Nero AAC Encoder/Decoder support [#1391]

[MikeCerm]

MediaMonkey needs to support Nero's AAC codec. The current AAC plug-in is simply not good. It's barely better than LAME, which makes the incredibly-high $10 price hard to swallow. Whether as a benefit for Gold users, or in the form of a commecial plug-in (as a replacement for the current AAC encoder), the superior Nero AAC codec should be supported.

From a licensing perspective, it could probably be offered free of cost to users who download a MM plug-in that connects to executables that Nero provides. Many other software packages do things this way, and Nero doesn't seem to have a problem with it. However, if MediaMonkey's current AAC plug-in sells for $10, and they want to continue the weird cash-grab, there's no reason that it couldn't be licensed from Nero, packaged, and sold like the current plug-in. It would just have the benefit of being higher-quality.

However, cost is not the main issue. Whatever the cost, use of Nero's AAC codec needs to be an option. Most newer portable devices, even non-iPods, support AAC playback. On-the-fly conversion is a key stand-out feature for MediaMonkey, and the ability to encode to AAC would allow people to fit a lot more music onto their portables than MP3. However, the current AAC plug-in eliminates this benefit by being poor quality.

I think that the price is too high for 99% of people, but I want AAC conversion enough that I'd personally be willing to spend $10 for it, if it were the Nero version (including HE- and HE-v2). At least give me the option.

[skinfreak]

Hear hear! The NERO codec is free and obviously an excellent implementation. This should be a no brainer.

[Peke]

Support for additional/external encoders is on our To-Do See http://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=1391

I'll rise it in To-Do for priority revision. THX for pointing.

[MikeCerm]

Support for additional/external encoders is on our To-Do See http://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=1391

I'll rise it in To-Do for priority revision. THX for pointing.

The previous comments in that thread are extremely old, so I won't hold my breath for implementation of external encoders.

However, I would just like to reiterate my point, and differentiate it from the other formats mentioned in that thread. APE and MPE are basically useless. There is no hardware support for either format, period. For lossless audio/archival purposes, WMA-Lossless and FLAC are already available in MediaMonkey, and have better hardware and software support across the board than APE. There's really no reason that anyone should be using APE for anything. Same with MPC; no hardware support, no archival purpose (use lossless for that), and for high-bitrate lossy compression, LAME, Ogg, and AAC are all more-broadly supported, and virtually indistinguishable from MPC these days.

So, I don't think it's fair to lump AAC support in with these other dead formats. AAC, like MP3, has native support on both Windows (as of Windows 7) and Mac. It's the only modern codec (that is, post-MP3) supported on virtually every portable music player (iPods, newer Creative Zens, Zune) and every modern smartphone. It's also really useful, because at the bitrates that people are likely to use on portable players (~128Kbps), it's noticeably higher-quality than MP3. That is, if you use the Nero encoder, and not FAAC.

So, once again, I would just like to register my desire for proper implementation of the Nero AAC encoder. Such a prominent and widely-supported format should not be relegated to "Other External Encoder" status, it should be given the same treatment as MP3. That said, if the external encoder option is more likely to be implemented, I'll take what I can get.

[AlexV]

Why is it that every free music player can play AAC fine but with MediaMonkey I need to install QuickTime. This just sucks !

[Peke]

You gave question and the answer in same question. "... free ..." MediaMonkey is proprietary license which means that you need to pay fee per each user that uses your audio decoder for specific format. Believe it or not for each registered MediaMonkey GOLD user we pay royalties for MP3 Encoder. With AAC it is both that we need to pay and as we do not want to rise MM license price it is sold separately for those that want that along with encoding ability.

Re QuickTime: There is always not bloated version of QT Lite that includes only needed stuff. http://www.free-codecs.net/download/Qui ... native.htm that work for all apple audio/video formats playback.

[ZvezdanD]

You gave question and the answer in same question. "... free ..."

WinAmp (free edition) and foobar2000 are free as well, but could play AAC files, not to mention The KMPlayer, VLC and many others that are mostly video players and all of them are free.

By the way, I give my vote for support for external encoders. I still use foobar2000 for conversion because of that. Nero AAC codec is the best and really should be supported. However, I cannot agree with OP about APE audio format. I am still using it, it has the best compression ratio (much better than FLAC or WMA-lossless) and it is supported in many mp3 players, especially Chinese and Korean.

[trixmoto]

I think Peke's point is that free players will work, so listing more that work is only supporting his argument!

I personally would not like MM's price to rise to pay for AAC included, as I don't need it.

[ZvezdanD]

I think Peke's point is that free players will work, so listing more that work is only supporting his argument!

I am sorry, but I really don't understand what you are saying. MM standard is free as it is WinAmp non-Pro edition. What is a difference in licensing between these two programs? Why MM could not have same AAC license as WinAmp? How WinAmp and many other free players could play AAC files without your need to pay for it?

I personally would not like MM's price to rise to pay for AAC included, as I don't need it.

Well, I am personally not using MM as a player, so I don't care about its AAC politics at all, but I think that many of its potential users are discouraged because of that.

[Lowlander]

I understood that due to MediaMonkey having a proprietary license it is not allowed to offer AAC decoding for free. This is the same issue with the lame MP3 encoder. It's limited to 30 days in the free version due to licensing issues. I'm not sure how WinAmp does it, maybe it has deep pockets supporting the AAC fees, especially as many players have big corporations behind them or are open source. Maybe it would be allowed in the free MediaMonkey, but would add too much cost to the paid version. Thus no one get's it (it would be strange that getting a paid version would result in reduced functionality).

Also the fact that others offer features doesn't necessarily mean that they do so legally.

[ZvezdanD]

I understood that due to MediaMonkey having a proprietary license it is not allowed to offer AAC encoding for free.

We are not talking about free AAC encoding, but playing.

[Lowlander]

The point still remains the same though.

[ZvezdanD]

The point still remains the same though.

It is not the same. Encoder's licenses are totally different than decoder's.

[Lowlander]

I know, but the point I made still remains the same, even if I got the encoder mixed up with decoder.

[ZvezdanD]

Well, as I said, I don't care if MM could play AAC files or not, but it seems you missed my point. There are many potential, first-time users who are not interested about some explanations about licensing. They just could try MM and it would not play something which other programs could play without any problem for free. Guess which program they would choose in that case.