Quote from: eahm on 2013-12-08 17:58:56

ChronoSphere my compliments, I can't even ABX @~96kbps with Vorbis, AAC and Opus. I guess it also depends how hard you try. I realized long time ago if I have to try for more than 10 mins it means the codec is good enough.

Thank you, though I didn't think my hearing to be that good. Incidentally, I tested opus and vorbis for this track, too in the past, and I stopped trying at 192kbps average for both of them. 160kbps was already near my limit, actually, as you can see below. Which is why I'm so surprised about AAC behaving so badly in comparison. Each test takes me about 3-4 minutes I guess.

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foo_abx 1.3.4 report
foobar2000 v1.2.9
2013/12/08 17:54:25

File A: R:\03. ゆうまお - 蒼空にくちづけたら.flac
File B: R:\03 蒼空にくちづけたら_160.opus

17:54:25 : Test started.
17:55:27 : 01/01  50.0%
17:55:54 : 01/02  75.0%
17:56:20 : 01/03  87.5%
17:56:47 : 02/04  68.8%
17:57:04 : 03/05  50.0%
17:57:52 : 04/06  34.4%
17:58:40 : 04/07  50.0%
17:59:08 : 05/08  36.3%
17:59:25 : 06/09  25.4%
17:59:40 : 07/10  17.2%
18:00:24 : Test finished.

 ---------- 
Total: 7/10 (17.2%)

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foo_abx 1.3.4 report
foobar2000 v1.1.18
2012/12/25 12:36:05

File A: C:\Users\Olav\Desktop\3929430_Lessons_In_Love_feat__Neon_Trees_Headhunterz_Remix.wav
File B: C:\Users\Olav\Desktop\QAAC TVBR 127\3929430_Lessons_In_Love_feat__Neon_Trees_Headhunterz_Remix.m4a

12:36:05 : Test started.
12:37:08 : 01/01  50.0%
12:38:06 : 02/02  25.0%
12:38:57 : 03/03  12.5%
12:39:42 : 04/04  6.3%
12:42:34 : 05/05  3.1%
12:43:14 : Test finished.

 ---------- 
Total: 5/5 (3.1%)

Setup was: foo_abx 1.3.4 -> Belkin USB cable -> HRT Music Streamer II -> Steelseries 5HV2.
QAAC v 2.09

Though I'd say nero's aac encoder did an even poorer job. Or maybe this song is just a problem sample.

mpc -192:        16:13:47
Flac -8:         16:09:49
vorbis q5:        12:17:56
mp3 v0:            11:48:20
qaac -v256:        11:44:08
Wv -hh -b384Mx:    11:17:12
opus 160:        10:38:05

btw. Why ALAC? I don't really know of an advantage except if you're already using the apple ecosystem and want to stay native.

I'm not sure what you're actually considering to do, but in case you want to change codec, and in case that Rockbox plays your new choice is of major concern: Musepack is a good candidate for your new choice IMO. Or lossyWAV | FLAC in case you can allow for higher bitrates.

Conversion failed: The encoder has terminated prematurely with code 2 (0x00000002); please re-check parameters

-s --cbr 256 --ignorelength --rate keep -q 2 - -o %d

-s --tvbr 100 --ignorelength --rate keep -q 2 - -o %d

I've been having the same issues until I ran it from the command line and saw it complaining about not being able to find CoreAudioTools.dll (or similar). Are you sure you have iTunes installed/made portable and in the same folder as qaac?

Oops , i have removed iTunes for 2 weeks. I thought that CoreAudioTool doesn't require Itunes to be installed. It seems everything is ok if I re-install iTunes. Thanks .

Quote from: ChronoSphere on 2013-12-11 11:03:45

I've been having the same issues until I ran it from the command line and saw it complaining about not being able to find CoreAudioTools.dll (or similar). Are you sure you have iTunes installed/made portable and in the same folder as qaac?

  Oops , i have removed iTunes for 2 weeks. I thought that CoreAudioTool doesn't require Itunes to be installed. It seems everything is ok if I re-install iTunes. Thanks .

Quote from: vozer on 2013-12-11 15:28:02

Quote from: ChronoSphere on 2013-12-11 11:03:45

I've been having the same issues until I ran it from the command line and saw it complaining about not being able to find CoreAudioTools.dll (or similar). Are you sure you have iTunes installed/made portable and in the same folder as qaac?

  Oops , i have removed iTunes for 2 weeks. I thought that CoreAudioTool doesn't require Itunes to be installed. It seems everything is ok if I re-install iTunes. Thanks .

It's ok even without iTunes. You missed something when you setup the portable version.

edit:
Don't copy the folder QTFiles where qaac.exe is but all the files inside QTFiles http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....st&p=844462

msiexec /a foo.msi /qn TARGETDIR=C:\bar

I just used Winrar to extract the Apple Application Support .msi from the iTunes installer. It's a separate installer and you don't need to fully install iTunes at all.

You don't need to install AppleApplicationSupport.msi, either. You can extract the contents of it with msiexec:

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msiexec /a foo.msi /qn TARGETDIR=C:\bar

This would extract the contents of foo.msi to the directory C:\bar without showing you any GUI elements. Wait ten seconds for the extraction to complete, then enter the directory, select the DLL files that qaac needs, copy them to the QTfiles folder, then delete everything else you extracted from AppleApplicationSupport.msi.

That script seems to run a few unnecessary commands.

That script seems to run a few unnecessary commands. You need only to extract the relevant DLLs and put them in one of the locations qaac looks for them.

@echo off
setlocal

if not "%~1" == "" (
	set installer=%~1
) else if exist iTunes64Setup.exe (
	set installer=iTunes64Setup.exe
) else if exist iTunesSetup.exe (
	set installer=iTunesSetup.exe
) else if exist QuickTimeInstaller.exe (
	set installer=QuickTimeInstaller.exe
) else (
	echo installer executable not found
	goto end
)

7z e -y %installer% AppleApplicationSupport.msi
if not %errorlevel% == 0 (
	echo cannot extract AppleApplicationSupport.msi from installer
	goto end
)

mkdir QTfiles\Microsoft.VC80.CRT

7z e -y -oQTfiles -i!ASL.dll -i!CoreAudioToolbox.dll -i!CoreFoundation.dll -i!*icu*.dll -i!libdispatch.dll -i!objc.dll -i!pthreadVC2.dll AppleApplicationSupport.msi
if not %errorlevel% == 0 (
	echo error on extracting AppleApplicationSupport.msi
	goto end
)

7z e -y -oQTfiles\Microsoft.VC80.CRT -i!msvcp80.dll.* -i!msvcr80.dll.* -i!manifest.* AppleApplicationSupport.msi
if not %errorlevel% == 0 (
	echo error on extracting AppleApplicationSupport.msi
	goto end
)

del AppleApplicationSupport.msi

pushd QTfiles\Microsoft.VC80.CRT

rem strip assembly version number from filenames of msvc runtime dlls
for %%f in (msvcr80.dll.*) do move /Y %%f msvcr80.dll
for %%f in (msvcp80.dll.*) do move /Y %%f msvcp80.dll

rem find needless one out of the two manifests and remove it
for /F "delims=:" %%t in ('findstr win32-policy manifest.*') do del %%t

rem rename manifest
for %%f in (manifest.*) do move /Y %%f Microsoft.VC80.CRT.manifest

popd
:end
endlocal

It it just in case the user doesn't have VC++ 2008 runtimes installed already?