rip to aacPlus?

[wifiguy]

Maybe it's not the best encoder in the world, but aacPlus sounds great to my not-golden ears. How about charging a license fee to dmC users who want to rip to aacPlus so that Coding Technologies gets their money fair & square and so that there aren't legal hassles like there were with dmC and Fraunhofer over MP3?

I've seen discussions in other forums about using Winamp's aacPlus encoder via a dbPowerAmp Generic CLI codec, but I don't think that's legal.

After paying a fee, dmC users could download a registered version with the aacPlus encoder as well as LAME MP3. Any possibility of making this happen?

Thanks for thinking about it,
wifiguy

[LtData]

Re: rip to aacPlus?

There is a plug-in to use Winamp's aacPlus encoder here: http://forum.dbpoweramp.com/showthread.php?t=7107

Do note that you need to have Winamp installed for this to work.

[wifiguy]

Re: rip to aacPlus?

Maybe it includes the Coding Technologies aacPlus logo, but I don't know if the plugin is above board. LAME is an MP3 work-alike that Fraunhofer apparently hasn't decided to challenge; at least not yet. So one can use the LAME encoder to rip to MP3s because Fraunhofer hasn't done anything about LAME so far.

Someone did some work to write enhaacplusenc.exe and enhaacplusdec.exe in the plugin you mention and it has a DLL from I don't know where. Since Coding Technologies normally charges money for an aacPlus codec, there may come a day when they challenge the plugin; hopefully not as nastily as the RIAA challenged Napster, Kazaa, etc.

dbPowerAmp was once free and now it's not, although the price is very reasonable. I think money had to be charged for dbPowerAmp because Fraunhofer didn't like MP3s being ripped for free. Exact Audio Copy is still getting away with not including LAME in the distribution package and not charging anything either. Who knows what's going on in Fraunhofer's minds as far as that goes?

I think there's a legal issue as far as aacPlus not being wrapped up in dbPowerAmp and that's what I'm hoping to see addressed.

wifiguy

[LtData]

Re: rip to aacPlus?

The aacPlus encoder I mentioned uses the aacPlus encoder included with Winamp. Also, since the encoder relies on Winamp being installed, I don't believe there would be a legal challenge. This is similar to how the Audible codec relies on other methods in order to read Audible files.

[Spoon]

Re: rip to aacPlus?

>So one can use the LAME encoder to rip to MP3s because Fraunhofer hasn't done anything about LAME so far.

We use Lame and pay Fraunhofer (well Thompson) their money, so Lame is legal if the company pays patent fees.

[wifiguy]

Re: rip to aacPlus?

Very glad to hear from Spoon about this!!

Since money is paid by dbPowerAmp folks for MP3 encoding, can money be paid for aacPlus encoding? That's all I was hoping to hear about when I posted my original query.

If dbPowerAmp pays for aacPlus and charges for it in some future release, it'll be legal, right? I was trying to ask if this will be considered for some future release of dbPowerAmp.

Thanks,
wifiguy

[Spoon]

Re: rip to aacPlus?

We will be offering an aac+ license in the next 2-6 months.

[wifiguy]

Re: rip to aacPlus?

MOST EXCELLENT! :smile2: I'll gladly buy it! Hopefully Spoon posted this on April 1st only by coincidence.

wifiguy

[Spoon]

Re: rip to aacPlus?

It wasn't an April fool