pure aac output from nero?

[Doom9]

I just got a new cellphone that has a built-in AAC/MP3 player. Since Nero comes with a high quality AAC encoder, I thought why not use it, after all, it can rip CDs and convert to AAC at the same time. Though, the output is put into an mp4 container, and my cellphone doesn't like that particularly. So I've used Nero to rip the CD to WAV, then used faac to convert from WAV to LC AAC, and that works just fine on the phone. But now I'm wondering if there's a way to get a plain AAC from the Nero encoder (I'd also like to find out if my phone can handle HE AAC.. imagine a 512MB MMC filled with 64kbit/s HE AAC files.. ).

[Bogalvator]

Well, you could use Nero to convert them all to mp4 first, then use the "Extract MP4 track.." utility from foobar2000 to get the .aac out of the MP4 container.

Bit long winded I know - in fact there are probably several better ways, but this would work OK.

[bond]

afaik the nero encoder itself has an option to directly create .aac files (next to .mp4 files, which are default), its called something like "output iso..."

another possibility would be to extract the aac stream from .mp4 simply with mp4ui (which is based on mpeg4ips mp4creator, which can also do it of course). mp4box could do it too

[hans-jürgen]

Originally posted by Doom9
But now I'm wondering if there's a way to get a plain AAC from the Nero encoder (I'd also like to find out if my phone can handle HE AAC.. imagine a 512MB MMC filled with 64kbit/s HE AAC files.. ). Like already mentioned, the easiest way is to let Nero produce both MP4 and AAC files at the same time with the "ISO 13818" option. Concerning the HE AAC profile there is no other mobile phone than the Siemens/O2 model yet which could decode it, as far as I know. So your phone probably only knows AAC LC in ADTS file format which is the default mode in FAAC. If your phone can run the RealPlayer 10 version for SymbianOS, you could also play the MP4 file format with that, but not all models come with that software.

[Doom9]

thanks for the tips guys.. looks like I have something to try out when I get home tonight.

[SeeMoreDigital]

As Bogalvator has already mentioned there is a setting in Foobar2000 (and dBpowerAMP for that metter) which allows you to output directly to .AAC, as well as AAC in .MP4: -

http://img105.exs.cx/img105/3600/NeroDigital_GUI_in_Foobar2000.png

You could also use mp4UI to de-mux AAC streams out of the MP4 container: -

http://img110.exs.cx/img110/5553/mp4UI_AAC_de-muxing.gif


Cheers

[catss]

Hi,
just tried out HE-AAC and LC-AAC on my Nokia 6230. The phone plays HE-AAC but doesn´t seem to fully support it. I just read in the Hydrogenaudio Forums that it is only capable of playing LC-AAC and the the HE Playback is messed up.

Only the non-SBR portion of the file is played back. At 64kbps, this means that HE-AAC will play back like a 22.05Khz, 64kbps LC-AAC file on a plain LC-AAC decoder. The resulting playback will sound "dull," as it will be missing the SBR-encoded high frequency data from 11Khz and up.

Hopefully there will be an update, but I guess not. What would be the minimal settings using LC-AAC, in order to produce decent quality? I´m also using the Nero AAC Codec.

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by catss
... What would be the minimal settings using LC-AAC, in order to produce decent quality? I´m also using the Nero AAC Codec. Only you can really decide what's going to sound right for you!

What ever low bit-rate AAC-LC setting you do decide to use, don't forget to select Nero's "Enable PNS (for very low bit-rates)" option!


Cheers

[catss]

Wow thx a lot.
The PNS setting really helped a lot. Transcoded an 320 kbit VBR MP3 using the 90-100 kbit Profile in Nero, once with and once without PNS enabled. The resulting file size with PNS enabled was about 40% !! smaller, and I´m not hearing a lot of differences between both. The quality of the PNS AAC File is nearly as good as the 320 kbit Mp3 source. (at least in my opinion) :)

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by catss
.. Transcoded an 320 kbit VBR MP3 using the 90-100 kbit Profile in Nero, Actually, 90-100 Kbps is not considered to be all that low - even for AAC-LC

Anything below 64Kbps is low ;)


Cheers

[catss]

Ah ok 90-100 was the lowest profile for LC that nero offered, after setting Variable Bitrate to the radio setting with PNS it reaches about 64kbit. Is PNS bad for higher values or just needles?

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by catss
...Is PNS bad for higher values or just needles? To be honest I don't know!

That said, I think it's a real shame more devices don't "fully" support AAC-HE. As it really excels at low bit-rates!

Some of us on the forum have generated some 6Ch AAC-HE "test encodes" using Nero's "Tape:Lowest" from 6Ch AC3 sources. Which work out to have an average VBR bit-rate of just 128Kbps. And they almost sound identical to the source!


Cheers

[Kurtnoise]

Originally posted by catss
Is PNS bad for higher values or just needles?
It's not a question to know if it's good or not. Perceptual Noise Substitution is a feature to optimize the bitrate efficiency for low bitrates (< 64 kbps). Why would you like to use it for higher bitrates ? It's not necessary I think. The codecs are built relatively very well now.

Anyway, there are some others features for lower bitrate (SBR, PS, TNS). They sound also good....

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by Kurtnoise13

Anyway, there are some others features for lower bitrate (SBR, PS, TNS). They sound also good.... SBR (Spectral Band Replacement) is AAC-HE...


Cheers

[eb]

Today everybody is fascinated with Nero aac, but for long time it was possible in many ways as for example HEADAC3HE by DarkAvenger http://mitglied.lycos.de/darkav/.
What is advantage of Nero over DarkAdvantager in AAC-he field?
Or is it the same?

eb

[Kurtnoise]

Originally posted by eb
Today everybody is fascinated with Nero aac, but for long time it was possible in many ways as for example HEADAC3HE by DarkAvenger http://mitglied.lycos.de/darkav/.
What is advantage of Nero over DarkAdvantager in AAC-he field?
Or is it the same?

Sorry but some people don't like AAC Nero encoder. So, I disagree with you when you say that everybody is "fascined" by Nero AAC. We are free to choose what we want...;)

the AAC encoder used under HeadAC3he comes from FAAC, the interesting free AAC encoder. It's open-source, multi-plateforms, manage mono channel, stereo, multichannels, etc...but we can't use it with HE-AAC features. This one is only available in Nero Encoder. That's why many people are interested by that to improve quality for low bitrates...


@SMD : SBR == Spectral Band Replication, not Replacement...of course, it's the same meaning. ;)

[hans-jürgen]

Originally posted by eb
Today everybody is fascinated with Nero aac, but for long time it was possible in many ways as for example HEADAC3HE by DarkAvenger http://mitglied.lycos.de/darkav/. That's a good one... ;) The "he" in DarkAvenger's app doesn't stand for High-Efficiency AAC, it only results from his joke with the application name, i.e. spelling the word "Headache" with AC3 (not AAC which would give an interesting "HeadAAChe").

It uses a special libfaac.dll which is included in the download package, the latest version is a13 (a for "alpha" version) which you can download from this thread in the german Doom9 forum (http://forum.gleitz.info/showthread.php?t=13202). More info about FAAC is available in the Audiocoding.com Wiki (http://www.audiocoding.com/modules/wiki/?page=FAAC).