums/index.php...c=48422.new#new

This has nothing to do with audio quality. The Zune problems you see have nothing to do with the aac format itself. Have you already tested with some apple aac files? Whether or not a codec is actively developed doesn't garantee a solution of each of the problems you described.

Just for clearing up: Only QuickTime Pro allows encoding, right? QuickTime standard is just a player/reproducer?

Sorry, but i use iTunesEncode with the latest iTunes 9.0.0.70 and foobar2000 0.9.6.9 and it works like a charm...



(You have to set up bitrate and options in iTunes first)

Thank you tedgo! You made me install iTunes I've just tried with Windows 7, iTunesEncode from Rarewares, latest foobar2000 v0.9.6.9 and latest iTunes v9.0.0.70 and indeed it works.

I've set up in foobar2000 2 custom converters very similar to your screenshot with:

1) parameters for lossy: -e "AAC Encoder" -d -i %s -o %d

2) parameters for lossless: -e "Lossless Encoder" -d -i %s -o %d

The -d switch nicely deletes the temporary wav file from iTunes library.

Just like you said, the encoding parameters for lossy have to be configured in iTunes, in a strange place called "Import Settings" in menu Edit >> Preferences >> Tab General

But you should know, that there seems to be a problem with the actual iTunes AAC encoder...
Setting it to HE-AAC or setting sample rate other than 44100 for LC creates files with wrong duration info (at least in foobar2000).
Don't know if the files are fully decodable on an mp3 player...

Yes correct, I've read posts about it and just verified the HE-AAC problem.

For multicore users remember to set in fb "Thread count" to 1 (Preferences/Advanced/Tools/Converter) or don't work when encoding multiple files.

That is interesting. It didn't use to work with iTunes 8 but now works with iTunes 9.

I actually suspect that the issue is that nero may use a range of bitrates outside of what the zune is accustomed to, and so the result is it reads the playtime all wrong.

in any case, this is a serious bug.

Anyway, IMHO, since the (again) restriction to constrained VBR i can't really see a benefit to use it, so i think is better to wait a bit for the new verion of Nero encoder.

I prefer iTunes AAC (through foobar2000) because on my system its about 20% faster than nero - including creating a temporary wave file first.
I haven't made abx tests in the last time between nero and itunes, but in my usual bitrate - at about 256kbps - i think there shouldn't be any difference in quality

iTunesEncode has always worked for me in all versions of iTunes.

It stopped working for me some time ago, I am not the only one either. iTunesEncode stopped working with iTunes 7.7 for most people out there. That is why I am surprised that it works now and has worked for some other people.

Worked for me too all the time.
But if i remember correctly i've had problems without the -d switch.

I stand corrected. But it's not really appealing without being able to get to all of quicktime's encoder settings.