im looking for a free, automated encoder for aac to mp3

[jamesish]

or any other format that sk jukebox will play =)

most of my music is in aac, and i dont want to re rip it to mp3.


any ideas?

[reptilehead]

http://www.dbpoweramp.com/dmc.htm

 It's not FREE, 14 bucks if you go beyond the 30 day trial, has tons of codecs to plug in, I personally bought it, becuase for me it was worth it.
 Do a search for everything aac, highlight it, right click drop down to convert and walk away.
 In the case of a larger collection.... don't come back for a few hours.... or days... maybe weeks...
 I converted my collection to aac once for the ipod, yeah never again... if it dont accept mp3, ogg and wma I wont bother with it. I started it on a saturday, and sunday afternoon it was finally ready using the ipod software. Thankfully I had my backup usb harddrive so i just wiped the internal HDD clean and put it all back the right way after I loaded everything into the ipod.

[Barry Barcrest]

Or use the disc writter plugin in for winamp and use the AAC decoder. It's clunky but it works sort of and it's free.

[Space Fractal]

Remember:

When you convert ACC to MP3, the quality can been bad, because it have uncompressed from aac, and then compressed it again (the same thing, when you compress jpg files twice). This is one of bad thing about loosy systems.

Otherwice both have right.

[jamesish]

then would i be better off re ripping everything? ><

im no audiophile, but its for a jukebox, and would like to have it sound decent.

thanks for the help, btw.

[Space Fractal]

Rerippen is a lots better than decode and encode again.

Here is what it does with AAC:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lossy_data_compression

for music files, it mains the files have removed alots of details, wich you can't get back. If you decompress and then compress, you just remove even more details. It isen't good.

If your AAC files use 128kbit, you should rerip to more wide mp3 files instead. You may ask Salomking to support Windows Media Player (or external engine like bass) directly with all installed codecs. Here you could install  http://www.3ivx.com/ codec for acc playback (I have not tested it).

If your AAC files used 256kbit bitrate or higher, you may have a better luck to convert them (but rememver it allways decompress, and then compress (it never direct convert them).



 (undl

[Barry Barcrest]

then would i be better off re ripping everything? ><

im no audiophile, but its for a jukebox, and would like to have it sound decent.

thanks for the help, btw.

If it is for a jukebox then i can support ACC files right off, but i would not know about reading their tag infomation. This is why i don't currently suppor tthem

[Space Fractal]

Arcade Music Box should even support AAC (and I do not even known it read tags, I use tag3.dll for that, a extension to bass).

But I guess this software isen't aimed for the projekt, like your (hince freebox may been better here).

This even I really liked SK Jukebox (very professionel made, it bad it only support few sound format), when I (quick) testede it when I made the jukebox wikipage.

Barcrest:
Did your software not use dirmask and filmask feature? If yes, why not pull the tags directly from the dir/filename from the mask, instead of reading tags (if any dir/filemask was typed)? This is what AMB does.

This method would so work even on wav files when "reading" tags, because it pull directly from the dir/filename instead. This is also a idea, what you can add in your next version.

[Silver]

Quick vote here for re-encoding (assuming the aac's are of good quality). However, I recommend reencoding to MP3 to a higher bitrate than you encoded to aac.

I have done this on lots of aac files, and performed double-blind tests - I can't tell the difference from the AAC. However, I used the most recent LAME encoder with the setting -preset extreme, which is around 256kbps VBR. Technically, it won't be as good as re-ripping, but I strongly suggest you choose 2 favourite albums, re-reip and re-encode them, and see if anyone can the tell the difference between your new mp3 encodes and the aac->mp3's.


[Off-topic encoding comment/rant]
As a side note, I don't know why anyone uses bitrates lower than 256, or even 192vbr. At 256kbps+ VBR, almost no one on earth can tell the difference between originals and encoded versions - whether you are using Mp3/AAC/Ogg/MPC/Wma/Mpeg+ etc... There are loads of double-blind tests done by audiophile professionals on the HydrogenAudio forums supporting this. All the mp3 vs aac vs wma vs ogg vs MPC debates/comparisions are only valid at low bitrates (128kbps and lower) where there are clear leaders.
[Off-topic encoding comment/rant over!]

[reptilehead]

In the case of a jukebox, I doubt that the loss of quality would be so significant as to require re-ripping, I've personally ripped in mp3, converted to aac, then to wma and with a 192kbps rip the loss was noticible, but not so bad as to make it unlistenable.
 The reality is, in a jukebox, it's "background noise" and would be treated as such for most aplications. I have a "psuedo-juke" right now that I have catigorized all my music onto just for ease of search (imagine trying to find "that one song-by that one guy-that has stay in the title") In the case of having friends over to have a few frosty ones the loss of quality isn't noticeable  until under 128, and I personally don't notice a loss (even with my test files in a background noise setting) under 192.
 In a quiet setting however, I can notice a loss even at 192, and definately in 256 in a re-encoded situation.


 oh yeah 256 vbr rocks, better than half my collection is 256vbr.

[Barry Barcrest]

At the end of the day it's down to how it sounds to your ears. i am more than happy with 128 upwards and i don't have the money to buy a fancy sound system to do the higher rates any justice so why waste the disc space. Everyone that has used my juke has been impressed and no one has ever said anyhting about the quality of the sound (With the exception of videos where some of them are very poor). I just have it hooked up to a microsoft sound system and i am more than happy with it.

[Space Fractal]

Yep 128kbit from acc to mp3 (or even wma) may been more notice, than if they was in 192kbit.

Try them all, and compare your self. That all I can say.

The most optimal is still not convert, but rerip from original source (if you can), this is evenit hearable or not.

Otherwice you may contact Salomking about aac support.

[jamesish]

from what i understand, you have to pay royalties to support aac, so i wouldnt expect SK to use it =)

i already started re-ripping.... 2 down, about 70 more to go ><

[Space Fractal]

maybe you should use CDex (http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=567)?

One of my favorite ripper.

It app support cddb, dirmask, and auto tag mp3 files and it fast & easy too (and can rip to bounch of formats). This is why I allways have liked this software.

[SalmonKing]

from what i understand, you have to pay royalties to support aac, so i wouldnt expect SK to use it =)

i already started re-ripping.... 2 down, about 70 more to go ><

Plus I am bound by the formats available in the sound engine control I use (MP3, OGG, WMA & WAV).  The only way to get around it would be to rewrite the program around a different engine that supports it, which I don't think I'll be doing for a while....   

I have thought about switching to bass.dll at some point to give me more flexibilty, but as I said, not for a while.  I had to rewrite the program twice.....once to move from WMP8 to WMP9, then to move from WMP9 to the engine I'm using now.  The control I'm using now is quite good & seems to be very solid, so there's no real urgency in moving away from it.

[jamesish]

id rather re-rip everything then move away from your jukebox, it just so happens to be the exact thing i was looking for =)

[squirrellydw]

http://www.dbpoweramp.com/dmc.htm

 It's not FREE, 14 bucks if you go beyond the 30 day trial, has tons of codecs to plug in, I personally bought it, becuase for me it was worth it.
 Do a search for everything aac, highlight it, right click drop down to convert and walk away.
 In the case of a larger collection.... don't come back for a few hours.... or days... maybe weeks...
 I converted my collection to aac once for the ipod, yeah never again... if it dont accept mp3, ogg and wma I wont bother with it. I started it on a saturday, and sunday afternoon it was finally ready using the ipod software. Thankfully I had my backup usb harddrive so i just wiped the internal HDD clean and put it all back the right way after I loaded everything into the ipod.

Does it save all the info from aac files, art, names, etc??

[reptilehead]

Files and titles yes, didnt care about the art though so I dont know about that.
 As with anything new you try the first time, just dont delete the original aac (or other file type youre converting) untill you know it works the way you want it too.