Birbla

Discussion summary

FFmpeg 9.1 introduces a new AAC encoder, with users hopeful about improved quality and performance. Some express nostalgia for older encoders and discuss the relevance of AAC versus Opus.

What the discussion says

  • Users are optimistic about the new AAC encoder's potential improvements.
  • Some recall past issues with audio quality in FFmpeg encodings.
  • Debate on AAC's future relevance compared to Opus.
“Hopefully they see this - there's still time to edit the submission link.”
— defrost
“Last time I used ffmpeg to encode songs for my iPod nano they were broken.”
— functionmouse

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  • Hacker News
  • Older I get, more it seems it’s possible to ping pong between rewrites for good reasons (ex. here, metric maxes but I find it hard to believe VBR and not-48 kHz are silly things and not worth investing it)
    by refulgentis
  • It’s fascinating so much of this comes down to the developer’s own ears - disturbing and quite cool at the same time how subjective this is
    by JSR_FDED
  • This is truly a representative of the old internet: somebody codes up the best AAC encoder ever, and the first response comes from some admin, and it's some bickering about 48Khz vs 44Khz.
    by ant6n
  • I applaud a new/better FFMPEG AAC encoder, but there are two pretty massive caveats that are mentioned in the specifics that need to be called out:

    - CBR only

    - Only optimized for 48khz sampling

    Not being able to do quality-based variable bitrate encoding is a major gap, and since all of the CD audio in the world is at 44.1k sampling, that seems like a huge miss too.

    by pseudosavant
  • > The encoder was mainly optimized for 48Khz audio. Get over it. It's 2026, resampling is free, 48Khz is the standard. 44.1Khz will work, and so will 96Khz but use 48Khz if you want the best quality.

    Is 48kHz really the standard nowadays?

    by superzazu
  • >FFmpeg's AAC DEcoder is busted with regards to stereo PNS, and the bug may be in other AAC decoders too, so we work around it in the encoder. Since no other encoder used PNS, the bug was not found until now.

    I don't know what PNS is, but I bet this has been bothering someone's niche use-case for 20 years

    by HugoTea
  • Nice, I'm looking forward to seeing how this performs in practice. FFmpeg's previous AAC encoder produced poor quality output and often had irritating chirping artifacts, so I've always had to install Apple's Core Audio encoder on any computer I do video recording on to get decent sound. I've done A/B/X comparisons and found that a 320kbps MP3 sounds better than a 320kbps AAC encoded by FFmpeg, but about the same as a 256kbps AAC encoded by Core Audio. If installing Core Audio is no longer necessary, that'll be a huge improvement and people who use something like OBS to do screen recordings or streaming will get a massive sound quality boost the next time they update.
    by ndiddy
  • Man what a showcase for Opus this is.

    Don't get me wrong, this sort of thing is a valuable exercise and we are better off with better encoders for these older codecs. But look at the numbers for Opus on this benchmark. It simply blows all the AAC encoders out of the water even at 64 kbps.

    by cogman10

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