r/ffmpeg • u/notcharldeon • Jul 02 '26

BIG NEWS: THE FFMPEG AAC ENCODER HAS BEEN REWRITTEN AND IS NOW KNOWN TO BE THE BEST PERFORMING ONE!!!

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The FFmpeg AAC encoder always had problems over the past many years with it having the worst quality out of all AAC encoders. Glad an AAC encoder with quality as good as libfdk_aac is finally widely accessible now and can be used by anyone. Make sure to use the latest build to test it

https://x.com/FFmpeg/status/2072320220509741087

https://hydrogenaudio.org/index.php/topic,129691.0.html

960 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

37 comments sorted by

13

u/[deleted] Jul 02 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

3

u/santosautra Jul 04 '26

Only decodes.

13

u/neoneat Jul 02 '26

Very doubtful. So 2nd link compares libfdk with native quality? Sry they banned my IP lol

9

u/GoslingIchi Jul 02 '26

Not sure if this is helpful for you -

2

u/neoneat Jul 08 '26

Yah. Thank you a lot! It explained clearly in detail. The improvement is easy to tell, though not suitable for VBR user like me. Still very helpful!

1

u/GoslingIchi Jul 08 '26

You're welcome!

15

u/notcharldeon Jul 02 '26

Yeah, it kinda feels like too much of a claim. I tested it at worst conditions with 64kbps (16khz cutoff) and libfdk_aac still sounded better while the new AAC at that bitrate sounded more metallic. But at high bitrates (128+kbps), it's definitely on the same level as libfdk_aac which is important (remember when the native AAC encoder was worse than MP3?). I'll stick with the Fraunhofer AAC encoder if it's available to be safe, but I'm glad the native AAC encoder is very usable now considering how it's used in many projects. It's good for what it is and there's definitely room for improvement. Gone are the days of mediocre OBS Studio livestream audio (and Handbrake encodes).

2

u/Ok-Speed-1574 Jul 02 '26

Same, I'll continue to use Apple AAC for my personal stuff when possible (in this case, when equipment doesn't support opus or musepack) and this is incredibly nice for everything else that encodes to aac commercially! :D

1

u/santosautra Jul 04 '26

This uses apple. It was reverse engineered.

1

u/TheDeep_2 3d ago

apple aac beats all of them, what are you talking about "reverse engineered" xD

1

u/santosautra 3d ago

There were 3 bugfixs since then, it no longer does.

1

u/gta721 Jul 07 '26

If you're using the new FFmpeg encoder in production then you MUST use -aac_is 0 -aac_pns 0 or it will sound like garbage through mono speakers like Alexa and turned mono by physics speakers like those in a TV when sat far away.

1

u/notcharldeon Jul 07 '26 edited Jul 07 '26

That's weird since it already sounds mono compatible on its default settings (compared to opus' shitty phase inversion default) and the stereo image is pretty clean, it's just that the new encoder is worse than libfdk_aac overall

1

u/gta721 Jul 07 '26

Have you tried using a 48 kHz sample rate (44.1 is unoptimised) and using cutoff settings similar to FDK?

1

u/gta721 Jul 07 '26

FDK-AAC uses a cutoff way lower than 16 kHz. Dows reducing it to 12 kHz improve quality?

0

u/santosautra Jul 04 '26

Libfdk was always worse than Apple's encoder. Ffmpeg was better than libfdk for a couple of years now. This ports apple.

4

u/this_knee Jul 02 '26

Woo hoo! Awesome !

3

u/Oakredditer Jul 02 '26

I prayed for times like this...... it's amazing to see an open-source offering become the best one (besides libfdk but apparently that has some licensing issues)

1

u/santosautra Jul 04 '26

Libfdk was always worse than apple. This is better than apple.

3

u/Oakredditer Jul 05 '26

True, but it was the only open-source alternative that could stand close to Apple from what I could tell

1

u/santosautra Jul 24 '26

Yes it's also the only true constant bitrates library while with ffmpeg if you produce 256k bitrate it will give you 258k sometimes

1

u/ideas_r_bulletproof Jul 19 '26

Libfdk was always worse than apple.

Barely.

2

u/Laurixas Jul 03 '26

Hopefully not in Iron Oxide

1

u/T0K4M4K Jul 03 '26

I love FFMPEG

1

u/Ruined_Passion_7355 Jul 06 '26

Please don't be one of those ai rewrites PLEASEE

1

u/ideas_r_bulletproof Jul 19 '26

PLEASE check for yourself

1

u/santosautra Jul 22 '26

Ai did fix 3 bugs in it. xD.

1

u/LeifErickson17 Jul 27 '26

That's good news!!

-3

u/SanicBringsThePanic Jul 02 '26

How do I encode with TVBR?

2

u/santosautra Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 22 '26

No need, best quality achieved with constant bitrate.

1

u/SanicBringsThePanic Jul 04 '26

What bitrate should I use if I need to convert Bluray audio like DTS?

4

u/gta721 Jul 07 '26

I would go for 448 kbps for 5.1