Hello,

NIN9 and me recently discussed about audio-codecs ...
he had some .ogg's - I do only have .mp3's and huh whats about .mp4's

Informations / Impressions
OK: one note for those who think MP4 great that must be ... NO!
1. mp3 is NOT MPEG 3 its MPEG 1 Layer 3 but thats very well known huh ?
2. so whats MP4 now ??? MPEG 1 layer 4 ? NO MP4 is just a "container" for the AAC Audio codec so the thing we are talking about is AAC OGG and MP3

I was reading some forum telling that AAC deserves the same quality at 96kb as mp3 at 128 sounds interesting huh ? OK that needs some testing

1. the base is an normal Audio CD
2. the original is a 16bit 44.100Hz PCM .wave file (accurate ripped) 26.4MB
3. now lets code ... sorted by size
- mp4@64kb 1.18MB --> clear difference to the original but not as bad as the 96kb mp3
- mp4@96kB 1.78 MB --> just as the original no hearable differenceto provide ultimate quality/size ratio
- mp3@96kB 1.79MB --> clear difference to the original not worth to keep
- ogg@128kb 2,33MB --> no difference to the original
- mp4@128kb 2,37MB --> no difference to original or 96kb MP4 or OGG@128, but to provide ultimate quality/size ratio
- mp3@128kb 2,39MB --> very close to original but less highs very little but noticable difference

That gives me the followin conclusions:
- .mp3 is out of date
- .ogg is a very nice and free MP3 replacement
- .aac/mp4 sets the new standard in quality and size for compressed music
- mp4@128kB deserves ultimate quality @ reasonable file size

and best of all MP4 can seamlessly replace MP3 since there is already full support by plugins for it ....
OK .... after lots of more testing and so on heres the result:

MP4 encoding Tutorial and Tools
1. get http://www.dbpoweramp.com to encode nearly ANY format to MP4
2. get our little package H E R E it's based on NERO's AAC engine with ENcoder CLI
Beta Phase ended should work like charm now!
2.1 install to get an easy to use GUI for batch encoding and maximum stability/quality
2.2 I recommend CBR @96kb (LC AAC)
- NIN9 would CRB @ 128kB (LC AAC)
- I do NOT recommend using VBR since the NERO encoder is not the best in choosing the right bitrate at time
3. now convert all the music you want to
4. get this great and free tool http://www.mp3tag.de to Tag your MP4 files for maximum pleasure
5. goto here and get the MP4 plugin for www.winamp.com
6. start winamp
7. goto preference choose MP4 plugin and set titel format to "%1 - %2" if you have set Tags
- in filetypes you can select MP4 or more types to associate with Winamp without doing that manually in windows

Additional Tools
x. for those with fullCDinOneMPx file ... mp3cue still works!!!
x. if you search for a supreme renaming tool go http://www.1-4a.com/rename/
EDIT: 02.01.2003
x. there is a way to split AAC files by time with WBIAS feat. BeSplit
or by a cue with CUE_Splitter feat. BeSplit
but remember BeSplit actually only supports AAC you have to transform your MP4 to AAC (without any quality loss). There is a dMC plugin to do this but just as the MP4 Plugin it does not work correctly ... I will investigate this and report back

report additions and any comment here !

happy coding ...
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