qaac - a new command line AAC/ALAC encoder using QuickTime API

[manolito]

Originally Posted by foxyshadis

FDK is considered higher quality now. Still, Apple AAC is extremely close, no harm using it, especially at 128 and up.

Can you back this up with some test results?

I am using libfdk-aac from within ffmpeg, it does sound pretty good, but VBR modes seem to be problematic.


Cheers
manolito

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally Posted by foxyshadis

FDK is considered higher quality now. Still, Apple AAC is extremely close, no harm using it, especially at 128 and up.

I wonder if LoRd_MuldeR has thought about incorporating this (Fraunhofer FDK) 'open source' version of the AAC encoder into his LameXP audio encoding application?

[LoRd_MuldeR]

Originally Posted by SeeMoreDigital

I wonder if LoRd_MuldeR has thought about incorporating this (Fraunhofer FDK) 'open source' version of the AAC encoder into his LameXP audio encoding application?

See here:
https://forum.doom9.org/showthread.p...30#post1721930

[SeeMoreDigital]

Thanks

[IgorC]

Originally Posted by foxyshadis

FDK is considered higher quality now. Still, Apple AAC is extremely close, no harm using it, especially at 128 and up.

Hehe. That's simply not the case.

Fraunhofer developer (on hydrogenaudio board) has said that their FhG AAC encoder from Winamp still provides better quality than FDK.
Some personal tests also indicates the same.
So it's still Apple > FhG Winamp > FDK.

[manolito]

Thanks for setting this straight...

Cheers
manolito

[stax76]

In StaxRip currently only wav and flac are defined as possible input formats, are there any other formats supported?

[hello_hello]

Originally Posted by IgorC

Fraunhofer developer (on hydrogenaudio board) has said that their FhG AAC encoder from Winamp still provides better quality than FDK.
Some personal tests also indicates the same.
So it's still Apple > FhG Winamp > FDK.

I can't say I've compared them as I tend to use bitrates (or VBR quality settings) that are transparent enough for me not to be able to tell the difference, and I use QAAC for encoding "soundtrack" audio mainly due to it having the --no-delay option, but I'll say one thing for FhG/Winamp, it's very fast. VBR encoding is probbly around twice the speed of the other encoders.

My main dislike when it comes to FDKAAC is the huge bitrate difference between the VBR quality settings, especially the higher -m 4 and -m 5 quality settings. -m 4 seems a bit low while -m 5 is too high. Although I found the gap can be closed somewhat by specifying a low pass filter in the command line. I settled on -w 18500 for both as it increases the low pass frequency for -m 4 and lowers it for -m 5 and seems to produce more sensible bitrates.
http://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php..._AAC#Bandwidth

[LigH]

There are new dummies for the icudt55.dll as addition to makeportable for qaac.

[tebasuna51]

WARNING with last qaac 2.60 version:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.ph...18#post1782018

[sneaker_ger]

tebasuna5, which 7.1 configuration would you recommend for e.g. BluRay rips? The new one from qaac >=2.61 or the old one from <=2.59?

[tebasuna51]

For 5.1 all seems work fine.

I never use 7.1, my audio system is only 5.1 and can't test with a real player the differences but I don't like the patch applied.
For 7.1 use qaac 2.59 and always output as .m4a, never like .aac (without --adts parameter).

[chros]

I wanted to transcode my 320kbps cbr mp3 radio captured files into something meaningful today, so I found qaac with the default preset (-V91 -q2). So I searched for a small but powerful GUI for it, hence I found BatchEncoder on GitHub yesterday: it reminds me MeGui and BeHappy, but can do batch processing with threading, supports loads of codecs and presets, it can download the only used latest utils (x32 or x64 version). Previously I've been written small batch scripts for this type of audio transcoding: no more

Do I have to install AppleApplicationSupport64 to be able to use qaac? Isn't the CoreAudioToolbox.dll file enough itself?
That's what I did: downloaded iTunes x64 and extracted AppleApplicationSupport and AppleApplicationSupport64 with 7zip, then installed x64 version.

Originally Posted by LigH

There are new dummies for the icudt55.dll as addition to makeportable for qaac.

What's this file for?

Originally Posted by tebasuna51

For 7.1 use qaac 2.59 and always output as .m4a, never like .aac (without --adts parameter).

Why is that?
I've been wondering which output "container" to use for stereo music files, but since most of the players support raw aac streams, I don't care about tagging and mp3directcut only supports raw aac streams I don't see why m4a is better. Am I missing something?

[LigH]

Originally Posted by chros

Do I have to install AppleApplicationSupport64 to be able to use qaac? Isn't the CoreAudioToolbox.dll file enough itself?
That's what I did: downloaded iTunes x64 and extracted AppleApplicationSupport and AppleApplicationSupport64 with 7zip, then installed x64.

No. If you executed the "makeportable" batch file, it would extract all the required DLL's for you into subdirectories (QTFiles + QTFiles64) which only need to exist with qaac.exe or qaac64.exe in the same directory.

32 bit:

• qaac.exe
• QTFiles\*.*

64 bit:

• qaac64.exe
• QTFiles64\*.*

Originally Posted by chros

What's this file for?

The "makeportable" batch file extracted all the DLL's from the iTunes64 installer which belong to iTunes' whole feature set; qaac needs only the encoder core. For encoding only, most of the content in the icudt55.dll is not required. But the file icudt55.dll can't be deleted, the encoder would refuse to work if it is not present. But you can replace the original files of several MB size with the tiny dummy DLL's, and the encoder still works.

Originally Posted by chros

Why is that?

M4A is a subset of the MP4 container which contains useful information about the structure of the AAC audio in its header, which a "raw" AAC audio stream with only ADTS headers partially lacks of. Most of all, the ADTS header is not able to store the channel layout of audio with more than 5.1 channels.

[chros]

Originally Posted by LigH

No. If you executed the "makeportable" batch file, it would extract all the required DLL's for you into subdirectories (QTFiles + QTFiles64) which only need to exist with qaac.exe or qaac64.exe in the same directory.

Thanks LigH for the detailed instructions! Although it still took me 10 minutes to find where the script is: this post.

Originally Posted by LigH

For encoding only, most of the content in the icudt55.dll is not required. But the file icudt55.dll can't be deleted, the encoder would refuse to work if it is not present. But you can replace the original files of several MB size with the tiny dummy DLL's, and the encoder still works.

It worked liked a charm, thanks!

Originally Posted by LigH

M4A is a subset of the MP4 container which contains useful information about the structure of the AAC audio in its header, which a "raw" AAC audio stream with only ADTS headers partially lacks of. Most of all, the ADTS header is not able to store the channel layout of audio with more than 5.1 channels.

Thanks, OK, then I'll use m4a container.

[LigH]

Originally Posted by chros

Although it still took me 10 minutes to find where the script is...

Or the qaac download (cabinet) page. Or MeGUI\tools\qaac.

[chros]

Originally Posted by LigH

Or the qaac download (cabinet) page.

Yes, that's where I found it in the end, thanks.
And I just noticed that the above mentioned BatchEncoder has a thread here on doom9.

[Bigjackaal48]

I must be the few where --Quality 1 helps a few samples since I use "192kbps VBR, -q 1". Oddly even found Damaged & Destroyed by Emil Beaulieau needs --quality 0 to stop ringing/clicks?.

[Barough]

QAAC v2.80
https://github.com/nu774/qaac/releases/tag/v2.80