aacPlus in iTunes

[SallyCinnamon]

Apologies if this question has already been asked somewhere, but I can't seem to get the aacPlus stream to play in my iTunes on a Mac or a PC.

Am I missing something? The stream downloads into iTunes, but when I click on the Play button, nothing happens.

Any suggestions?

[5-4=UNITY]

Yeah, it doesn't work in iTunes, unfortunately. :(

[SallyCinnamon]

That's what I figured. Funny -- you can import CDs in AAC format in iTunes, but you can't play an AAC stream.

What players play the AAC stream? Winamp and what else?

[specialk]

They do a pretty good job explaining everything in there:

http://www.woxy.com/help/

[The Sheck]

That's what I figured. Funny -- you can import CDs in AAC format in iTunes, but you can't play an AAC stream.

What players play the AAC stream? Winamp and what else?

VLC Player. Get it now though, it's going to be yanked due to copyright violations sometime soon.

Nice to see another MN on the boards, too. :)

[SallyCinnamon]

Nice to see another MN on the boards, too. :)

I remember you, The Sheck -- I was on the boards in another life as Doll Face. Just found out today that 97X is back on the Web waves -- I've been out of it for some time. :)

[The Sheck]

I remember you, The Sheck -- I was on the boards in another life as Doll Face. Just found out today that 97X is back on the Web waves -- I've been out of it for some time. :)

Well, welcome back! :)

[jonbonjela]

aac plays flawlessly on winamp(the free version)and it is brilliant!

[akip]

aac plays flawlessly on winamp(the free version)and it is brilliant!

is there any way to get a display of track names? i'm not on this site continually, although it must seem that way. i do do a few other things, esp once i start my upcoming p/t research job.

[Buzzstein]

is there any way to get a display of track names? i'm not on this site continually, although it must seem that way. i do do a few other things, esp once i start my upcoming p/t research job.

not yet, but Bryan will add that eventually.

[Neil]

is there any way to get a display of track names? i'm not on this site continually, although it must seem that way. i do do a few other things, esp once i start my upcoming p/t research job.

You can just run the mini-playlist window. The link for it is labelled "mini Playlist" and it's on the bottom right corner of the playlist on every page. It's fairly up to date, usually about a minute or two behind in updating new songs.

[the happy prole]

Heeheehee. Hey Sheck, remember when Apple made that big announcement about their new support for "near cd-quality" aac at 48 kbps and I said it was bullshit?

What Apple was trying to unveil would likely have been their version of aacplus, which was already out. Now seven or eight months later, Apple *still* hasn't released their new lowbitrate aacplus-compatible codec. In the meantime winamp supports it and despite being no longer in active development.

Although I don't really think aacplus is all it's cracked up to be anyway.

[akip]

thanks, neil & buzz. i used to use the mini playlist before the redesign, but just didn't pick up on it afterwards till it was just now pointed out to me. duh.

[Buzzstein]

Although I don't really think aacplus is all it's cracked up to be anyway.

why?......

[the happy prole]

I just think the sound quality is overblown. I just don't think the average person with average room acoustics and average equipment really sees that much of a difference. For people who are extremely sensitive about music, they'll have $200 cans or perfectly placed $500 speakers and a $180 soundcard instead of the one that came with your stereo. And probably extra DSP software. And yeah, at that level it creates a small but noticeable difference, but that's not most people.

Personally, I cannot tell the difference in clarity between a regular cd and super weighted vinyl on a $1000 turntable and 24k cd. DVD I can hear a difference because the spatial separation but I don't care that much. It's not that I'm casual, because there are many mixes I think sound like absolute crap (Highwater Marks or Forget Cassettes for example). But you can't polish a turd. If the mix is good, the wee bit of distortion doesn't affect my enjoyment at all because I'm listening to other things and not focusing on it. If the mix is crap, I don't care how crystal clear the trumpet sounds when the trumpet is too damn loud in the first place.

The bandwidth savings are real, though. If aacplus sounds the same as mp3 at 2/3 the kpbs then that's significant advantage. I kinda look like aacplus as getting fastfood for cheaper. Nothing to complain about and I'll take it, but it's not like you're getting surf and turf for fast-food prices.

[shivvy]

If you can't hear the difference between the 64k MP3 stream and the 48k aacPlus stream then you may need new ears. I can't BELEIVE how incredible sounds and I am not particularly technical.

At home I hook my laptop up to my home stereo and the improved sound quality of the aacPlus stream was staggering to me. It delivers much sharper fidelity to my ears, not to mention a clear stereo stream.

The bandwidth savings is a nice added bonus, but honestly we're all just thrilled to be able to offer a higher quality listening experience that we can afford. We would NOT be able to offer a 128k MP3 stream for free due to the amount of money it would cost us. This is like the best of both worlds for us (and I would hope the listener!).

[markalot]

I just think the sound quality is overblown.

The problem has to be in your set. I'm sitting here in from of my computer enjoying full clear stereo sound via my portable stereo I have hooked up to the computer. The MP3 or WMA stream could not come close. To me it sounds better than the 128K stereo mp3 stream that was offered just before 97X went off the air. I can't hear ANY artifacts, and at 48K thats amazing IMO.

[the happy prole]

I notice the stereo, without a doubt. It is quite awesome and I'm very much excited hoping WOXY can get around my little firewall problem.

The stereo feed kicks the crap out of mono and that is because .aac lets you get the same quality at much less bandwidth. Where I disagree is the 48 kbps aacplus vs. 128kbps .mp3 stereo or even 128 aacplus vs. 128 .mp3. That's just my subjective listening experience. Although yeah, my cheapass $120 speaker set and years of practicing too loud in too small of a practice space probably hurt.

But math bears it out as well. The sampling frequency is the sampling frequency. If you sample at a certain kbps per second you will lose the high frequencies because your rate isn't fast enough. And that's true whether you use .mp3 or .aac. It's gone, it's lost data and it cannot be reproduced with 100% accuracy.

The only difference between .aacplus and .mp3 is that .aacplus adds a mathematical algorithm to try to guess at the information being lost. At under a 64kbps sampling rate in .mp3 you will start hear artifacts. But at 64kbps you've got nearly all of what you need to capture. In generic rock music there's really not all that much happening in the upper octave frequency range anyway. And what little is happening up there occurs so rarely that it isn't predictable and can't be accurately modeled using .aacplus's algorithm.

You get better quality at lesser bandwidth at low bandwidths. But above a certain sampling rate, .aac offers no advantage at all because.

[jccalhoun]

yes 48 kb aac+ is not as good as 128 mp3. Even without taking stereo into account, the difference between 64kb mp3 and the 48 aac+ is distinct. I've not heard a 128 aac+ stream yet, so I can't say if I can hear the difference.

[the happy prole]

The only difference between 64kbps and 128 kpbs is stereo. It's the same coding algorithm at the same sampling rate. At 128kbps you are sampling the left and right channels separately, thus the doubling of the bandwidth. If you were to go back and sample some old Phil Spector stuff at 64 kbps and 128 kbps it should sound exactly the same.

It's kinda difficult to quantify the stereo effect but since most modern stuff is mixed for stereo it just sounds kinda off in mono.

The difference between mp3 and aacplus I think would depend on the particular song and the mix. With each channel being sampled at a higher rate, 128 kbps mp3 doesn't have as many the blanks to fill in. While aacplus has a lot more blanks, it actually takes an educated guess at what's missing whereas 128 kbps does not.

At a high enough sampling rate, you don't need to guess very much so aacplus adds very little. At low sampling rates, you need to guess a ton and aacplus probably has a huge advantage.

I've listened to both the 64 aacplus and 128 mp3 on Somafm and discovered that .mp3 seems to sound more trebly. After messing with my equalizer settings a bit, I couldn't tell a difference.

[The Sheck]

Heeheehee. Hey Sheck, remember when Apple made that big announcement about their new support for "near cd-quality" aac at 48 kbps and I said it was bullshit?

What Apple was trying to unveil would likely have been their version of aacplus, which was already out. Now seven or eight months later, Apple *still* hasn't released their new lowbitrate aacplus-compatible codec. In the meantime winamp supports it.

I noticed the new version of Quicktime (being released next week) doesn't have .aacplus encoding yet. *sigh*. At least there's VLC Player (for now).

[markalot]

But math bears it out as well. The sampling frequency is the sampling frequency. If you sample at a certain kbps per second you will lose the high frequencies because your rate isn't fast enough. And that's true whether you use .mp3 or .aac. It's gone, it's lost data and it cannot be reproduced with 100% accuracy.

The only difference between .aacplus and .mp3 is that .aacplus adds a mathematical algorithm to try to guess at the information being lost. At under a 64kbps sampling rate in .mp3 you will start hear artifacts. But at 64kbps you've got nearly all of what you need to capture. In generic rock music there's really not all that much happening in the upper octave frequency range anyway. And what little is happening up there occurs so rarely that it isn't predictable and can't be accurately modeled using .aacplus's algorithm.

You get better quality at lesser bandwidth at low bandwidths. But above a certain sampling rate, .aac offers no advantage at all because.


I don't agree. MP3 is an old standard, and is not very effecient. Yes, 192K + mp3 is better then AAC at 48K, but at 128K your pretty much at the whim of then encoder and how up to date the algorithim is. Do they use L.A.M.E. or do they use frauhhofer (can't spell it?). Just look at the improvements LAME made compared to the original encoders.

But of course it's subjective, that's the entire point of the algorithim. My ears hear clear cymbals where even with mp3 at 128K I hear swishy cymbals. I have rips of the mp3 128K stream and I can immediatly hear that it's mp3. Unfortunatley I know what mp3 artifacts sound like and so I can pick it up every time (128 and below anyway).

IMO

LAME 128K ?= AAC 48K
AAC 48K > LAME at any bitrate less than 128K
LAME 160K+ > AAC

[eric]

What Apple was trying to unveil would likely have been their version of aacplus, which was already out. Now seven or eight months later, Apple *still* hasn't released their new lowbitrate aacplus-compatible codec. In the meantime winamp supports it and despite being no longer in active development.

unless these builds the beta team has been testing out for the past couple of months were all an elaborate ruse, it's still being developed. the guy who added aac+ support is even heading the team.

[the happy prole]

I dunno about the overall sound like clarity of cymbals and whatnot but I do agree with you that even at 128kbps, regular .mp3 will every once in a while leave some weird artifacts. The additional SBR processing (aka the "plus" in aac plus) defintely seems to smooth or outright eliminate those artifacts. I have found this to be true with .mp3pro (mp3pro is to mp3 as aacplus is to aac) as well.

As for whether .aac is better than .mp3, I don't hear a difference. And I don't think the supergeeks with the crazy audio equipment have conclusively shown that one or the other is better. However, there does seem to be a consensus that the core .aac coding algorithm is better than .mp3. Once they tweak and refine .aac (in the same way LAME was an improvement upon original .mp3) it will probably be better.

I think the audio engineers pretty much given on to .mp3 and are moving on to .aac and other algorithms, even if most users have not.

I have no doubt Apple is still working on aacplus and they will probably come out with aacplus support for iTunes pretty soon. I'm guessing that they are grappling with the DRM issues. Otherwise I can't imagine what the holdup would be.

[vivalamusica]

For some of us, the bandwidth is the major consideration. If you're stuck on a dialup connection, it's not a choice between 24kbps AACplus and 128Mbps (or even 64kbps) MP3. It's a choice between 24kbps MP3, which sounds like a rough approximation of the original song playing from a clock radio under a blanket, or the AACplus streams, which sound surprisingly good. When the higher bitrate streams are out of the question, AACplus is a godsend.

[skytrack]

As for whether .aac is better than .mp3, I don't hear a difference. And I don't think the supergeeks with the crazy audio equipment have conclusively shown that one or the other is better. However, there does seem to be a consensus that the core .aac coding algorithm is better than .mp3. Once they tweak and refine .aac (in the same way LAME was an improvement upon original .mp3) it will probably be better.

I think the audio engineers pretty much given on to .mp3 and are moving on to .aac and other algorithms, even if most users have not.

AAC is superior to mp3 in almost every way, and yes, most audio engineers have pretty much given up on mp3 and moved onto AAC. LAME is great, but not enough to beat AAC. The following two links I am posting are scientific public listening tests that show aac's superiority to mp3.

128k Listening Test (http://www.rjamorim.com/test/multiformat128/results.html)
Which is the best AAC encoder? (http://www.rjamorim.com/test/aac128v2/results.html)

[the happy prole]

Wha?

"Overall Ratings: The results for each sample were grouped together, without modifications.

Then I performed an ANOVA analysis. The results are graphed below. Vorbis aoTuV is tied to Musepack at first place, Lame MP3 is tied to iTunes AAC at second place, WMA Standard is in third place and Atrac3 gets last place."

[skytrack]

What I was trying to show in the last test was that if you actually look at the graphs, AAC does beat LAME overall. Not by much, no, but it does. Keep in mind that AAC is quite young by most standards while LAME is mature. But, since this is a discussion about aacPlus, take a look at the following listening test. You will see that aacPlus knocks the socks off of LAME in low-bitrate applications, such as streaming internet radio. MP3Pro (which is quite similar to aacPlus) is the only real competitor.

32k Streaming Test (http://www.rjamorim.com/test/32kbps/results.html)

[The Sheck]

I'd heard rumors of this being true, but wasn't able to verify until now. Apparently, some songs in the itunes store are encoded at a higher rate than others. Here's a screenshot (http://www.macrumors.com/downloads/dancer_itunes.gif) of one such song: 'Rhythm Is A Dancer (2004 Mix)' by Snap. Note the encoding rate, which is 290 kbps (!!!) and the encoder used, which is something called FAAC 1.24+ (May 7, 200...). The record labels normally use something called itunes producer, which automatically encodes tracks to the standard 128 kbps you see at the store. So it looks like there is an .aac plus program Apple is using, with incredible coding. A 290 kbps .aacplus file comes in at just over 8 MBs.

There is no way to tell whether a song has a higher bit rate before you purchase it (for now). Also, this may just be an anomaly.

[skytrack]

I'd heard rumors of this being true, but wasn't able to verify until now. Apparently, some songs in the itunes store are encoded at a higher rate than others. Here's a screenshot (http://www.macrumors.com/downloads/dancer_itunes.gif) of one such song: 'Rhythm Is A Dancer (2004 Mix)' by Snap. Note the encoding rate, which is 290 kbps (!!!) and the encoder used, which is something called FAAC 1.24+ (May 7, 200...). The record labels normally use something called itunes producer, which automatically encodes tracks to the standard 128 kbps you see at the store. So it looks like there is an .aac plus program Apple is using, with incredible coding. A 290 kbps .aacplus file comes in at just over 8 MBs.

There is no way to tell whether a song has a higher bit rate before you purchase it (for now). Also, this may just be an anomaly.

As you suggested, this is probably just an anomaly. Also, while the bitrate on this song is very high, it is still a low-complexity AAC file, meaning it IS NOT encoded in aacPlus or high efficiency AAC.