m4a Codec Beta (AAC and Apple Lossless)

[Spoon]

For R12.

<now released>

NB Album Art + bug fix for Apple Lossless ad Sonos will appear in next beta.

[hanschke]

will there be a full r12 release with all codecs in the setup as well?

[LtData]

If you mean will there be an installer that has every codec, no. The only installer that comes with codecs is Reference, and even it doesn't come with everything.

[TarkusShakti]

will this be the thread to watch for announcements regarding updates to the AAC codec?

[Spoon]

Yes.

[Spoon]

Update 9th February

Same download link as before.

Now includes Apple Lossless encoder,
Nero AAC correct labels under bitrate scale (existing users please reselect desired bitrate / quality).

Album art has slipped from this release (basically we will have to trash our tag reader & writer and rewrite from scratch).

[Ron F.]

I followed the directions and have the encoder neroAacEnc.exe in the correct location, but when I attempt to convert a file to AAC, I get the following error message, as an example:

Error converting to m4a Nero (AAC), 'C:\Music\Messiah - Linn Records Studio Master - 44.1 KHz 16 bit WAV\45 - Chorus Hallelujah.wav' to 'C:\Music\Messiah - Linn Records Studio Master - AAC\45 - Chorus Hallelujah.m4a'
Error writing audio data to StdIn Pipe [clEncoder::EncodeBlock]


I have the txt and bitmap image files too. I am runing Win 2K.

Conversion to Apple Lossless format works fine however.
Any suggestions?

-Ron

[Ron F.]

I am sorry, I am running Win XP. I have not tried the AAC codec on my Win 2K machine yet.

-Ron

[LtData]

Your WAV file is a 44.1KHz 16-bit WAV? How many channels is it, stereo or mono?

[Ron F.]

It is a stereo WAV file.

It converted to flac, mp3, and Apple Lossless without any trouble.

Thank you for your assistance,
Ron

[Deano]

Hey Spoon,

I believe I have found a bit of a bug with your Beta Codec.

Converting from FLAC to AAC appeared to work smoothly and created the correct number of files in my test directory (using a VBR quality setting of .55 with no forced profile).

Files are created and dBpowerAMP correctly reads the tags and also seems to have copied the totaltracks and totaldiscs information correctly.

However, opening these files in Foobar2000 it does not accurately find *any* tags at all on these files (it does, however, play the files back perfectly).

Are you not writing standard tags? In 11.5 all the test AAC (.m4a) files dBpowerAMP created worked properly in Foobar2000 in regard to tagging. What's changed?

[Spoon]

Total tracks was not in 11.5, try the files in iTunes, those tags should be read fine.

[Spoon]

RonF, what bitdepth is the wave file? is it PCM or compressed wave?

[Deano]

Total tracks was not in 11.5, try the files in iTunes, those tags should be read fine.

I don't have iTunes and nor do I want to install that piece of (putting it politely) ugly bloatware.

I would prefer if you'd make the tags work in everything, not just iTunes.

[Ron F.]

RonF, what bitdepth is the wave file? is it PCM or compressed wave?

These files are 44.1 KHz - 16 bit stereo WAV. I believe it is PCM and not compressed. I did not know I could generate a compressed WAV.

It started as a download from the Linn Records website as an 88.2 KHz 24 bit WMA file, which I first converted to 44.1 KHz - 16 bit WAV using dBpowerAMP, and now I am trying to convert to AAC to load onto an iPod - and got stuck in the process.

-Ron