AAC-LC is ubiquitous, the only other codec that is wider spread is MP3 and only by negligible margin.
AAC-LC, the earliest version of AAC has been declared as patent free or all patents expired by Redhat for many years already.
AAC-LC was always designed for 128Kbps+ in mind. There are other AAC like HE-AAC and xHE-AAC aiming at lower bitrate.
The current best AAC-LC encoder is done by Apple's Core Audio and most people uses it via qaac. I had always wished Apple to open source it. But now we don't even need that to happen.
The test was done with CBR. So this is extremely promising. Assuming the author is willing to spend more time for VBR I am sure there are plenty of room for improvements.
I wonder if the code follows FFMPEG as LGPL2 or could there be a BSD version.
For music, there is very little reason not to use 256Kbps AAC or even higher bitrate. You get maximum compatibility with near no loss of quality. Last time the group listening test there were only a few samples where 256Kbps AAC-LC failed to match Opus.
Youtube did switched to 256Kbps AAC for a while. Only to returned back to 128Kbps Opus.
I hope there can be further improvement to be made with the encoder.
AAC-LC, the earliest version of AAC has been declared as patent free or all patents expired by Redhat for many years already.
AAC-LC was always designed for 128Kbps+ in mind. There are other AAC like HE-AAC and xHE-AAC aiming at lower bitrate.
The current best AAC-LC encoder is done by Apple's Core Audio and most people uses it via qaac. I had always wished Apple to open source it. But now we don't even need that to happen.
The test was done with CBR. So this is extremely promising. Assuming the author is willing to spend more time for VBR I am sure there are plenty of room for improvements.
I wonder if the code follows FFMPEG as LGPL2 or could there be a BSD version.
For music, there is very little reason not to use 256Kbps AAC or even higher bitrate. You get maximum compatibility with near no loss of quality. Last time the group listening test there were only a few samples where 256Kbps AAC-LC failed to match Opus.
Youtube did switched to 256Kbps AAC for a while. Only to returned back to 128Kbps Opus.
I hope there can be further improvement to be made with the encoder.