HE-AAC

I was reading a Norwegian IT newspaper this morning and came across an article claiming that a compression format called HE-AAC is way better than any other. Can anyone confirm/repudiate this? And perhaps point me at a reliable source of more information?

Link and reference to more reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HE-AAC.

It's a (very) lossy format and appears to be part of the MPEG-4 specification. The Wiki article refers to a number of tests, which are not conclusive, but tend to confirm that the coding is suitable for streaming audio or applications which require a low bandwidth. It doesn't seem to be a widely used format.

I was reading a Norwegian IT newspaper this morning and came across an article claiming that a compression format called HE-AAC is way better than any other. Can anyone confirm/repudiate this? And perhaps point me at a reliable source of more information?

Try it! - Nero do a well-regarded free Windows and Linux command-line encoder for AAC that includes the HE option.  They seem to have removed references to it on their web site with the release of Nero 8, but it's still on their ftp server ( ftp://ftp6.nero.com/tools/NeroDigitalAudio.zip ) in a version from this August.  The binary with SSE in the name is for use on machines without SSE2, and was buggy in the first release (don't know now).  Documentation here: ( ftp://ftp6.nero.com/tutorials/nerodigital/audio_encoder/NeroDigitalAudio_tut_eng.pdf ).

Paul

Cheers guys, I will have a read - but it doesn't sound like it is Earth-shaking news

Don't use the stuff myself, so please clarify: isn't the HC mode of AAC the best compression known to exist?  And if I have this wrong, which is it -- in association with iTunes' downloads, I believe (which I also don't use)?