I fully realize that quality is subjective and people should conduct their own abx listening tests, but I unfortunately do not have the time to do a really comprehensive test...(and I would thing better no test than one which is not thorough...)
The mp3 forums have some general guidelines though and even some officially sanctioned guidelines about which encoder version to use, which bitrate for which purpose, etc...
This is something which is sorely lacking for aac encoding imo...There are of course roberto's listening tests which provide a good general insight, but I'm more interested in the ~160 kbit/sec vbr modes of current encoders.
So are there any guidelines available (specifically about the nero encoder) someplace which give some hints as to:
* which encoding results in which target bitrate? (the settings in the encoder have been way off for a while now)
* are the different LC presets just changing the allocated bitrate or are there also changes in the encoding algorhythm. (sp.?) cfr. lame vbr-new and vbr-old or even more obvious: in lame 3.96 the difference between v5 and v4?
I did not come up with any definitive answers about these things by searching...Though I'm sure I will be corrected if I did not look hard enough
One important thing is the "Encoder quality" setting. In the latest versions, "Fast" activates a new encoding mode which will probably be the default later on. Right now, it may be better in some circumstances (some of guruboolez tests confirm that), but we don't generally recommend it yet/make it the default, because it may still have serious failure cases, where the High mode has as good as no serious failure cases but may be a bit worse on average.
Garf:
Is the status of this about to change very shortly? I thought I had heart that a new version of nero will include an updated version of AAC with improved encoding (especially at mid-high bitrates).
If true, how will the newest version improve on the very low bitrates?
The new version will include PS AAC (HE-AAC v2), so that will be a large improvement at very low bitrates.
Don't ask me when it will be released