Re: What's the best AAC encoder today?
Reply #35 – 2021-05-23 07:21:56
After your help now I can use all three encoder by foobar2000. Apple AAC has version "qaac 2.72, CoreAudioToolbox 7.10.9.0". I do not know whether it is the latest one by Apple. I think there are 'newer' versions of CoreAudioToolbox available (like in newer versions of iTunes), but it does not really matter since in terms of the audio quality of the AAC files produced, no improvements have been made in about 10+ years now when it comes to standard AAC (i.e. AAC-LC) files. so basically any version of Apple AAC encoder used after that point (after about 2009-2011) is just as good as whatever is the most recent which is why I never bothered to use anything newer myself as the one your using is what I am using in Foobar2000 (i.e. CoreAudioToolbox 7.10.9.0 ; although I am still on 'qaac v2.69' as I just use whatever is included in the Foobar Encoders Pack (which the most recent Encoders Pack release is from Jan 2021) as I never manually update qaac in particular as I just use whatever they give you in the Foobar2000 Encoders Pack). so while the CoreAudioToolbox your using is from the year 2018, it does not matter if you used one from 2013 or the most recent from 2021 etc, it's all basically the same where it matters. the Apple AAC encoder your using (which I extracted from the iTunes installer in 2018) is 32-bit. but the last I knew the 64-bit version was only negligibly faster at encoding, so I never really bothered to change to 64-bit. besides, it seems the encoders they give you in the Foobar2000 Encoders Pack in general are 32bit as I think it's safer to use these since more CPU's will be supported even though the 64-bit ones can encode things a bit faster in general. but it's not really a big deal either way as unless someone encodes A LOT of music, the speed difference is not significant enough to really matter, especially given any decent CPU over the last 10 years or so is plenty fast enough.