[M4IF Technotes] Looking for HE AAC test software / AAC-LC

[Dave Singer]

At 12:21 +0200 6/20/03, Hans-Juergen Bardenhagen wrote:
>Hi Ben,
>
>>      As part of my occasional codec shootout projects, I'm now looking
>>  at doing some tests with HE AAC encoding.  Anyone have a HE AAC
>>  encoder and/or decode I could play around with.  Beta, even command
>>  line, is fine with me.
>
>Yeah, me too... ;-) OK, now seriously: you can buy the first publicly 
>available HE-AAC codec from Nero on July 18, 2003, because Ahead 
>Software will release it as a part of their new Nero 6 "application 
>suite" then.
>
>http://www.nero.com/
>
>>      Also, for AAC-LC, any thoughts as to what is the best encoder to
>>  show off the technology.  I've had good luck with Apple's in
>>  QuickTime 6.3 (much better than the one from 6.0), but if there are
>>  markedly better ones out there, I should try them as well.
>
>The Hydrogen Audio listening test at 128 kbps used CBR for all AAC 
>codecs in the test, so QuickTime 6.3 was benefitting from this 
>restriction of course (and won), but Nero AAC (the normal one without HE-
>AAC) should come close and/or even be better when it's allowed to use 
>its VBR presets like -streaming (averaging at ~128 kbps/stereo). A close 
>competitor to Nero was Sorenson's Squeeze 3.5 AAC codec which is equal 
>to the FhG professional version that doesn't have VBR or multichannel
>support, just like QuickTime.

I must confess to being a little confused.  We're a VBR codec 
naturally;  but we do try to track the requested data rate fairly 
closely.  Why that would give us an advantage, I am not sure...
-- 
David Singer
Apple Computer/QuickTime