Advanced Audio Coding

Advanced Audio Coding, or simply AAC, is an audio compression and encoding technique that achieves better sound quality than MP3. AAC is the default audio format for YouTube, iPhone, iPod, iPad, Nintendo DSi, iTunes, DivX Plus Web Player and Playstation 3.

Advantages

• Higher audio quality at lower bit rates (128, 160 kbps)
• Improved compression provides higher-quality results with smaller file sizes
• Support for multichannel audio
• Higher resolution audio, yielding sampling rates up to 96 kHz
• Improved decoding efficiency, requiring less processing power for decode
• Up to 48 channels

Disadvantages

• Not such popular as MP3
• Not compatibile with all devices on the market

Components

• MPEG-2 Standard Part 7
• MPEG-4 Standard Part 4
• ACC Low Complexity profie
• Scalable Sampling Rate profile

Development tools

• Itunes
• Nero Free AAC Converter Code

Versions

• AAC