Hi,

I'm sorry if this question has been asked a million times before, but I didn't find anything using the well respected search function.

1. As the header implies, I am thinking about encoding my music to AAC from now on. I've been using MPC and Vorbis for some time now, but it seems that a lot people start to recommend AAC these days.

What about the quality? I encoded some files with Psytel AAC Encoder (-normal & -extreme & -archive), and the quality was very good actually. What are your experiences?

2. Is the Psytel Encoder (from the Rare Wares Page) recommended or should I invest some money in the Nero MP4/AAC Encoder (if you recommend to use AAC at all)?

Thx

eMpTy

P.S.: And please, don't start rambling on about lossless compression

See http://www.audiocoding.com/wiki/index.php?page=PsyTEL

Thx,

I've been to that page before, but what about the difference in quality between Nero AAC and the Psytel AAC?

Is it worth buying that Nero Plugin?

CU

eMpTy

I used all my free demo encodes trying to work this out for myself! In general it sounds better at the bitrate I used (~160kbs) but at ~80kbs Nero AAC is still behind Vorbis in my opinion. I also found a few samples that the Nero version messed up certain kinds of samples that the Psytel version didn't.. some NiN sample which had the sound of background fuss, it ended up sounding like a 48kb mp3 sadly...

I noticed that as well, but I'm more interested in "near transparent" quality, hence higher bitrates are my preferred choice (until the day that some genius comes up with a codec that gives transparent quality at 32 kbs ...)



I encoded some No Doubt tracks (Hey Baby & Hella Good) using Psytel, and I cannot describe what bothered me about them, but they didn't sound good at all. They were too flat and had some rings in them, and I noticed that background fuss as well.

Everyone rubs it in... I'm using Vorbis at 80k's because it is "near transparent" to me! Why's my hearing so bad... oh well, at least it saves me disk space


My best advice is go and get a trial copy of Nero 5.5 from their site and try the new AAC version yourself.. see if you have the same problem with those tracks.

I personally stopped using AAC after having to pay for it.. $15 to download or $40 on cd (wtf!??!) is money better spent elsewhere to me

Yep, I think I'll give the trial version a try.
Or... I'll just stick with Vorbis and hope that more hardware implementations will come in the near future.

Thx Mac & hans-jürgen

CU

eMpTy

yeah the fact that other high quality compression is free (mpc, vorbis, lame) sort of hurts the chances of selling AAC.

There are no public formal listening tests comparing these two codecs, especially not at these bitrates (just like there are no such tests between AAC and other formats at these bitrates). So if you don't want to rely on plain hearsay, you'd have to compare them yourself with your kind of music -- or wait until someone will conduct such a comparison, so this never ending bulls**t will have an end at last...



Well, as it has already been mentioned, the new Nero version (with an important bugfix concerning VBR presets) allows 50 encodings for free, so you can find it out yourself.

I have encoded for my son this year approx. 100 CDs with Psytel Fastenc (MPEG-2 LC AAC Encoder build March 2002) and so far by casual listening I haven't found anything which would spoil my temper How serious was this bug?

Hi, i did a lot of soundtests using lame 3.92, lame 3.93.1 and lame 3.94 beta 11 (vbr 1 and vbr 0). mpc (insane and better), ogg (vbr 224 and higher), aac (psytel aac enc. presets extreme and archive) and mp4 (nero with cracked mp4 plugin in extreme and audiophile quality.
In my opinion aac (preset extreme is enough) is the best soundquality i#ve ever heard. very naturaly,clear, unbelievable stereopanorama und hammersound. Unbeatable by any other hyped lossy codec. Nothing is coming closer to the original cd (except lossless codecs like ape ore shorten)
A funny thing is that the new nero mp4/aac plugin based on the psytel aac encoder and developed by the same man (Ivan Dimkovic) has no chance to aac.
The aac files were created by using eac and psytel 2.15 encoder or sometimes encoding wave to aac with ivan+menno aac frontend.
Try the aac and i swear you never will waste a thought to mpc or ogg.
It is also possible to pack the aac files in an mp4 container by using ivan+menno frontend with mp4 creator.
the sound is the same and the mp4 files is a litte bit smaller as aac file.
all you need for aac you can get at rarewares.

shine on

ps. whats your opinion???

What do you mean by sound tests? ABX?

I would wait with AAC until more companies released their encoders and the format has settled a bit. If there aint gonna be a free commandline encoder it's not an option anyway, I dont wanna use a bloated commercial program like Fraunhofer mp3Producer PRO (or whatever their mp3 suite is called) just to encode my ripped wav's.
Just my 2 euro-cent

When hans-jürgen mentioned the VBR preset bug that was in the Nero version of the encoder, I don't think he meant the Psytel encoder. Your encodings are probably "safe".

In addition to my opinions I already expressed in this thread I think it's a stupid thing to come here bragging about a "cracked Nero plugin", since this is totally unnecessary because of the 50 free test encodings which should be enough to decide if EUR 15.00 should be rather spent on a fine piece of software or on a fishy T-shirt...

Furthermore it would be much more helpful if you could thoroughly describe the problems you hear with other codecs, especially the ones between Nero and PsyTEL AAC. Then Ivan might listen to these samples if you can provide them on a website perhaps.

In general I mostly agree with your opinion about the high bitrate sound of PsyTEL, but since my main interest in AAC is based on low bitrates and my own purpose for it, I do not join every flame war about this and that best "archiving" codec.