Yep it uses the Nullsoft's Internal Plug-in. I am sure Menno stated on Hydroegn Audio that if you use the in_mp4.dll from Audiocoding.com (which would overwrite the Nullsoft one as they have the same name at present) it would not affect the conversion - I have not tried yet!

My music listening nowadays, falls into two distinct catagories, each with two sub-catagories:

Home and away.

Home:
Serious listening: Thats done with the original CD or album on a decent stereo system.
Casual listening: Thats done using either Winamp or QCD, with either the iZotope Ozone, or OSS/3D plug-in, using Lame encoded MP3's exclusively. (More on why later.)

Away:
In the Car: Hardware limitations make it MP3 or WMA. I'll take MP3, thank you very much.
Everywhere else: Hotel, cycling, jogging, walking: again its MP3 for hardware compatibility.

So . . . it boils down to MP3 for hardware compatibility. And, to be honest, nothing else seems to be better in "casual" listening situations, such as mobile and portable apps require.

MP3, using lame 3.90.3 (Libron's compile) with the -alt-preset standard switch.

My 2cw. (two-cents-worth)

Dex

Yeah, your post helped out. I think I'm gona stick with LAME for awhile as I think i have a pretty good setup using the internal encoder with audiograbber and MP3s work pretty much everywhere...

WMA is deffinetly out.. (microsoft)

I'm thinking evutally either AAC or OGG/or both will gain some momentium and be a more of a viable alternative as subsitute for MP3 with better quality to size ratio.

quote:

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Originally posted by Operandi:
I'm thinking evutally either AAC or OGG/or both will gain some momentium and be a more of a viable alternative as subsitute for MP3 with better quality to size ratio.

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It could be that AAC is the choice now. Both the Quicktime (itunes) and Nero Codecs are mature enough to use and FAAC is catching up.

Two online music stores now sell their digital downlaods in AAC format (Apple and Real).

Reading the comments of those who took part in the recent Hydrogen Audio test many stated that AAC had reached transparency at 128 k/bits on certain tracks. You certainly couldn't say that about mp3s!

On another note I have now got Audiograbber working with the Nero AAC Codec. Just now need to work out how to tag them automatically!

[This message has been edited by Tomb on 05 March 2004 @ 19:28]

quote:

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Originally posted by Tomb:
It could be that AAC is the choice now. Both the Quicktime (itunes) and Nero Codecs are mature enough to use and FAAC is catching up.

Two online music stores now sell their digital downlaods in AAC format (Apple and Real).

Reading the comments of those who took part in the recent Hydrogen Audio test many stated that AAC had reached transparency at 128 k/bits on certain tracks. You certainly couldn't say that about mp3s!

On another note I have now got Audiograbber working with the Nero AAC Codec. Just now need to work out how to tag them automatically!

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Hmm.... sweet

So we should see internal AAC codecs supported sometime soon?

I'm kinda unfamilar with FAAC, I'm guessing its what LAME is to MP3?

[This message has been edited by Operandi on 07 March 2004 @ 10:16]

quote:

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Originally posted by Operandi:
I'm kinda unfamilar with FAAC, I'm guessing its what LAME is to MP3?

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I answered some questions about FAAC in this and other threads on this forum already, but maybe you missed these answers. If you mean the open source status of FAAC and LAME with your question, then yes, FAAC is the only available open source AAC codec. Concerning its improved quality you could have a look at the recent listening test comparing it to four other commercial AAC codecs. Regarding the difference to Nero you should keep in mind that Nero used a 10% higher bitrate with the 12 test samples, i.e. ~140 kbps instead of the 128 kbps that were to be tested. So a fair comparison between FAAC and Nero should use an equivalent setting for FAAC (e.g. -q 130 -c 17000), but this was not the purpose of the test.

[This message has been edited by hans-jürgen on 07 March 2004 @ 16:03]

To use it select the external encoder tab.
Set FAAC as the external mp3 program
In predefined arguments select user defined
In arguments type the following argument:

%s %d -q 100 -c 16000 -w

Set file extension as mp4 or m4a

Note the above argument gives an average of 128 k/bits.

Er, that's it!

More can be found at the draft guide I am putting together at:
http://www.arax12.dsl.pipex.com/

quote:

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Originally posted by hans-jürgen:
I answered some questions about FAAC in this and other threads on this forum already, but maybe you missed these answers. If you mean the open source status of FAAC and LAME with your question, then yes, FAAC is the only available open source AAC codec. Concerning its improved quality you could have a look at the recent listening test comparing it to four other commercial AAC codecs. Regarding the difference to Nero you should keep in mind that Nero used a 10% higher bitrate with the 12 test samples, i.e. ~140 kbps instead of the 128 kbps that were to be tested. So a fair comparison between FAAC and Nero should use an equivalent setting for FAAC (e.g. -q 130 -c 17000), but this was not the purpose of the test.

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Yeah, sorry I missed that in your ealier posts. I checked out that v2 AAC test, looks like FAAC has improved nicely.

quote:

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Originally posted by Tomb:
[B]You can download FAAC from the Rarewares AAC page (you will need the FAAC Binaries for Win32)
http://www.rarewares.org/aac.html

To use it select the external encoder tab.
Set FAAC as the external mp3 program
In predefined arguments select user defined
In arguments type the following argument:

%s %d -q 100 -c 16000 -w

Set file extension as mp4 or m4a

Note the above argument gives an average of 128 k/bits.

Er, that's it!

More can be found at the draft guide I am putting together at:
http://www.arax12.dsl.pipex.com/

---

Thanks for the info Tomb but I'd rather not mess with external encoders for various reasons. Any idea when/if there will be internal encoder support for audiograbber?

Also how dose AAC fair in the higher bit rates?, like I said earlier I’m using LAME vrb stereo with bit rates varying between 200-300k/sec. Is AAC (FAAC?) still a viable alternative to LAME in a situation like that?

[This message has been edited by Operandi on 08 March 2004 @ 03:56]

As for FAAC competing with Lame at the higher bitrates it has been mentioned that on other forums that FAAC (and AAC) may be a better bet at 128 k/bits it still may not be ready to compete against Lame's --alt-preset standard but I am sure that it is only a matter of time.

My feeling is that you don't need such high bitrates with AAC to achieve transparency as you do with MP3. Somewhere between 160 and 192 should be good enough - it is for me. Of course it is all down to what is good for your ears and if you are happy with Lame at 220-250vbr then stick with it. MP3 will be around for a long while yet.

[This message has been edited by Tomb on 08 March 2004 @ 08:49]

quote:

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Originally posted by Tomb:
Not sure about internal support with Audiograbber. Hopefully Hans-Jurgen has e-mailed Jackie to mention it! I am sure the FAAC project want as many pieces of software supporting their enocoder as possible.

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Not yet, because I got the impression that he reads and answers in his forums quite regularly. And Audiograbber is of course interesting, because it is freeware now, so there would be another free CD ripper with FAAC support besides CDex, BonkEnc and foobar2000 (EAC with command line .exe, too).

[Edit]
Damn, forgot to mention dBpowerAMP and Poikosoft's Easy CD-DA Extractor (though not freeware) again...

quote:

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As for FAAC competing with Lame at the higher bitrates it has been mentioned that on other forums that FAAC (and AAC) may be a better bet at 128 k/bits it still may not be ready to compete against Lame's --alt-preset standard but I am sure that it is only a matter of time.

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I've read these claims, too, and you have to realize that they are all based on hearsay or on stupid assumptions ("Why doesn't AAC at 128 kbps sound as good as LAME at ~200 kbps?"), because there are no public group listening tests trying to examine any codec at such high bitrates. And the reason is of course that it's pretty hard or close to impossible even for trained listeners to come up with reasonable results, meaning that you won't find enough people to validate such claims statistically.

And concerning a direct comparison between LAME and FAAC it was interesting to read what Gabriel Bouvigne (one of the main LAME developers) had to say on Hydrogenaudio about the quality and "inner values" of FAAC... Back on topic, hurray!

[This message has been edited by hans-jürgen on 08 March 2004 @ 19:00]