A few questions before I transcode my entire flac collection to aac

[EliC]

Re: A few questions before I transcode my entire flac collection to aac

Hi,
1. My first question is whether I should select VBR or CBR and what other options I should select.

I would appreciate feedback here as well. My ipods gen 3&4, have had problems with VBR lame MP3 files. Is this problem present with aac files? What about nero aac files?

I want to end up with files for the iPod at about 224 kb/s in terms of file size and sound quality.

JMHO, but probably alot higher bitrate then you need, especially sine you have the flac backup. Do some ABX testing, check out the listening test on hydrogenaudio, or just listen to a few yourself. I find ~128 VBR to be more then enough for me.

2. Unfortunately it is not stated explicitly in the other thread what options or buttons I should click on within the volume normalize DSP to do this - there is a choice for ReplayGain within the volume normalize DSP but there is also a post saying the DSP help file says this choice does NOT use tags and instead physically changes the file.

Normally replay gain values are stored as tags, but in this case the replay gain values will be used to set volume normalization level which will permanently change the new transcoded song (your original flac file is still lossess)

[LtData]

Re: A few questions before I transcode my entire flac collection to aac

Personally, my iPod plays Nero VBR AAC files just fine. Also, I believe VBR AAC files have never had problems on iPods, though I might be mistaken.

As for Nero AAC files, they are no different than iPod-made AAC files and should behave the same.

[EliC]

Re: A few questions before I transcode my entire flac collection to aac

Also, I believe VBR AAC files have never had problems on iPods, though I might be mistaken.

I didnt mean to imply that they had. But they do have some problems with VBR MP3 files and I wasnt sure if this extened to VBR aac, especially since apple did not have VBR aac encoding for some time (though they had ABR)

As for Nero AAC files, they are no different than iPod-made AAC files and should behave the same.

Well, they have different psychoacoustic models, different allocations of bitrate, ect that may result in some different processing...

[bontakun88]

Re: A few questions before I transcode my entire flac collection to aac

I'm converting audio files in flac to aac and I use the Volume Normalize with ReplayGain option but I would like to increase the volume of the audio files.
I didn't understand the option Maximum Amplification and the connection of this with Desired Volume. Can someone explain me these options, please?

[LtData]

Re: A few questions before I transcode my entire flac collection to aac

Did you read the DSP help file first, to see if that helped any?

[bontakun88]

Re: A few questions before I transcode my entire flac collection to aac

Did you read the DSP help file first, to see if that helped any?

Yes, but I can't understand how to use them. I saw setting in desired volume a value higher than 0 the volume increase but I didn't understand what is maximum amplification

[Spoon]

Re: A few questions before I transcode my entire flac collection to aac

Set to use ReplayGain and leave the scale on the right on the default (right at the top).

[bontakun88]

Re: A few questions before I transcode my entire flac collection to aac

Set to use ReplayGain and leave the scale on the right on the default (right at the top).

yes, this is already done but I would to increase the volume

[Spoon]

Re: A few questions before I transcode my entire flac collection to aac

Then you will induce clipping where your audio goes over maximum scale (which is not good).

[bontakun88]

Re: A few questions before I transcode my entire flac collection to aac

Then you will induce clipping where your audio goes over maximum scale (which is not good).

Yes, I have seen. I'm thinking how do. I'm converting the songs with replay gain which normalizes at 89db but for my ipod it looks a little low.
I would to know what Maximum amplification is so it could me be useful.

[Spoon]

Re: A few questions before I transcode my entire flac collection to aac

ReplayGain slightly quietens most tracks, it needs to do this for the quiet tracks which really need 'boosting', so they would not clip.