Question on possible audio quality differences in MeGUI

[tonyh]

Are there any quality differences between FFAudioSource and LWLibavAudioSource in MeGUI's "Preferred Decoder" settings? Or are they pretty much the same thing?

The encoder settings I am using is "FFMpeg AAC" at CBR of 224kbps.

I am stretching some audio files from 24fps to 25fps and before I start I'd like to know if their will be a loss of quality.

[hello_hello]

There shouldn't be any decoding differences but "FFMpeg AAC" is the worst quality AAC encoder. You can enable the Nero or QAAC encoders in MeGUI's options and unless you need a CBR encode, it's better to use variable bitrate (like x264's CRF encoding, you can set a quality and the bitrate will be whatever it needs to be).

See this post (https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/396848-PAL-DVD-change-frame-rate-25-23-976?#post2580350) for some instructions if you need to get them working in MeGUI.

[tebasuna51]

Both decoders are based at same libav libraries. But I recommend LWLibavAudioSource, I have some troubles with FFAudioSource and some codecs.

About the encoders, you can enable other encoders, like hello_hello say, but ffmpeg claim than the native aac encoder is better now (https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Encode/HighQualityAudio):

NOTE: as of 2017 libfdk_aac may not always be better than aac for AAC-LC. The built in aac encoder is quite good.

I recommend also VBR instead CBR, but MeGUI have a bug (https://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1909182#post1909182) and only work with 50% (quality 1) or 100 % (quality 2).

BTW the 100 % is recommended for you, with a difficult cd-audio track I obtained 210 Kb/s, near your desired CBR bitrate, and a quality comparable to Nero or qaac at that bitrate.

[tonyh]

Thanks for the replies.

In my testing, I've not heard any discernable differences between LWLibavAudioSource and FFAudioSource. But if LWLibavAudioSource is recommended, I'll continue using that.

I'll activate Nero in MeGUI's options too and give that a go as well and see what results I can get with VBR.

[chros]

I'll activate Nero in MeGUI's options too and give that a go as well and see what results I can get with VBR.
Just use qaac instead.