What's best MP3/AAC encoder for low bitrate stuff?

G

Guden Oden

Senior Member
Legend
I was thinking of getting a flashram card for my new phone and stick some music on it. As it isn't terribly important to me that the music is of CD quality when I'm on the move on buses, walking on trafficked streets etc, I thought I might instead aim to squeeze as many tunes as possible onto the card instead.

So which encoder should I use? Note, I absolutely detest command line crap, shit like that should have died in the early 80s... There absolutely has to be a GUI-enabled program that can do batch encoding/transcoding of existing 128kbit (or more) MP3s.

Also, is AAC anything to bother with, does it have any advantages, or is it just some DRM-laden invention the industry's trying to push on us?
 
AAC itself doesn't have any DRM. Its just a codec.

Personally, I wouldn't worry too much about squeezing your audio way down. Large SD cards are getting much cheaper by the day. You can get 2GB cards for <$100 easy.

That's quite a bit of music, even at 192Kbps.
 
For MP3 encoding, LAME is usually recommended. It is not a GUI application in its own right, but there appears to exist about a dozen or so GUI programs that can be used as frontends for it.

AAC is intended by the MPEG guys to be the successor of MP3, although it hasn't seem quite that level of popularity yet.
 
Don't bother with AAC, just use MP3. If you're running windows then just use WMP10 to rip CDs directly to MP3.
 
NANOTEC said:
Don't bother with AAC, just use MP3. If you're running windows then just use WMP10 to rip CDs directly to MP3.
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AFAIK that would limit bitrate to something like 64kbps unless you spit out cash for a encoder.

I personally use "Exact Audio Copy" + LAME, but I guess anything will work aslong as it uses a quality encoder like LAME
 
Npl said:
AFAIK that would limit bitrate to something like 64kbps unless you spit out cash for a encoder.

I personally use "Exact Audio Copy" + LAME, but I guess anything will work aslong as it uses a quality encoder like LAME
Click to expand...

Nope..I just installed a fresh copy of XP Pro and downloaded all service packs and WMP10 and it allows ripping CDs to MP3 up to 320kbps. It didn't cost me anything except the time to download the updates.
 
NANOTEC said:
Nope..I just installed a fresh copy of XP Pro and downloaded all service packs and WMP10 and it allows ripping CDs to MP3 up to 320kbps. It didn't cost me anything except the time to download the updates.
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Okay then, I`m sure it was crippled in earlier Versions
 
Npl said:
Okay then, I`m sure it was crippled in earlier Versions
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Yeah, in WMP9 it was crippled or non-existant. However, WMP 10 has a built in MP3 encoder (not sure what). However, it's not as flexible as encoders like LAME as you don't get as much control over bitrates and quality (for instance, no 160Kb option and no variable bit-rates).
 
EAC is my choice for CD rippers... For mp3 encoding the obvious choice is LAME. For AAC, Quicktime's so far IMO has been the best AAC encoder, but that doesn't work too well w/EAC (unless your want to code up a cmd-line tool to use QT's encoder). For a cmd-line tool for AAC to use w/EAC I'd go with FAAC. It's free, and recently it's gotten pretty decent in quality...

As far as usage goes, AAC actually does get quite a bit of usage outside of Apple's music service. It's the codec used for satellite radio (and probably HD radio when that ever get's off the ground in greater numbers), as well as the audio format for Japan's ISDB broadcasts...
 
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The MP3pro plugin for Nero is really good and user friendly.

With it, you can encode to MP3pro up to 96Kb/s (or use variable bitrate at similar bitrates) or regular MP3s up to 320KB/s

Super easy to use, put a CD in, checks the internet database (if trackinfo isn't stored on the CD itself), set quality and where you want to put the encode files.

Ripping a CD takes 2½ minutes. Quality is good, better than LAME.

It's $20. Biggest bummer is that it's a bitch to find on the Nero website.

Cheers
 
Not all MP3 players can decode MP3Pro though. If it cannot it'll fall back to the base MP3 encoding and discard the high frequency stuff from the MP3Pro encoding which will result in a worse sounding track than a track natively encoded to MP3 in the first place.
 
Yeah, MP3 Pro never really took off (probably because you had to pay for the encoders) so very few players bother to decode it.
 
i'll second archie and say that quicktime has been a perfect AAC encoder for me. i've been using AAC almost entirely for more than a year now, and these days i encode to mp3 only if i have to, i.e. i plan to use the file with mp3-only players. re application, i think AAC is one of mpeg4's official audio track formats.
 
Diplo said:
Yeah, in WMP9 it was crippled or non-existant. However, WMP 10 has a built in MP3 encoder (not sure what). However, it's not as flexible as encoders like LAME as you don't get as much control over bitrates and quality (for instance, no 160Kb option and no variable bit-rates).
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If you don't mind a little registry editing, you can customize the bitrates in WMP.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MediaPlayer\Settings\MP3Encoding
 
I use CDex and Lame.

Works well. Simple. Fast. Can run multiple instances if you have multiple drives and multiple CPUs.
 
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