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Topic: qaac tool command line options help (Read 6907 times) previous topic - next topic
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qaac tool command line options help

I'm reading about the qaac tool and I'm a bit confused...

I would like to know which option will output the "best" 192 kBps VBR AAC file with the following options:

-a
-V
-v
-c
--he

I'm not sure which one to pick (so far I'm using -v192).

Also I'm not sure about --no-smart-padding. Is it only useful when encoding gapless content?

Thanks for your help!

Re: qaac tool command line options help

Reply #2 –
I read the docs I searched several hours and for an newbie to the format and compression in audio it dosen't speak to me. Most articles (including the wiki here) contradict themselves or are written several years ago (sometimes nearly a decade ago)...

Re: qaac tool command line options help

Reply #3 –
Technically, bitrate management etc., I think the "best" is -V 91.

I personally use fhgaacenc (AAC/Winamp) VBR 3 (~96) (foobar2000 iOS, car etc.) and VBR 5 (~192) (wife's iTunes) because it's really fast and I can't be bothered with all the portable files or QT installations and updates etc. for how much and for how I use lossy today.

Re: qaac tool command line options help

Reply #4 –
Usually the VBR modes are preferred over ABR or CBR, as they allow the encoder to best distribute the available bit rate. Using more bit rate for the harder parts to encode and less for the easier sections.

That said, comparing TVBR and CVBR, I still haven't concluded which of the two wins. But I've assumed the difference between the two shouldn't be that big that I would notice. This is my opinion upon reading lots of forums posts, tests results, and some minimal testing on my own.

Code: [Select]
-V, --tvbr     AAC True VBR mode / quality [0-127]
-v, --cvbr     AAC Constrained VBR mode / bitrate

According to qaac's docs, iTunes uses CVBR 256kbps, for their "iTunes Plus(256k)" preset. So I usually just stick to that, or a variant of it. Like dropping the bit rate to 192 or 128 depending on what device I plan to use it on.