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Topic: AAC vs. LAME mp3 (Read 39576 times) previous topic - next topic
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AAC vs. LAME mp3

Reply #25 –
Quote from: Nick E on
However, there's a thread here (HA) that comes up, where posters indicate that they have played these files on iPods.  But there's some question about how much they're getting out of them:
I recently stumbled on the glory that is HE-AAC - I was shocked when I heard how good they sounded at low bitrates, and they played very nicely in Foobar2000. Then I loaded one up into iTunes - it reported the track length incorrectly (approximately twice as long), and when it played it didn't sound like it did in Foobar. Somewhere I read that what it is playing is actually the LC part of the file, but I can't find a source for that right now. In any case, I would imagine iPods would probably handle these files similarly - it will probably play (possibly buggy), but you won't get the full quality of the HE-AAC file.

AAC vs. LAME mp3

Reply #26 –
It is true that iTunes, QuickTime, and iPods can play HE-AAC files.  They will only play the LC portion of the audio file though so a 64kbps HE-AAC file will have the same audio quality as a 64kbps LC-AAC file when being played through iTunes and from an iPod.  HE-AAC support has been something that people have wanted back in 2003 when Apple released the 1G iPod mini.  People have signed petition after petition and, 5 years later, we still don't have anything.

I doubt Apple will add HE-AAC support now given that flash memory capacities keep drastically increasing while their prices decrease.  Before there was a need for HE-AAC as the iPod mini's held 2GB and 4GB.  Now the iPod touch is up to 32GB and I wouldn't be surprised if Apple releases a 32GB iPod nano this fall along with a 64GB iPod touch.  It would be nice if Apple added HE-AAC support especially since my iPod touch has a 16GB capacity but I don't see that happening.

AAC vs. LAME mp3

Reply #27 –
Quote from: kornchild2002 on
It is true that iTunes, QuickTime, and iPods can play HE-AAC files.  They will only play the LC portion of the audio file though so a 64kbps HE-AAC file will have the same audio quality as a 64kbps LC-AAC file when being played through iTunes and from an iPod.

Actually it will have worse quality than a 64kbps LC-AAC file because of the space occupied by the HE information. If I am not mistaken, the audio is resampled to half the rate it would normally have at 64kbps and the HE information is used to simulate the lost high frequencies.

AAC vs. LAME mp3

Reply #28 –
Quote from: kornchild2002 on
It is true that iTunes, QuickTime, and iPods can play HE-AAC files.  They will only play the LC portion of the audio file though so a 64kbps HE-AAC file will have the same audio quality as a 64kbps LC-AAC file when being played through iTunes and from an iPod.


I believe that AAC-HE files when decoded as LC only contain 1/2 the sampling rate of the source file and effectively a reduced bitrate, so the quality is generally quite a bit worse then the equivalently sized LC file.

AAC vs. LAME mp3

Reply #29 –
Oops, yeah, my mistake.  I meant to say that a 64kbps HE-AAC files will have less audio quality than a 64kbps LC-AAC files.  Actually I originally wrote "a 64kbps HE-AAC file will have the same audio quality as a 64kbps HE-AAC file" so I edited it on the spot to say LC-AAC.  I am listening to the new Nine Inch Nails album and for some reason, one of the songs made me a little dizzy.

AAC vs. LAME mp3

Reply #30 –
Quote from: greynol on
Quote from: Jebus on
Its worth mentioning that Nero AAC isn't gapless on the iPod, while Lame MP3 and iTunes AAC are.

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....st&p=505251
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....mp;#entry496270
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....mp;#entry476797


Sweet!! I had no idea. I'm going to use it now, for sure! Sorry about the out-of-date info; post corrected.

AAC vs. LAME mp3

Reply #31 –
Quote from: /mnt on
Rockbox has poor support for AAC, and also Rockbox uses software decoding on AAC files on most DAPs.


Care to name a DAP which doesn't use software decoding for AAC?  I can't think of a single mainstream DAP of the last years which doesn't use a general-purpose CPU or DSP to decode all audio codes in software.

Quote from: Alexxander on
I use Nero aac and noticed it is clearly very powerhungry, after 8-9 albums I'm out of battery but with ogg (aotuv) and mp3 (lame vbr) battery last always 10-12 albums. But my surprise was with FLAC, after 14 albums the Sansa still hadn't shutdown allthough it was close to the limit. I will try mp3 and ogg at about 320 kbps because I think the higher the bitrate the less battery is used.

Quote from: kornchild2002 on
If you must use Rockbox then stay away from AAC as it isn't very efficient on that firmware.



Nero AAC 320 benchmarks out on Rockbox on your hardware @ ~155% realtime for decoding.  128Kb/s=180%
Lame MP3 320 benchmarks out on Rockbox on your hardware @ ~200% realtime for decoding.  128Kb/s = 212%
Vorbis 350 = 200%.  128Kb/s=257%

FLAC 8 decodes @ 600% realtime on your hardware.

http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main...manceComparison

I'm actually a little surprised you're seeing such a direct correlation between codec and runtime lengths.  While the CPU is the largest consumer of power, it is hardly the only.

Your conclusion is wrong, Alexxander, though.
The higher the bitrate the more battery is used - in two ways.
1 - more CPU to decode.  (Since Rockbox dynamically clocks the CPU, less time @ idle = more battery used.)
2 - more disk access to refill RAM buffer.  (Yes, I know you have a flash player, but reads (while not needing to spin-up a HDD) are not w/o their costs.)
What you are seeing is simply that FLAC is very efficient to decode.
Creature of habit.

AAC vs. LAME mp3

Reply #32 –
Quote from: Soap on
Nero AAC 320 benchmarks out on Rockbox on your hardware @ ~155% realtime for decoding.  128Kb/s=180%
Lame MP3 320 benchmarks out on Rockbox on your hardware @ ~200% realtime for decoding.  128Kb/s = 212%
Vorbis 350 = 200%.  128Kb/s=257%

FLAC 8 decodes @ 600% realtime on your hardware.


I think that actual battery life numbers are a better indication of real world performance.  Sure, it is nice knowing the real time decoding speed but what does that tell us in the end other than how fast the firmware decodes?  From my experience with Rockbox on a 5G 60GB iPod, it doesn't get the same battery life (on a single charge) as the iPod's default firmware when playing either AAC or mp3 files.  Hence, that is why I made that comment.  Now things might have changed as I did that test about 4-5 months ago.  I have no need for Rockbox so I don't want to go through the testing process again.

AAC vs. LAME mp3

Reply #33 –
Quote from: kornchild2002 on
Now things might have changed as I did that test about 4-5 months ago.

Things have gone from 55% to 80% of Apple runtime on the iPod Video, and from 66% to >100% on the Sansas.

But I wasn't trying to convince you, kornchild2002, of anything.  I simply quoted you since I was bringing some real numbers in which supported something you had said earlier.  My main point was to Alexxander, that high bitrates didn't cause his good runtime,FLAC caused his good runtime.
Creature of habit.

AAC vs. LAME mp3

Reply #34 –
Just to clear things up...

I haven't trained myself. I encode at .45 because the .50 of nero adds a lot of the filesize.

nero is gapless on my ipod classic. You have to make sure the files are .m4a, not .mp4

Again, if you train yourself, you can make any music miserable. I couldn't detect anything on nero aac so I'm happy with it.