Re: A poll on AAC: Which encoder & what settings?
Reply #3 –
I use Foobar2000 for making AAC(Apple) (from lossless files obviously) since Apple's AAC encoder seems to be considered the best (why bother with anything else as far as AAC goes?). my signature pretty much sums up what I prefer as far as AAC goes, which is pretty much TVBR q45 (96kbps) as I tend to use that as a general minimum for AAC, although for someone who likes to play it a little safer with AAC, can opt for TVBR q64 (128kbps) as I feel with any high quality encoder (i.e. Apple AAC/Opus) you probably don't need more than 128kbps or so otherwise efficiency starts to decline quite a bit for minimal sound quality improvements that many would probably not even notice on typical speakers/headphones.
p.s. I generally use Opus when possible but outside of Opus, AAC (Apple) seems to be best. I don't see much reason to use MP3 anymore (especially since the Opus developer said that in general Opus gives same quality as MP3 at about 60% of the bit rate (i.e. for example... Opus @ 80kbps would be about the same as LAME v5 (130kbps)) unless your device can't use Opus or AAC.