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Topic: FDK-AAC quality? (Read 34824 times) previous topic - next topic
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FDK-AAC quality?

Hello- I am new to this and am trying to find some answers. I am in the process of ripping my cd collection (500+) to FLAC so I can digitally archive them.  I also want to convert to a lossy format for my phone and DAPs (Fiio X1/X3).  I am using dbpoweramp and it includes the FDK-AAC codec. I cannot find a lot of information about the quality of the FDK- AAC codec, especially compared to Apple's.  I did a lot of listening tests and based on what I can hear it seems 256 cbr aac (using dbpoweramp's FDK-AAC codec) seems to be fine for me.  I thought in sounded slightly better then 256 vbr Lame mp3 and about the same as 320 cbr Lame mp3.  I became concerned because when I searched for information there were a few posts about the FDK codec never going above 17khz which was commented as a serious issue.  Should I be concerned using the FDK-AAC encoder, or would I be better of just using LAME mp3? 

Thanks for helping out a newbie,

Scott

FDK-AAC quality?

Reply #1
If you're using 256k CBR I doubt there is much difference between codecs.  At that bitrate even bad codecs will be transparent.

FDK-AAC quality?

Reply #2
At that bitrate even bad codecs will be transparent.

I know a few encoders that still are bad at 256Kbps.. BladeEnc, vo-aacenc, built-in WMA encoders in ffmpeg. There are a few others as well.

Quote
Should I be concerned using the FDK-AAC encoder, or would I be better of just using LAME mp3?

No, FDK-AAC is a good AAC encoder.

FDK-AAC quality?

Reply #3
FDK AAC is designed specificallly for low-powered devices like smartphones and DAPs, so I doubt you'll have any problems with the way it sounds. Especially at 256 kbps (which is transparent with AAC). And you'll probably find, also, that you'll get great battery time using that codec.
ghostman

FDK-AAC quality?

Reply #4
FDK AAC is designed specificallly for low-powered devices like smartphones and DAPs, so I doubt you'll have any problems with the way it sounds. Especially at 256 kbps (which is transparent with AAC). And you'll probably find, also, that you'll get great battery time using that codec.


FWIW, the choice of encoder will not alter the battery life required to decode the format, provided two encoder output the same format.

FDK-AAC quality?

Reply #5
Relevant information.

http://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=AAC_encoders
http://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title...Listening_Tests

Today the top quality VBR AAC encoders are Apple and FhG (Fraunhofer encoder from Winamp).  While 256 kbps is high bitrate it's still make sense to go VBR for even higher quality on some difficult to encode moments.

Plus You don't have to have iTunes or Winamp installed. You can have portable versions of encoders (QAAC for Apple and fhgaacenc for Winamp's FhG). Search for it.


FDK-AAC quality?

Reply #7
I became concerned because when I searched for information there were a few posts about the FDK codec never going above 17khz which was commented as a serious issue.

You can override codec's default bandwidth up to 20kHz (but not beyond that).
Read here: http://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title...unhofer_FDK_AAC


So is that a good or bad thing?

Thanks for everyone's help.

FDK-AAC quality?

Reply #8
Is that good or bad dby2011? ABX and let us know?

FDK-AAC quality?

Reply #9
I wouldn't mess with the codec defaults but given the excessive nitrate it probably won't make a difference.

FDK-AAC quality?

Reply #10
I did do multiple listening tests and did find 256 aac to almost be indistinguishable from FLAC , slightly better then 256 mp3 (cbr and vbr). However, I have another wrench in the equation.  The two Fiio players I will be using don't work well with AAC and gapless playback, there is still a very slight audible "click" between songs.  Using LAME mp3 gapless is perfect.  Not sure what I will do now as I have a lot of music that benefits from gapless playback (Pink Floyd, live concerts etc).  Thanks for everyone's insight and help.

FDK-AAC quality?

Reply #11
How did you test? Where they ABX? Not trying to bust your balls but saying 256 is almost indistinguishable from its lossless source is absurd, many find ~96 almost indistinguishable.

You need to post some logs before you say something like that, this is s scientific forum, I learned my lesson this way as well and I love how everyone talks here.

Second: I never suggest this, I never even suggest MP3 but you clearly have problems with AAC (are you sure? FiiO is a new brand) so just use CBR MP3 for maximum compatibility, from 192 us is all good, 320 CBR is what most suggest to stick with because is the max CBR bit rate for MP3.

FDK-AAC quality?

Reply #12
I did do multiple listening tests and did find 256 aac to almost be indistinguishable from FLAC , slightly better then 256 mp3 (cbr and vbr). However, I have another wrench in the equation.  The two Fiio players I will be using don't work well with AAC and gapless playback, there is still a very slight audible "click" between songs.  Using LAME mp3 gapless is perfect.  Not sure what I will do now as I have a lot of music that benefits from gapless playback (Pink Floyd, live concerts etc).  Thanks for everyone's insight and help.


There's an option to select which king of gapless metadata gets written to the file when you encode it. Perhaps your frond-end will let you choose.

From the man page:

Quote
Code: [Select]
      -G, --gapless-mode <n>
              Method  to  declare amount of encoder delay (and padding) in M4A
              container.  These values are mandatory for proper gapless  play-
              back on player side.

              0      iTunSMPB (default)

              1      ISO standard (edts and sgpd)

              2      Both

FDK-AAC quality?

Reply #13
Relevant information.

http://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=AAC_encoders
http://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title...Listening_Tests

Today the top quality VBR AAC encoders are Apple and FhG (Fraunhofer encoder from Winamp).  While 256 kbps is high bitrate it's still make sense to go VBR for even higher quality on some difficult to encode moments.

Plus You don't have to have iTunes or Winamp installed. You can have portable versions of encoders (QAAC for Apple and fhgaacenc for Winamp's FhG). Search for it.


Hi @IgorC
i have most on my audio in PC at mp3 LAME 320 CBR. (70gb in size total)

now in my android phone & Laptop i want to convert & transfer most of it (NOT ALL), i think 96kbps AAC-LC is ideal for me. But what encoder i should use for AAC m4a on my Android Phone 16gb Memory (8gb free for music) & on laptop 20gb free for music.

i was using Nero AAC at 48kbps for long time, but deleted all my songs on this bit-rate on my mobile and laptop.

now for 96kbps VBR my options are: (or i should use CBR at 96kbps ?? )
1. Apple AAC - QAAC
2. FDK AAC
3. FgH AAC (this encoder now gives error that it cannot encode VBR 3 at 96kbps, before it was working)

NOTE:
on PC and Laptop i use foobar2000 player for playback, media management & encoding.



FDK-AAC quality?

Reply #14
3. FgH AAC (this encoder now gives error that it cannot encode VBR 3 at 96kbps, before it was working)

  It should still work, at least the encoder hasn't changed. You are using fhgaacenc, right? Does it work through Winamp?

Chris
If I don't reply to your reply, it means I agree with you.

FDK-AAC quality?

Reply #15
3. FgH AAC (this encoder now gives error that it cannot encode VBR 3 at 96kbps, before it was working)

  It should still work, at least the encoder hasn't changed. You are using fhgaacenc, right? Does it work through Winamp?

Chris

yes FgH give this error

Code: [Select]
Conversion failed: The encoder has terminated prematurely with code 0 (0x00000000); please re-check parameters


but Apple AAC is working, simply installed iTune latest 6.4 version then was able to convert to Q.45 96kbps VBR,
but i was wondering that CBR 96kbps vs VBR 96kbps which has better quality??

FDK-AAC quality?

Reply #16
3. FgH AAC (this encoder now gives error that it cannot encode VBR 3 at 96kbps, before it was working)

  It should still work, at least the encoder hasn't changed. You are using fhgaacenc, right? Does it work through Winamp?

yes FgH give this error

Code: [Select]
Conversion failed: The encoder has terminated prematurely with code 0 (0x00000000); please re-check parameters


That error isn't from FhG but from foobar2000. At least it looks a whole lot like Converter messages foobar2000 uses. If you update fhgaacenc to the new version that's bundled in the Free Encoder Pack it will give more useful error return codes. Though my assumption is that you don't have the required dlls from Winamp.

FDK-AAC quality?

Reply #17
Relevant information.

http://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=AAC_encoders
http://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title...Listening_Tests

Today the top quality VBR AAC encoders are Apple and FhG (Fraunhofer encoder from Winamp).  While 256 kbps is high bitrate it's still make sense to go VBR for even higher quality on some difficult to encode moments.

Plus You don't have to have iTunes or Winamp installed. You can have portable versions of encoders (QAAC for Apple and fhgaacenc for Winamp's FhG). Search for it.


Hi @IgorC
i have most on my audio in PC at mp3 LAME 320 CBR. (70gb in size total)

now in my android phone & Laptop i want to convert & transfer most of it (NOT ALL), i think 96kbps AAC-LC is ideal for me. But what encoder i should use for AAC m4a on my Android Phone 16gb Memory (8gb free for music) & on laptop 20gb free for music.

i was using Nero AAC at 48kbps for long time, but deleted all my songs on this bit-rate on my mobile and laptop.

now for 96kbps VBR my options are: (or i should use CBR at 96kbps ?? )
1. Apple AAC - QAAC
2. FDK AAC
3. FgH AAC (this encoder now gives error that it cannot encode VBR 3 at 96kbps, before it was working)

NOTE:
on PC and Laptop i use foobar2000 player for playback, media management & encoding.


ANSWER / SOLUTION:
to make life simple, i installed latest iTunes 12.3.0 (64-bit) and from foobar2000 i encode to 96kbps CVBR qaac Apple AAC to m4a format.
FhG AAC and FDK AAC just seemed too complicated because WinAMP codec started giving errors. And FDK AAC took 30 minutes of download and update and still no FDKEncoder.exe file was created.

Also only Apple AAC (qaac) encoder menu in foobar2000 is simpler and has CVBR (Contained VBR) which has LOWER JUMPS in bit-rates than regular VBR.
So for 2015-10-15 Thu i am going for Apple AAC (qaac) at 96kbps CVBR to m4a.

FDK-AAC quality?

Reply #18
I'm curious if somebody could point me to a listening test which compares this encoder (fdk-aac) to qaac.  I just want to know how the two encoders compare.  For me, fdk-aac seems to be creating smaller files on vbr -m5, compared to if I used qaac on the vbr q109 setting.

Thank you.

FDK-AAC quality?

Reply #19
I'm curious if somebody could point me to a listening test which compares this encoder (fdk-aac) to qaac.  I just want to know how the two encoders compare.  For me, fdk-aac seems to be creating smaller files on vbr -m5, compared to if I used qaac on the vbr q109 setting.

Thank you.


I know you asked for a comparison of fdkaac and qaac, but I thought this might still be helpful.
I needed to encode some of my audio collection for my mobile devices so obviously file size was a concern. Anyway, I decided to experiment with the faac and fdkaac codecs at the command line on linux. I was very pleased with the results from the fdkaac codec. File size vs. quality is pretty impressive. I sampled various codec profiles including vbr m5, HE-AAC 64k, and HE-AAC v2 40k. I ended up settling on HE-AAC v2 40k. All three profiles provide great results, but at 40k you can really take advantage of your available storage and still have some respectable sounding music on the go.

https://www.hydrogenaud.io/forums/index.php?showtopic=110494

Hope this is useful.

FDK-AAC quality?

Reply #20
I'm curious if somebody could point me to a listening test which compares this encoder (fdk-aac) to qaac.  I just want to know how the two encoders compare.  For me, fdk-aac seems to be creating smaller files on vbr -m5, compared to if I used qaac on the vbr q109 setting.

Thank you.


I know you asked for a comparison of fdkaac and qaac, but I thought this might still be helpful.
I needed to encode some of my audio collection for my mobile devices so obviously file size was a concern. Anyway, I decided to experiment with the faac and fdkaac codecs at the command line on linux. I was very pleased with the results from the fdkaac codec. File size vs. quality is pretty impressive. I sampled various codec profiles including vbr m5, HE-AAC 64k, and HE-AAC v2 40k. I ended up settling on HE-AAC v2 40k. All three profiles provide great results, but at 40k you can really take advantage of your available storage and still have some respectable sounding music on the go.

https://www.hydrogenaud.io/forums/index.php?showtopic=110494

Hope this is useful.



I was mainly curious since I use dBpoweramp for CD ripping and it includes the fdk-aac encoder.  It just makes it easier than having to install the CLI encoder and fiddle with it.  I also seemed to notice I was getting smaller files with fdk-aac, even on the highest quality setting.  At those rates, I really cannot hear a difference but would prefer smaller files if I could get them.

I'm actually reading your thread about the listening test now.

Thank you.

FDK-AAC quality?

Reply #21
The apple encoder used to be drastically faster (Not sure about current status), something to test perhaps.
PANIC: CPU 1: Cache Error (unrecoverable - dcache data) Eframe = 0x90000000208cf3b8
NOTICE - cpu 0 didn't dump TLB, may be hung

Re: FDK-AAC quality?

Reply #22
The FDK AAC encoder uses some aggressive denoising, even at quality 5, which means it's technically never transparent, depending on the source.

Re: FDK-AAC quality?

Reply #23
The FDK AAC encoder uses some aggressive denoising, even at quality 5, which means it's technically never transparent, depending on the source.
Can't reproduce the issue.