HE-AAC/AAC+ on Zune HD?

[Greg_E]

Will the Zune HD players play AAC+v1 (HE-AAC v1) or better yet the newer v2 version?

I'm very tempted to buy a Zune HD but I want it to play AAC+v1 files.Anyone willing to test for me? WMP12 should be able encode to this, and Winamp certainly will encode to this. Settings of 64kbps stereo AAC+v1 (not v2).

[CrowdAds]

[Marvin the Martian]

Originally Posted by Greg_E

Will the Zune HD players play AAC+v1 (HE-AAC v1) or better yet the newer v2 version?

I'm very tempted to buy a Zune HD but I want it to play AAC+v1 files.Anyone willing to test for me? WMP12 should be able encode to this, and Winamp certainly will encode to this. Settings of 64kbps stereo AAC+v1 (not v2).

From the WMP12 help menu......

[Greg_E]

Guess they only bought the decoder then. Well Winamp will do it if anyone is willing to try for me, I can also upload a few tracks if someone will try. If not I'll have to go back to one of the Sony NWZ players even though I'm not entirely happy with their output level, they will at least play these files which gives me plenty of room for all my current music on an 8GB player (with lots of room to spare).

[lem7]

...upload me the file, ill check if it works on the zHD

[Greg_E]

I'll send you a private message when I get a couple files up.

[lem7]

Even if it is not compatible with the zHD, the ZuneSoftware will automatically convert it. but yeah ill see if the ZuneSoftware converts it or just sync it raw.

[Greg_E]

You should have a PM now, two sets of zip files with some selected tracks. All tracks are AAC+v1 at 64kbps encoded with Winamp. SInce the HD supports several flavors of mp4 I hope it can do these files now. If they sound like AM radio, then it isn't working properly. WMP12 should play them properly, as will Winamp and maybe iTunes. VLC will play them but the open source codec is not as good as the licensed codec, but still decent.

[lem7]

Originally Posted by Greg_E

They should sound full fidelity and stereo, end of the Mose Police Never Sleeps track has audio on both sides that is definitle left only and right only.

Sorry had alot of things to do....

So yeah I added those 10 songs on ZuneSoftware and it synced to the zHD without converting it.

Sound wise I'm not an audiophile or am I a sound idiot, considering that.... the sound was excellent using my Bose-QC3 on the ZuneHD. Yes defiantly can tell they are full stereo sound, not mono.

Ill be happy to help you if you got more questions.

[Greg_E]

Sounds like it might be time to get one to replace my ancient Archos Jukebox. With that compression and using it only for a music device, the 16 should last me nearly forever. Pretty much if the files were in stereo and the high frequencies sounded normal, it was decoding them correctly, the TOOL selection was probably the newest master of the set and I know it sounds good from the computer and the Sony NWZ-E series I tried a while ago.

Did it seem to struggle with the files, as in does the processor get really hot while playing them which will suck the battery down? That's a sign that they used software to decode the files and not a hardware DSP, though I expect there is an Analog Devices chip inside with the video and audio codecs built in (guess I need to find a tear down).

For album art, will it take a single jpg in the folder andapply it to all the tracks or does it need to have the image encoded into the file headers of each track like some other players?

Bluetooth A2DP? Would be nice to couple it to one of the in helmet systems for motorcycle use and all the good systems use A2DP to do this.

Playlists - .pls or .m3u or will I need to make .asx lists for everything? (the .asx would suck since I would need to do it by hand)

The spec sheets on the Zune products leave much to be desired for this type of info. They really should be advertising the aac+ decoder because I'm not the only one interested in this codec. Got a bunch of the Sony PSP guys to reconsider their compression after I sent some of those same files to one guy for testing. PSP3000 does aac+v1 but not v2, does the SBR part (v1) but not the PS part (v2) (Spectral Band Replication and Parametric Stereo) which is the + part of the aac encoding (aac+sbr and aac+sbr+ps). the PS part allows decent performance down to 32kbps which I use for a stream from the radio station at work (listed as FM+ quality).

[htpconvert]

For album art, will it take a single jpg in the folder andapply it to all the tracks or does it need to have the image encoded into the file headers of each track like some other players?

....

Playlists - .pls or .m3u or will I need to make .asx lists for everything? (the .asx would suck since I would need to do it by hand)

[/QUOTE]

Can't help you with all the things you asked but on these two questions:

you need to use the zune software for this. It will not recognise a folder.jpg (although it will recognise a zunealbumart.jpg ... or something like that!)

Likewise, playlists are created and managed via the zune software

[Greg_E]

Hmmm.. So it is that locked down then. That kind of sucks but I guess isn't that far off from many other players. The Sony's had to do playlists in the device because they didn't seem to work with either .pls or .m3u.

If it will take an image out of the folder and convert while transferring the music I guess that would be fine.

[lem7]

Originally Posted by Greg_E

Sounds like it might be time to get one to replace my ancient Archos Jukebox. With that compression and using it only for a music device, the 16 should last me nearly forever. Pretty much if the files were in stereo and the high frequencies sounded normal, it was decoding them correctly, the TOOL selection was probably the newest master of the set and I know it sounds good from the computer and the Sony NWZ-E series I tried a while ago.

Did it seem to struggle with the files, as in does the processor get really hot while playing them which will suck the battery down? That's a sign that they used software to decode the files and not a hardware DSP, though I expect there is an Analog Devices chip inside with the video and audio codecs built in (guess I need to find a tear down).

For album art, will it take a single jpg in the folder andapply it to all the tracks or does it need to have the image encoded into the file headers of each track like some other players?

Bluetooth A2DP? Would be nice to couple it to one of the in helmet systems for motorcycle use and all the good systems use A2DP to do this.

Playlists - .pls or .m3u or will I need to make .asx lists for everything? (the .asx would suck since I would need to do it by hand)

The spec sheets on the Zune products leave much to be desired for this type of info. They really should be advertising the aac+ decoder because I'm not the only one interested in this codec. Got a bunch of the Sony PSP guys to reconsider their compression after I sent some of those same files to one guy for testing. PSP3000 does aac+v1 but not v2, does the SBR part (v1) but not the PS part (v2) (Spectral Band Replication and Parametric Stereo) which is the + part of the aac encoding (aac+sbr and aac+sbr+ps). the PS part allows decent performance down to 32kbps which I use for a stream from the radio station at work (listed as FM+ quality).

Not sure if it gets hot, i did play with the test songs for a good 30mins and it was not hot at all.

In ZuneSoftware you can change the album art using .jpg and it will apply that new album art to all the songs in the album.

Ahhh.... Zune HD does not have bluetooth =( ... Wish it does because I would defiantly use it with my Blue tooth headset.

as for playlist I have no idea o.O ... I never use the playlist option on the zHD.

... hey i didn't know i could use AAC+ on my psp!

[Greg_E]

Even better is that you can stream aac+ radio stations to it too:
http://pspradio.co.uk/