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Winamp FhG AAC problem on Sansa e250 v1

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ThaCrip:
Well since that FhG encoder don't seem to work in VBR mode @ 32kbps with AAC-LC in Foobar2000 i may consider going with Apple AAC @ q27 (64kbps) setting which uses AAC-LC with VBR mode automatically and still offers a small enough file size and cleans up the sound but without it taxing the Sansa e250's CPU like the FhG @ 32kbps does. because with FhG encoder in Foobar2000, AAC-LC does not take effect until the 96kbps setting where as with the Apple AAC encoder AAC-LC is still used @ q27 (64kbps) (and i think even lower to).

on a side note... i was playing around with some of Apple AAC's lower VBR settings which were 48kbps/56kbps/64kbps and compared them on the same song, without spending a bunch of time, and i could pick up the 48kbps(64kbps actual song rate)/56kbps(73kbps actual song rate) pretty quickly but with 64kbps(actual 83kbps song rate) i was not that confident i could hear any clear differences at that point when fairly quickly checking it through ABX. i never actually finished the whole 16 cycles in the ABX though but i would expect to comfortably pass the 48kbps/56kbps settings but with the 64kbps setting, at least on that one particular song i tested, i am not as confident i could detect it, if i can it's definitely not as easy/obvious. now... testing that same general scenario with LAME encoder i noticed that same point for me is... v8 (85kbps)(easy to detect) to V7 (100kbps)(not easy to detect). like with v8 i could detect pretty easily but with v7 i am not that confident anymore. the actual kbps for that particular song with LAME on v8 was 94kbps and v7 was 109kbps.

so with that info above... i have to at least somewhat correct what i said in my initial post in here which was 'LAME v4 being my point of transparency' because i just assumed i could do v5 (130kbps average) because i tried that on a different song on Aug 15th 2013 (using the same setup i am using now(i.e. PC speakers(Klipsch Pro-Media)) and passed the full ABX test (12 passes and got 11/12 (0.3%)). so maybe it's either just the song making it harder for me to detect now or is it possible my hearing is worse because i am slightly older now (37 at the moment (nearly 38) and back then i would have been 33, nearly 34.). but what i should do is test that specific song that i tested back in Aug 2013 as this way it can remove the potential of it being the song that's making it harder for me to detect differences (like that other song i just happened to test back in Aug 2013 might be easier to notice sound flaws vs the one i tested moments ago) and if i failed to detect it now on that same song @ v5(130kbps) then maybe my hearing is a touch worse(?). but i just thought i would mention this.

but with all of that said... it seems, at least based on the single song i tested, that Apple AAC @ q27(64kbps average) is similar to LAME @ v7(100kbps average). the actual bit rates on Apple AAC q27 and LAME v7, like mentioned above, is 83kbps(Apple AAC) and 109kbps(MP3). so at least based on those settings it appears Apple AAC is better than MP3 as it takes less bit rate to achieve roughly the same quality. but i think this is probably expected given what i can tell from the general word which seems to say that at higher bit rates all encoders are pretty much the same but at the lower bit rates AAC etc tend to be superior to MP3. superior as in achieves similar sound quality with less bit rate. but i am curious as to whether someone else around here feels similar to my claim here(i.e. Apple AAC q27 vs LAME v7 being roughly equivalent)?

but back to the general topic... what i might do is settle for Apple AAC @ q27(64kbps) as that, based on what i briefly tested above, seems to be decent enough sound quality(like nothing obviously negative for me(if more obvious sound issue do turn up in other songs i would imagine it will still be minimal)) while still maintaining a pretty minimal file size and while not as small as those 32kbps files, they are still much smaller than my general LAME v2 (190kbps average) i have been typically using on my general music collection (converted from FLAC source).

thanks for everyone's time as i should have a general idea of how ill handle things now ;) (if anything turns up soon ill probably make another post here)

p.s. i just updated the Apple AAC encoder though with the iTunes v12.7 file as i extracted the AppleApplicationSupport.msi (using 7-zip) and installed only that which makes it so Foobar2000 can use Apple AAC encoding. but i can't imagine anything changed from a sound quality perspective being the one i was using was from Jan 2017 and now is Sep 2017. is AAC even being developed from a sound quality perspective anymore?

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