[M4IF Technotes] Looking for HE AAC test software / AAC-LC

[Hans-Juergen Bardenhagen]

Hi Ben,
>     As part of my occasional codec shootout projects, I'm now looking
> at doing some tests with HE AAC encoding.  Anyone have a HE AAC
> encoder and/or decode I could play around with.  Beta, even command
> line, is fine with me.

Yeah, me too... ;-) OK, now seriously: you can buy the first publicly  
available HE-AAC codec from Nero on July 18, 2003, because Ahead  
Software will release it as a part of their new Nero 6 "application  
suite" then.
http://www.nero.com/
>     Also, for AAC-LC, any thoughts as to what is the best encoder to
> show off the technology.  I've had good luck with Apple's in
> QuickTime 6.3 (much better than the one from 6.0), but if there are
> markedly better ones out there, I should try them as well.

The Hydrogen Audio listening test at 128 kbps used CBR for all AAC  
codecs in the test, so QuickTime 6.3 was benefitting from this  
restriction of course (and won), but Nero AAC (the normal one without HE- 
AAC) should come close and/or even be better when it's allowed to use  
its VBR presets like -streaming (averaging at ~128 kbps/stereo). A close  
competitor to Nero was Sorenson's Squeeze 3.5 AAC codec which is equal  
to the FhG professional version that doesn't have VBR or multichannel  
support, just like QuickTime.
ZZee ya, Hans-Jürgen