OK... I'll take the hit... I have used the search function... I have read through several post topics... I still can't find any HA recommended configurations for using AAC in EAC. Something similar to:

List of recommended MPC settings

You know, a comprehensive list of the files needed and the settings recommended. Including examples of the additional command line options for EAC.

It sounds like AAC is a good alternative with the best of both worlds. From reading the forum it seems to have quality close to MPC with current (and seemingly growing) portable support.

Also, here is an observation... The posts in the AAC forum (and the sites linked within) seem to be more techie (geeky? ) than any other HA forum. Why is that? It makes AAC a little more intimidating to a newbie like me.

It's because AAC is much simpler.

If you want good quality, use
aacenc -normal

If you want to be sure, use
aacenc -extreme

If you want to do an overkill, use
aacenc -archive



Hrm... I guess something similar to that is available at the FAQ.



That's right.



Hehe. I never noticed that.

*We'll have to do something about that, Hans-Jürgen.

Do you need clarification about some specific "techie" topic in AAC? Feel free to ask or PM me.

Regards;

Roberto.

I'm sorry, what FAQ?



So in the "Additional command line options" field in EAC you'd just type "-extreme"?

What about the stuff to make sure the tags are correct, like:

--artist "%a" --title "%t" --album "%g" --year "%y" --track "%n" --genre "%m" %s

In other words how do AAC files get tagged? Specifically with EAC.

Finally, I notice on AudioCoding.com they say "Preset "-extreme" for those seeking for that ultimate "transparency" and never found it at ~192 kbps" Does that mean it is comparable to MPC at quality 5 but it takes a little higer bitrate to get that quality? What setting do YOU use most often? I'm reading up on the whole listening test thing so maybe I'll conduct some in the neer fututre to see what suits me best.

Life was much simpler before I ran into EAC and HA and all these other formats, etc.!

nevermind...



Hrm... you can tag AAC files with ID3v2 tags. But that's dangerous and will make your files unplayable on anything else than FAAD.

To enable it, just set EAC up to write ID3v2 tags.

Hrmm.. I'm not really sure about that. PsyTEL at least probably has more experimental type options than mppenc even. The profile system is very similar too. The only real difference is that mppenc also offers a quality scale. I wouldn't say that necessary makes things more complex though. I think the real issue is just that nobody has compiled a guide for AAC. Same thing for Vorbis really. If someone wants to write one, I'll be more than happy to pin the topic.



I'd agree also, however I'd suggest doing listening tests to determine quality. It also might be important to distinguish which AAC encoder you are talking about. From some reports it sounds as if the AAC implementation in Nero may not perform as well as PsyTEL in some cases, assuming you are talking about either of these two. The reverse could be true as well. As far as I know, there has been no comprehensive public testing for comparison (at least using the actual release version of the Nero codec) of this so I'd be careful about drawing certain conclusions.



If this is true it might be because there are fewer AAC users on this board then users of other formats, and those that do use are interested in it from a more technological point of view more often than not it seems.

Off topic...

Just noticed... Dibrom, there's something different about you...
Did you change your hair?

(I sorta liked the other one better - VERY INTIMIDATING-)

Please excuse my confusion, but I'm still unclear about tagging. I thought that all the additional command line options (--artist "%a" --title "%t" --album "%g" --year "%y" --track "%n" --genre "%m" %s) were for APEv2 tags not ID3 tags. If AAC files don't get ID3 or APE tags how is that kind of information stored in the file.

Also, does replaygain work on AAC files?

Thanks for your patience.

Yes, they are for APEv2 tags - ON MPC FILES, USING MPPENC.

AAC can hold ID3v2 tags, but, as I said, it's a hack that breaks compatibility with everything besides FAAD. If you badly wants to tag your AAC files, convert them to MP4 and use QT tags.



Yes, but AACgain is still on alpha stage, and the developer is too busy, so it will probably take some time.

AFAIK, the MP4 (which you probably will wish to use instead of AAC in recent future) tagging system has not been completely decided upon and that's why there's no command line as the one in MPC with EAC. Be careful if you thing tags are essential like I do. I decided to encode everything in MPC insane for now. I'll transcode the files and keep both copies on my hard disk when MP4 tagging system settles and portable players supporting MP4 comes out.

If that is what you are doing why not choose a lossless encoder? I ask because these are the questions my brain has been wrestling with since I came across HA and realized all the decisions I needed to make. What file size does --insane give you and is it worth the posibility of trasncoding losses?

It seems like the encoder choices and decisions and arguments are at an all time high. Does anyone think these "encoder wars" will eventually calm down?

No way, there's too much zealotry involved.

Having to make a lot of decisions or the fact that there is no clear "answer" does not necessarily mean that there is a "war". The simple fact of the matter is that currently there exists no codec which is ideal in every single regard. There probably never will be either. Thus, it's necessary to have to weigh the pros and cons and make judgement about what is important for you each time you decide to use something. Usually what people disagree on is whether or not a particular aspect is important, but if you know for sure whether or not it is to you, then there's really no problem.

I'd definitely prefer it over lossless but of course that's me. You should decide it for yourself probably. The bitrates I got varies drastically. It's really interesting (I was about to ask about it in a different thread), because on the same kind of harpsichord music of Handel I get around 130 kbps sometimes and around 280 kbps some other times. Both using --insane profile. But even if it's 280 kbps, it's around 6 times smaller than lossless. I think I'd never care for the audio loss for --insane quality. Not even at quality 5 I'd probably be able to distinguish. But I wanted to archive it for once.

I think the choice depends on
i) How much music you have.
ii) What your purpose is.

For i) I have around 300 CDs which makes around 180 GB of data which would be reduced to 30-40GB if I use lossy encoding. That means I can use my 80GB hard drive to store all the music I have. I don't think I'd like to spare 180GB for a difference I'd never be able to hear or wouldn't mind to hear.
ii) My purpose is listen to it on my home stereo connected to my computer (stereo-link). On it I want absolute good quality. If I'd care for only portable listening I wouldn't probably mind using different format at much lower bitrates. For instance AAC/ogg around 140kbps should be more than good enough for such a purpose. But I decided if I use MPC I wouldn't mind transcoding because the quality would be awesome.

Anyway, if you didn't you should try all the formats. I can't personally hear any difference at high bitrates, that's why it boils down to encoder/decoder friendliness. I gave up on Ogg because the unicode bug was annoying, it wasn't as well tuned at higher bitrates which I was aiming for and even though it's an open format there wasn't many developers and the developers lacked coordination (at least that's what it seemed to me). Moreover I thought the vorbis site was simply unprofessional and getting on my nerves with that childish tone. And also it was a matter of personality, ogg users reminded me of general linux zealotry and populism. It had many fans that adored it but do not know why which is better. When I tried MPC I was amazed because it was fast, belonged to a what I thought to be more advanced codec family (sub-band vs. transform), had great replaygain support, extremely professional and kinda elitist like the BSD crowd I always admired. It also produces 120 kbps files at insane profile for some of my music which is simply insane AAC I avoided. Might be good quality wise, but my tags are preciouss. Also you need to go through lot of hassle if you want the best ripper + encoder combination to get the tags.

Great post, atici!

I really enjoyed the last paragraph.

* Bow * Thanks

By the way your response to the original question as to why aac command line is simpler : "It's because AAC is much simpler." does not reflect the truth is it? You might love AAC but let's be honest and admit tagging system has not matured yet. So your tags are going to be quite "simple" with AAC as well

Well, you can say that it's so featureless it's simple.

i dont see why the taging would be a problem? with some nice naming sheme you can always tag your files later or you dont even need to tag them ever.

(something like
artist_year_album/tracknumber_songname.aac
should do no? )

I agree. I never depended on tags to be happy.

The tag issue is swinging my pendulum back to MPC... Unless...



How does one attempt to tackle this task and what happens if you do this and the AAC's tagging scheme matures. Do you risk losing that information?

The former won't do because the file names are too long, I can't write it to a CD later on (because of CD filenaming restrictions). I just use trackno.*** and keep the album in a separate folder. Also I don't want to type the name for each individual piece later on. I know there's organizing software but why need one if you start organized. Especially for classical music there're lots of various information that I depend on. I remember the file names getting very very long and EAC couldn't generate the file (Album Name + Composer Name + Artist Name + Piece Name + Movement). I am a fan of tagging system too, it represents being organized. I name them carefully distinguishing the genre "Baroque" from "Romance", etc.

ic, ok i must admit iam personally not interested in that amount of info, so you do like searches for composer name in your audio player? (otherwise you could store all that info in the external file)

If you care about ripping process like you probably should , you need to use a proper ripper like CDex or EAC, not quicktime and probably not Nero. That overcomplicates AAC creating process (you'd actually want MP4 soon). Rip -> use aacenc -> convert mp4 -> tag them in some software that uses (is there any?) Quicktime tagging system. You'd probably pay for Quicktime and resort to inferior rips if you'd stick to Quicktime completely. Eventually you might even rerip/encode your collection because you're not happy.

What would you lose if you use MPC? Nothing for now. You would have perfect tags and best quality at high bitrates (no one on HA would dispute that point). It's the closest you can get to lossless with the convenience of tagging. If in two years portable MP4 players come to market and you need your music you'd be using 200GB drives and you could simply transcode in a different folder with lower quality for your portable player.

And did I mention, your encoding and decoding speed will be very fast. I didn't care too much about that point, but decoding speed seems important to me these days.

I think I've just been convinced!

You mentioned CDex. I've also looked at AccurateRip. Do either of these hold a candle to EAC?

Do a search and read. I'd suggest you use EAC because everything is well documented and I like to use the exact offset. CDEx is reputed to be as good, and maybe easier to use. If you have a plextor drive you might want to use Plextor Tools. I think all the rest of the rippers would not probably be worth considering. Spend 10 minutes googling and set your EAC profile (the MPC encoding thread you referred to will help you find the links) carefully for once. Depending on your drive you might find it too slow (I get around 7x ripping speed with secure but I depend on C2 info my drive supports), if so consider CDEx.

Thank you all for a lively discussion. You have helped me settle my restless brain.

You're welcome

I wish I could discuss more about BSD vs. linux and populism vs. elitism especially in music encoding Maybe in an offtopic forum later on. The majority keeps pissing me off (check avatar)...

First, there's no "AAC tagging scheme". ID3v2 in AAC is a hack, period.

Second, to tag your MP4 files, you will need to use Foobar2000 (Although people are trying to convince Case to add QT tag writing to TAG)

Wanna bet?

I know at least 3 people that claim MPC is unsatisfactory even at highest settings, but are too afraid of dealing with the hordes of MPC zealots here.

Have you done your own listening tests, considered format features and future, and all this stuff?

I don't want to offend you, but I think you're going too fast. It took me weeks when I decided to switch from MP3 to "something better" years ago (there wasn't even HA by then! whew! I'm getting old...)

I'm just advising you that, if you decide too fast, chances of repenting later are big.

Besides, keep in mind you are basing your decision on 2 people's opinions - mine and atici's. I suggest you read some more, too. Who knows, maybe you end up falling in love for Vorbis.

Regards;

Roberto.

I meant among the lossy codecs. Lossless is too much unneccessary information for me. My claim is if the same album was released in a version that was passed through a --insane MPC and some placebo codec generated the original file (in a way that increases the quality), those 3 guys would not be happy There're some information lost in the recording/mastering process as well. Music itself is inherently lossy (cables, speaker construction, physical medium, your ear shape ). I don't think we should demand too much in terms of fidelity when our perceptions are limited.

What I believe is music is good as you like it not how it's produced. That's why I use TDS audio enhancer and DSP plugins as well.

But my 140GB extra space on my hard drive is immediately noticeable to me and will be so in the next decade.

Does these guys like other lossy codecs? Do they believe there could be lossy codecs that are better? Maybe it's a theoretical bottleneck, that one can't get any better than that using lossy codecs.

I agree. Try them all. Although you won't probably hear any difference You might end up liking one better due to something else (quality of the plug-in for your exotic player?). I like the .ym format for instance (Yamaha Atari sound chipset)

Yes. 2 of them, at least. One prefers AAC, the other prefers Vorbis GT3. I didn't ask the third one.

BTW, I'm not involved. I'm the first one to admit that my ears are utterly crappy.

"That's why he uses AAC", some smartass might say. (hello, H***er)

Long live .sid!!!! (Commodore 64)

(Is it just me, or are we monopolizing this thread?)

Is there anyone out there by the way that would do WMA advocacy? I'd never touch that thing but you should try that too if you want portability.
Some players (like iRiver SlimX) supports it. And it's reputed to be CD quality at 64 kbps

If these people hear problems with the current MPC encoder then they should say something. Otherwise, there's no point in mentioning anything unless they just want to annoy people. The MPC community here has been very open to people pointing out flaws in the current encoders because that usually leads to a fix being developed. Them not posting because of the "hordes of MPC zealots" sounds like a cop out, like they aren't even confident enough in their own ability to hear these supposed problems or that they are afraid of being proven wrong. There really should be no problem with having a discussion regarding quality problems as long as they follow the standard HA procedures (providing test samples and abx results).

As for the bit about GT3, that's pretty interesting. Even Garf admits that it doesn't compare to MPC. There are also well documented problems with it, which affect the normal encoder also (the infamous noise issue anyone?). Whoever is saying that GT3 outperforms MPC either hasn't tested enough or simply doesn't want to use MPC for some sort of political/philosophical/functional reason. I'd be more than happy to be proven wrong on this matter btw.

Is there a good beginner's guide to ABX'ing? I agree with the post I read elsewhere that commented on the poor design of the pcabx site.

Just so I understand the ABX process, can you check me?

1. Rip a track to WAV.
2. Encode the WAV into the formats I'm choosing from @ the appropriate settings I'm choosing from.
3. Decode the results back to WAVs.
4. Use an ABX application to listen to and rate the samples (which are played randomly.)
5. Assess the results of the test.



No offense taken. That's why I'm asking!



Not really. I've been reading all of the forums here at HA. It's just that this was a conversation where I could bend the ear of a few of HA's very knowledgeable members. (Not an attempt to burry my nose in your... Never mind!)



One of the reasons I was leaning toward MPC was because users were telling me that transcoding has a much smaller effect on them. I was thinking of MPC for most of my music and maybe lossless for my favorite CDs that I don't have a backup copy of. I might even do a second encode of source material I know will reside semi-permanently on my portable so I don't have to transcode them. I think that would be a reasonable strategy.

Hmm I guess you need to do some artifact training first at ff123's site before ABXing. Or you might say ignorance is bliss and refrain from doing it because you might not like what you listen to later on.

I don't think Vorbis has really had any fewer developers than the other major codecs discussed on this site. In fact, it probably has had more, though there is only 1 person working on the psymodel. This is really the same with the other codecs too though, with the possible exception of LAME, though the relative disorganization and lax approach to development there effectively puts a damper on any advantages this might offer.

Also, I wouldn't say that Vorbis lacks coordination. In fact, it has probably been one of the more well coordinated projects. The issue is mainly that the goals of the developers are not necessarily in agreement with some of the ideals that many people on these boards may have (high bitrate tuning, official replaygain support, etc, etc). For its official aims (good quality at low bitrates, license free, etc) it does pretty well. Some of the things that Vorbis has been aiming for take quite a bit of planning and coordination even.



This doesn't have a single thing to do with the performance or functionality of Vorbis.



I can understand this being annoyed with certain elements of that community, but it still doesn't really have any logical connection with the performance or functionality of the encoder. I guess if you're just making a choice based on aesthetics, this could sway you, but I really don't think that's a good basis for a decision.



Subbanding as used in MPC is not more advanced than transforms as used in most of the modern codecs (AAC, Vorbis, etc), it's actually the other way around. As we've seen though, this doesn't necessarily have much relevance regarding overall quality at least when you're not pushing things to the absolute limits of efficiency. Other areas of codec design like a well tuned psymodel and additional tools can have much more of an impact.

I agree with most of your points Dibrom. It was pointed out (or wasn't it) in my post that the pick even depends on your personality, and the rest is how I made my pick. I wasn't trying to universalize my opinion

About the other point that popularity does not have a logical connection with quality (or being most logical). That's much of a philosophical question and this thread is not probably a good place to discuss . But I think one can produce good arguments favoring that there usually is, and the whatever the prevalent/popular idea/OS/etc. is most susceptible to being flawed.

About the coordination problems, I was mostly referring to the one I saw between Garf and Monty. Garf needed some info and has been waiting for some time about it for his tuned encoder. But there're some others I saw in the vorbis mailing list archives.

It's probably because AAC is more geeky, so there's nothing we could do about that... I tried to sum up the essential "recommended settings" on the Wiki page for PsyTEL, intentionally leaving out the "why this, why not that" stuff and only mentioning the important things like resampling for lower bitrates and using only the LC profile for several reasons. Maybe I should have added an even briefer summary like "AAC SUX FOR RIPPERS, MPC RULEZ, OGG IST DEATH!!!" or something like that...

Interesting debate...

As for MPC, it's without doubt the best lossy codec, very near to transparency (or better to say almost transparent) on very effective bitrates, but this is the only one reason why I use it along with WavPack (in lossy mode). I can't describe my "problems" with MPC properly and even can't ABX my reservations (compared with wav). One evening I can, on the other I can't... It is in the sound, in the very nature of the sound, it has a lot to do with spatial resolution, how the space is defined and so. I think it must be very closely linked with the lower bitrate on which MPC usually operates. For me is MPC and WavPack (~ 352-448 kbps) definitely the best solution for archiving music, I do not need no lossless (except for classical music, but in this field is WavPack very effective). Most of the time it's just wasting a space. And tagging was never an issue for me.

Just my 2 cents.

P.S. First time I realized the spatial "problems" with MPC was when I compared wavs/mpcs/wavpacks from "Men In Black 2" soundtrack. There it was sometimes quite apparent even without abxing... For MPC (1.15r) I use --quality 7 --xlevel.

I still wonder if WavPack lossy wouldn't be even better that MPC for transcoding purposes. The algorithm is much simpler - there isn't even psychoacoustics at all. Just quantization.

Maybe someone with the knowlege could enlighten us if, theoretically, wavpack lossy would be "nicer" for transcoding than Musepack.

Some listening test would be interesting too, although I wonder how should it be carried out.

Yeah right, why not start with the difficult task first (with bitrates near lossless compression) and then do a quick run through the easy listening tests at ~160 and ~192 kbps?

I personally use only WavPack for decoding back to wavs. More tomorrow as I must now hurry up