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Topic: how good is the quality of new faac 1.29 (2017-07-17) ? (Read 91573 times) previous topic - next topic
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Re: how good is the quality of new faac 1.29 (2017-07-17) ?

Reply #25
Why the foobar's parametres "--mpeg-vers 4 --q 500 -w - -o %d" (working in FAAC 1.28) doesn't work in FAAC 1.29.6?
That may be related to a recent change not to overwrite existing files by default. --overwrite option enables it.
So, in the end it turns out it doesn't work. Windows version has some problem with standard input.
It probably will be fixed in next release.


Re: how good is the quality of new faac 1.29 (2017-07-17) ?

Reply #27
Thanks. There are no problems with foobar2000 in FAAC 1.29.7.2 release.


Re: how good is the quality of new faac 1.29 (2017-07-17) ?

Reply #29
It worked!


Re: how good is the quality of new faac 1.29 (2017-07-17) ?

Reply #30

Hello everyone, everything good?

Can anyone with experience help with the following question?

Using Free Audio Converter 1.0.30 what is the best FAAC configuration 1.29.7 using bit rate per channel without Joint-Stereo?

128, 130, 150 ....

Because in the version I used 1.0.28 with FAAC 1.28 I used 128 per channel and the songs got the final quality this way:

247kbps, 265, 270 ....

And with FAAC 1.29.7 when choosing which rate per channel the songs have the same qualities for example:

130 per channel result = 260kbps.

What is the best bitrate per channel setting in FAAC 1.29.7 without Joint-Stereo?

I apologize for extending the text too much.

Thank you!

Re: how good is the quality of new faac 1.29 (2017-07-17) ?

Reply #31
Using Free Audio Converter 1.0.30 what is the best FAAC configuration 1.29.7 using bit rate per channel without Joint-Stereo?

I don't think there are any good settings for that.  You should use joint stereo and probably a more mature AAC encoder.  Even with the improvements, FAAC is still probably not the best choice. 


Re: how good is the quality of new faac 1.29 (2017-07-17) ?

Reply #33
If you want bulk encode with faac don't do it yet, better wait for upcoming releases.
Encoding improvements are underway.

Re: how good is the quality of new faac 1.29 (2017-07-17) ?

Reply #34
So should I use FAAC 1.28 for now?

Thanks!

Re: how good is the quality of new faac 1.29 (2017-07-17) ?

Reply #35
So should I use FAAC 1.28 for now?
FAAC 1.29.7 will be better than 1.28, but until quality improvements arrive, it's best to use a different encoder if possible. You can use Apple's Core Audio AAC Encoder with fre:ac 1.1 Alpha if you have iTunes installed. The Core Audio encoder seems to provide the best quality at the moment.

Re: how good is the quality of new faac 1.29 (2017-07-17) ?

Reply #36
The Core Audio encoder seems to provide the best quality at the moment.
Damn, installing the thing on Linux is not that easy. I just had to download a whole bunch of dlls before qaac agreed to work.

Re: how good is the quality of new faac 1.29 (2017-07-17) ?

Reply #37
The Core Audio encoder seems to provide the best quality at the moment.
Damn, installing the thing on Linux is not that easy. I just had to download a whole bunch of dlls before qaac agreed to work.
You can use the FDK-AAC encoder on Linux. The quality is comparable to that of the mighty Core Audio encoder maintained by Apple.
NeroAACEnc, used to be distributed as Win/Linux binaries, also works. The quality is lower than the Apple/FDK/FhG encoder.

Re: how good is the quality of new faac 1.29 (2017-07-17) ?

Reply #38
Indeed, FDK-AAC is not bad, native Linux binary of reasonable size as opposed to 28M for qaac.

FAAC 1.29.7.7

Reply #39
Because in the version I used 1.0.28 with FAAC 1.28 I used 128 per channel and the songs got the final quality this way:

247kbps, 265, 270 ....

And with FAAC 1.29.7 when choosing which rate per channel the songs have the same qualities for example:

130 per channel result = 260kbps.
I just modified that functionality to allow some bitrate variation. The updated bitrate control code generally seems better.
Now with 128 per channel, you can get something like 263, 281 ...

New version:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/faac/files/faac-src/faac-1.29/faac-1.29.7.7-win32.zip/download

Note that sourceforge had some issues last days, hopefully it will work today.

Re: how good is the quality of new faac 1.29 (2017-07-17) ?

Reply #40
You can use the FDK-AAC encoder on Linux. The quality is comparable to that of the mighty Core Audio encoder maintained by Apple.
It may be even better than that. I just did a couple of quick listening tests (60-80kbps AAC-LC) and it looks like FDK sounds better than Core Audio.  :)

Re: how good is the quality of new faac 1.29 (2017-07-17) ?

Reply #41
I just did a couple of quick listening tests (60-80kbps AAC-LC) and it looks like FDK sounds better than Core Audio.  :)
Can you provide some ABX logs?

Re: how good is the quality of new faac 1.29 (2017-07-17) ?

Reply #42
ABXing CoreAudio AAC-LC @ 80k is too easy.
Previously I was trying two test samples That_s_What_I_Get and Home_Computer but the latter is a joke so for this ABX I took That_s_What_I_Get@80k
Encoding:
./qaac.sh -v 80 ~/tmp/web/aactest/That_s_What_I_Get.wav -o q1.m4a
./aac-enc -t 2 -r 80000 ~/tmp/web/aactest/That_s_What_I_Get.wav f1.aac

ABXed with 'abx' on linux one sample encoded with FDA, one with Core.
Result: 10/10 but that's just too easy due to annoying CoreAudio artifacts.

f1.aac actually has a little lower bitrate than q1.m4a so FDK is definite winner here.

 

Re: how good is the quality of new faac 1.29 (2017-07-17) ?

Reply #43
Thanks for this, what do you think about FhG/Winamp vs FhG/FDK? FhG/Winamp is so fast when converting.

Re: how good is the quality of new faac 1.29 (2017-07-17) ?

Reply #44
Yeah, not going to happen for now, FhG/FDK gives me ~160-170x and FhG/Winamp ~400x, I don't use lossy much anymore but speed is very convenient.

Re: how good is the quality of new faac 1.29 (2017-07-17) ?

Reply #45
The "afterburner" fdk option makes difference, about twice slower but produces a little better sound.
I just ABXed @80kbps afterburner vs nonafterburner 9/10.

Maybe Winamp has this option disabled. I don't know.

Re: how good is the quality of new faac 1.29 (2017-07-17) ?

Reply #46
Encoding:
./qaac.sh -v 80 ~/tmp/web/aactest/That_s_What_I_Get.wav -o q1.m4a
./aac-enc -t 2 -r 80000 ~/tmp/web/aactest/That_s_What_I_Get.wav f1.aac


Passing --lowpass 14000 to qaac and -r 84000 to aac-enc would probably provide a better comparison.

Re: how good is the quality of new faac 1.29 (2017-07-17) ?

Reply #47
I confirmed that the new version faac-1.29.7.8 is getting even faster.

https://github.com/knik0/faac




Re: how good is the quality of new faac 1.29 (2017-07-17) ?

Reply #49
Great, it's even faster.