I applaud a new/better FFMPEG AAC encoder, but there are two pretty massive caveats that are mentioned in the specifics that need to be called out:
- CBR only
- Only optimized for 48khz sampling
Not being able to do quality-based variable bitrate encoding is a major gap, and since all of the CD audio in the world is at 44.1k sampling, that seems like a huge miss too.
You can use -q:a, for "true" VBR, but its metrics are a few percent (imperceptable, we still win) less.
"The benchmarks I posted were done mainly on 44.1Khz. I tuned by ear on 48Khz data though, so some of the windowing/transient logic is tied to 48Khz. It translated to 44.1Khz well enough that I left it as-is, since the timing difference isn't that large."
- CBR only
- Only optimized for 48khz sampling
Not being able to do quality-based variable bitrate encoding is a major gap, and since all of the CD audio in the world is at 44.1k sampling, that seems like a huge miss too.