xHE-AAC

[Yellow Pasque]

Sorry, but the exhale encoder does not seem too exciting to me, given that it doesn't do less than 64kb stereo. I don't see any advantage over opus, especially when you factor in patent/licensing issues.

(From the exhale author):

exhale starts only at 64 kbit/s stereo. xHE-AAC's advantage over its ancestors is much more obvious at rates lower than that. Adding the algorithms necessary for such low-rate coding would roughly triple the amount of source code and, possibly, work-hours (I like to write my source code from scratch and work on exhale in my free-time), and I won't be able to manage that. So I decided to leave the low rates to commercial encoders.

[andrew.46]

Sorry, but the exhale encoder does not seem too exciting to me, given that it doesn't do less than 64kb stereo. I don't see any advantage over opus, especially when you factor in patent/licensing issues.

It is very early days yet of course but it is exciting to get in at the very beginning, certainly exhale represents this for Open Source and for Linux...

[andrew.46]

You really are a wizard [...]

My real name perhaps should be Sparrowhawk

Of course you know what i am gonna say ? ABCDE? to keep you busy in this odd phase

I no longer have access to a computer with a CD / DVD drive or indeed any audio CDs . However exhale could be added in easily enough by following the steps I previously used to put fhgaacenc into abcde but omitting all mention of wine. You could have a crack at it by opening up the script itself with your favourite text editor or if you like I could do it 'blind' without testing and you could be my tester.

Would be difficult from my end as I normally obsessively test and retest, not possible without an optical drive unfortunately...

[andrew.46]

OK I have produced and early version of abcde with xHE-AAC encoding and tagging with AtomicParsley mostly for Shantiq but feel free to jump in! It is completely untested by me as I do not have an optical drive any more, however I know this section of the script well as I heavily developed this section for a few years!

What you need:

1. A full installation of abcde, preferably from git
2. AtomicParsley installed, preferably from here...
3. A copy of exhale, instructions here...

With all of that organised download the patched abcde and provided abcde.conf file that I have made available here.... To make everything safe it would be a great idea to back up your installed file:

sudo mv -v /usr/bin/abcde /usr/bin/abcde_bak
cp ~/.abcde.conf ~/.abcde.conf_bak

Then extract the archive from my web site and copy both files into the correct location:

sudo mv -v abcde /usr/bin/abcde
sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/abcde
cp abcde.conf ~/.abcde.conf

You will see a section in the supplied abcde.conf file that can be altered as you see fit:

# Specify your required encoding options here, exhale takes numerals
# here from 1 (about 64kbit/s) to 10 (about 192kbit/s):
EXHALENCOPTS="4"

And cross your fingers

Restore your system if all is a disaster:

sudo mv -v /usr/bin/abcde_bak /usr/bin/abcde
mv ~/.abcde.conf_bak ~/.abcde.conf

And walk away

Edit: I have made a full diff against the git head that also includes the doc changes here... I had forgotten how much fun this is

[shantiq]

Just seen this Thanx Andrew will give it a whirl and report

[shantiq]

and yes Andrew direct hit

outputting to /home/shan/abcde.a20e740c/track02.wav

 (== PROGRESS == [                              | 046671 00 ] == :^D * ==)   


Done.




 echo Encoding track 02 of 12: Praise...
Encoding track 02 of 12: Praise...
encodetrack-m4a-02 nice -n 10 exhale 9 /home/shan/abcde.a20e740c/track02.wav /home/shan/abcde.a20e740c/track02.m4a


  ---------------------------------------------------------------------
 | exhale - ecodis extended high-efficiency and low-complexity encoder |
 |                                                                     |
 | version 1.0.2 (x64, built on Apr  5 2020) - written by C.R.Helmrich |
  ---------------------------------------------------------------------


 Encoding 44-kHz 2-channel 16-bit WAVE to low-complexity xHE-AAC at 192 kbit/s


 Progress: --------------------------------- Done, actual average 206.7 kbit/s


 Input statistics: Mobile loudness -20.25 LUFS,	sample peak level -2.11 dBFS


encodetrack-02 true
 echo Tagging track 02 of 12: Praise...
Tagging track 02 of 12: Praise...
tagtrack-m4a-02 nice -n 10 AtomicParsley /home/shan/abcde.a20e740c/track02.m4a --artist=Inner City --album=Praise --title=Praise --tracknum=02 --year=0 --genre=Techno --comment=xHE-AAC encoding --overWrite


 Started writing to temp file.
 Progress: =======================================================>100% |
 Finished writing to temp file.
tagtrack-02 true
movetrack-02 mv /home/shan/abcde.a20e740c/track02.m4a /home/shan/Music/m4a/Inner City-Praise/02.Praise.m4a
movetrack-output-m4a true




Finished.

[shantiq]

first full album tagged xHE-AAC

[andrew.46]

and yes Andrew direct hit

Great news . How does it feel to be the first person in the world to rip an audio CD to xHE-AAC?

[shantiq]

Very nice :] and thanx I see you have submitted it to the abcde so soon we can have it in the panoply 5 [correction: 7] aac codecs right ?

[andrew.46]

Very nice :] and thanx I see you have submitted it to the abcde so soon we can have it in the panoply 5 aac codecs right ?

I have not submitted the patch yet although I have left a message with Steve in #abcde to see if he is interested. Two things I guess:

1. I am not sure if I still have write access to the git repository
2. If I have I would probably not use it as I am no longer really one of the developers, etiquette dictates that I should not really just barrel in with a big patch that is not all that mainstream

So if Steve is interested I will hopefully get the patch into abcde one way or the other. I am lurking on abcde tonight in the hope of catching him, you could join if you like: Freenode / #abcde ...