Quick intro to transcoding your media files to HE-AAC v2

[Menneisyys]

In the AAS forums, I've been asked to elaborate on how HE-AAC v2 (eAAC+, HE-AAC2 etc.) files can be created. HE-AAC v2 is the latest and without doubt the BEST sound encoding technology (if you want to store HUGE amounts of songs using as little storage as possible). Audio files encoded with HE-AAC v2 at 48 kbps sound equally good as MP3's at 128+ kbps and Ogg Vorbis / WMA files at around 96 kbps.

As has already been explained in my related article, few Windows Mobile / Symbian / Palm OS players support the format, but their number is continuously increasing.

Probably the best and fastest way of converting files to the HE-AAC v2 is as follows:

1. Get the free (it’ll suffice – no need for the commercial, Pro one), Full version of WinAMP.

2. Mass-select the songs you’d like to convert in the upper right corner of the window (that is, the individual song list), right-click and go to Send To: / Format converter:



3. set the parameters as can be seen in the following screenshot:



Make sure you double-check you set “Channel mode” to Parametric Stereo so that version 2 of HE-AAC will be used, not just the plain version 1. Also, instead of 32 kbps, you might also want to go for 48 kbps for slightly increased sound quality. But no more: over 48 kbps, HE-AAC v2 will revert to v1 (Parametric Stereo won’t be used any more).

After this, you can easily start the mass-conversion by pressing OK. The results (.AAC files), by default, will be stored in the directory specified in the uppermost text input field. They can be directly played back by Music Player in newer N-series Nokias natively supporting the format (the N95, N81, N82 etc.), the free (!) TCPMP on Windows Mobile and Pocket Tunes on Palm OS.

Note that the above tutorial is about encoding standalone files. As far as transcoding live radio streams into HE-AAC v2 is concerned, I'll VERY soon (hopefully tomorrow) publish the Audio Stream Transcoding Bible, which will be a god-send for everyone that can't listen to certain radio stations on his/her handset and/or want to minimize data usage.