Getting the Most out of Your Audio Gadget Storage - Transcoding Software
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Transcoding Software
There are numerous free and commercial encoders that are bundling HE-AAC. Personally I’ve been satisfied with Nero’s Digital Audio Encoder/Decoder that is freely available independently (download: here or here) along with being bundled in Nero 7-8. Once downloaded and extracted you’ll find out that it’s a console application.
If you’d prefer a GUI, then I’d suggest checking out BeLight (here), which is a GUI for the renowned audio transcoding package called BeSweet. This freeware combination allows you a wider range of coding technologies, not only AAC. Of course, we cannot forget about the classics like Winamp and Foobar2000— both are freeware.
Another free alternative is FAAC (here) that is licensed on GPL. However you should try out dBpoweramp Music Converter™ (here). Some of its features (MP3 encoder and all media guide meta data) are only available for a 30 day trial, but we aren’t interested in those now. Other than those features it is freeware and it works impeccably without limitations. I’ve been using it for months without any issues.
Furthermore, if you’ve chosen dBpoweramp, then don’t forget to download Apple’s M4A codec release (here) from dBPoweramp’s Codec Central. Personally, I’d advise grabbing Nero’s AAC coding utility. It’s worth mentioning that both support the coding standards that we need. However, according to some the NeroAAC is slightly better.
Adding NeroAAC codec support isn’t hard. You download the audio decoder/encoder and extract those four files into a new folder called “m4a Nero (AAC)” located on default path: “C:Program FilesIllustratedBpowerAMPencoderm4a Nero (AAC)”. Now you can run the dBpowerAMP. The new codec will be detected and the dynamic link library (.dll) will be automatically generated. Then you’re ready to go!
Nevertheless, at first run you can manually locate your Nero AAC encoder too. Select Encoder -> Locate Encoder -> and browse to neroAacEnc.exe file. Click on OK.
Additionally, we cannot forget about dBpoweramp’s Batch Converter. This is a feature which allows converting multiple files at once. You start it up, pick the tracks you want to be converted, set your preferences, and let it do its work. This is crucial because if you’re planning to convert hundreds of tracks, it takes a while and doing that manually one-by-one certainly does not sound appealing.
My last suggestion regarding dBpoweramp is that installing the DSP effects is very worthwhile. Visit this page and download the latest package. Surely you won’t benefit from all of them, however some of those effects might be needed every now and then. For example, Volume Normalize is critical. This effect normalizes the volume of your tracks.
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