Software Update: Nero Digital Audio MPEG-4 & 3GPP Codec 1.0.0.0

The folks at Nero have worked hard on their own MPEG4 audio codec and this made available for the general public. The codec is called Digital Audio Reference Quality MPEG-4 & 3GPP Audio Codec in full and allows you to convert audio to and from your own MPEG4 AAC codec via a command line interface. When encoding, it is possible to add so-called ’embedded album art’ to the song in addition to the usual extra information such as the artist and album name. In this way the covers, inlays and lyrics can be saved. The Digital Audio Reference Quality MPEG-4 & 3GPP Audio Codec is currently only available for the Windows platform, but a version for Linux is already in the works. Once the Linux version is ready, developers will likely start working on support for other operating systems and platforms. Developer Ivan Dimkovic late on the forum of Hydrogenaudio know the following about this codec:

I am pleased to announce the launch of FREE Reference Quality MPEG-4 Audio solution from Nero, in the command line form!

• First in the world FREE 2-Pass MPEG-4 AAC Encoder
• Support for mono, stereo and multichannel encodings
• Support for sampling rates up to 96 kHz, up to 32-bit Floating-Point PCM input
• Compression Ratios ranging from ultra high (58 CDs fit on one!) to High-End Audio (2.5:1), for absolutely perfect audiophile encodings
• Support for Embedded Album Art (Covers, Booklets, Lyrics!)
• Store Entire Audio Album in a Single .mp4 File with all the Features of an Audio CD embedded inside, but at a fraction of the space!
• Reference Quality MPEG-4 Audio Codec
• Fully Compatible with the Latest Version of the State-of-the-art MPEG-4 Audio Standard (LC-AAC, HE-AAC and HE-AAC v2)

The Encoder expects .WAV files in PCM wave format as input and provides .MP4 in MPEG-4/3GPP file format as output, as well as quality/ bitrate values ​​as parameters. The Decoder expects input in MPEG-4/3GPP file format and provides PCM wave files as output.[break]