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Topic: How well does Nero AAC do 5.1 surround? (Read 3985 times) previous topic - next topic
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How well does Nero AAC do 5.1 surround?

I'm looking for a lossy codec that does will with 5.1-channel music.

Ogg Vorbis (normally my codec of choice) does abysmal on surround music, in its current state of development. It hasn't been tuned for multichannel at all.

AC3 at 448 kb/s (like on DVDs) is transparent to me, but that is with a professional encoder. I heard none of the free AC3 encoders are too good. But by any chance, maybe someone could name me a good professional encoder that I can look into? Something the studios use?

MP3 and Musepack can't handle multichannel at all.

So that brings me to AAC. I like the Nero encoder, but can it compress multichannel music to a size comparable to AC3? Or it doesn't work too well, like Ogg Vorbis? Should I use 2-pass ABR or VBR? What bitrate is generally considered transparent?

Nothing about this in the wiki, forum or Nero's documentation (as far as I can tell.)

Since I'm asking about Nero, is there a way to change the lowpass?
My reasoning for this: In the 48kHz audio I'll be compressing, there are likely to be harmonics and dither all the way up to the 24kHz limit. And it looks like Nero AAC at -q .5 encodes a lot of information above 20kHz. I think those bits would be better used for improving quality at frequencies I can actually hear.

edit: Searching the forums, I discovered that in an old version, there was a -lowpass option. But with 1.0.7.0, it tells me -lowpass is an invalid option. What's up with that?

How well does Nero AAC do 5.1 surround?

Reply #1 –
this is a bit out of topic, but AFTENdoes a nice of encoding AC3.

How well does Nero AAC do 5.1 surround?

Reply #2 –
You could try Wavpack lossy . Its free and will work on hi-rez and multichannel. Use -bxx.xx [usefull value for x=3.0-5.0]
Transparency is between 5:1 and 3:1 - typicaly 4:1

Example:

-b4x [4:1 lossy compression]
-b3xc [5.5:1 lossy + correction file = lossless]
 

How well does Nero AAC do 5.1 surround?

Reply #3 –
Quote from: slks on
But by any chance, maybe someone could name me a good professional encoder that I can look into? Something the studios use?

Sonic Solutions Scenarist. For commercial title production in Hollywood and the top post facilities worldwide, Sonic Scenarist is the de-facto standard on which they rely. Support for all of the major DVD-Video sound formats including 24-bit, 96 KHz High-Density Audio, MPEG-2 audio, Dolby-certified Dolby Digital and DTS 5.1 surround sound.
Quote from: slks on
So that brings me to AAC. I like the Nero encoder, but can it compress multichannel music to a size comparable to AC3? Or it doesn't work too well, like Ogg Vorbis? Should I use 2-pass ABR or VBR? What bitrate is generally considered transparent?

I used 2-pass vbr on some classical music expanded to 5.1 with Dolby Prologic II (can't recall the -q number used) and ended up with 231kbps total bitrate. I was very satisfied with quality. I cannot upload the file, it's only 4.2MB for 2:31.
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