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Using AAC to save memory space

Music - February 16th, 2006 - Written by Jukka Eklund

S60 supports a wide range of codecs, so why not take advantage of the more advanced ones when packing your music in the phone? MP3 is fine, but with AAC and its latest evolution eAAC+ you can save memory space without loosing any of the quality. My colleague wrote some tips how to do that, thanks Florin :)
When working with AAC, you need to check first which codecs your phone supports. If you have Nokia N70 or N90, you can rock eAAC+. The same applies also to all of the upcoming S60 3rd Edition phones, and that really means all. If you have S60 2nd Edition device they can all do AAC (Nokia 6600 being the exception here). From the more older ones only N-Gages can play out AAC. If still unsure, you can check all the details at forum.nokia.com/multimedia.

To get your tunes into AAC you have two options: either rip your music directly to AAC or convert your existing MP3’s to another format. For ripping you can use the latest Nokia PC Suite (get it here). For both ripping and converting a good choice is Winamp 5.1 or later.

When ripping with Winamp, select AAC options from “CD ripping preferences” in Rip menu: “Raw AAC” for AAC, “aacPlus Encoder” for eAAC+. If choosing the latter one, also select “aacPlus v2″ as Format. About the bitrates:
- for AAC: 128kbps, or 96kbps (44100Hz, Stereo is fine)
- for eAAC+: 64kbps, or even 48kbps

To convert (ie. transcode) your already ripped music to AAC, you need to get a plugin for Winamp. With the plugin installed, select your tunes, right click Send to: and select Transcode. There you have the same options as for CD ripping.

The final step is to copy your newly created music to your phone, and enjoy!

About the author Jukka Eklund

I have been working in the Finnish IT industry for over 10 years, and spend most of that time working with a some form of Internet service. [..]

Comments(16)

  1. akboom wrote February 16th, 2006 at 2:53 pm

    As I mentiond elsewhere, eAAC+ at 32 kbps is also superb. You will not know the difference between an 128/192 kbps MP3 and 32 kbps eAAC+ tune. It may even sound better.

    BOOM

  2. Jukka Eklund wrote February 16th, 2006 at 4:46 pm

    Bitrates are very much subjective, depends on your ear and other equipment involved. The values I gave here are quite conservative on purpose.

  3. Steve Litchfield wrote February 16th, 2006 at 6:48 pm

    Note that it’s a VERY bad idea to transcode between formsts. That way artefacts in the original get compressed and encoded along with the music, and the end result is usually awful. If you want to go from 128kbps MP3, throw the files away and go back to your original CDs and rip from those.

    And guys, are you saying that the latest PC Suite knows all about encoding in eAAC+?

    Steve

  4. Jukka Eklund wrote February 17th, 2006 at 8:34 am

    Steve, as I wrote the latest PC Suite (6.7) can encode both AAC and eAAC+.

  5. Steve Litchfield wrote February 17th, 2006 at 8:52 am

    Thanks for confirming. You guys need to shout about this technology a lot more in your PC Suite docs/pages! 8-)
    Next question: why is the Nokia Transfer Music utility so horrible to use? [grin]

    Steve Litchfield

  6. Jukka Eklund wrote February 17th, 2006 at 9:39 am

    Thanks for comments, I will forward those to PC Suite people.

  7. Darla Mack wrote February 21st, 2006 at 5:53 am

    Nokia Tones Get a Remix

    I know many people simply chose the standard Nokia tone as their ringtone on their handsets. Sometimes when I can’t decide on which tone to use I do the same thing. A buddy of mine from Howard Forums has compiled

  8. slurpy69 wrote February 22nd, 2006 at 8:54 am

    I actually have a S60 2nd Edition 6600 and can now use mp3 as my ringtone. I found a codec somewhere and simply installed it to my 6600’s C drive.

  9. Fakir wrote February 23rd, 2006 at 11:24 am

    New mobile phone: Nokia 6630

    I bought a Nokia Series 60 telephone through a net auction almost a week ago, but today is the first day I’ve got time to play with it
    First test: Can I send files to it from my laptop using bluetooth?
    Setup: A linux laptop with a 15 Euros …

  10. Rune B wrote February 24th, 2006 at 7:57 pm

    I sent a trackback to this post from http://fakir.blogsome.com/2006/02/22/new-mobile-phone-nokia-6630/ but it does not seems to show up ?

    The reason for the trackback was to indicate that faac is a encoder you can use on Linux to make AAC files for Nokia. At least I am happy with the result :-)

  11. Jukka Eklund wrote February 25th, 2006 at 4:37 pm

    Rune B, sorry about that. Still learning to pick correct stuff from the automatic junk bin..

  12. Anonymous wrote March 1st, 2006 at 6:07 pm

    I encoded a 128kbs mp3 file(2.20 min) in AAC, eAAC+ and Ogg. All 0f them beat mp3 by miles in quality. Resulted file sizes for a 48kbs file are:
    Ogg - 858kb
    AAC - 858kb
    eAAC+ - 858kb
    But out of them all Ogg sounds better. Is it bcoz 6630 hasn’t got a eAAC+ decoder. Isn’t there a way to get eAAC+ support for 6630. Like installing a player with the codec.
    Software on this url states it supports eAAC+, http://gallery.mobile9.com/f/24050/ -would it be possible.

  13. akboom wrote March 3rd, 2006 at 2:21 pm

    6630 doesn’t have eAAC+ or AAC+ support; just plain old AAC I think. But the eAAC+ decoder is backward compatible; so what’s happening in your case is that the eAAC+ file is playing as normal AAC; that is without PS and SBR.

    There may be players available with eAAC+ support. Anyway, transcoding a 128 kbps MP3 will not get you the best of PS and SBR. Use a better quality source.

    BUT; OGG IS FREE and GOOD; support OGG :-)
    AMK

  14. Jukka Eklund wrote March 7th, 2006 at 2:36 pm

    Good point AK, 128kbps MP3 is definetely not good enough source. I think at least 192kbps might be ok.

  15. Darla Mack wrote April 22nd, 2006 at 5:31 pm

    PC Suite Gets Updated to the Music Edition

    Nokia PC Suite has now been updated to 6.8 for supporting handsets. This version focuses more on Music and with the NSeries devices almost (if not already) being released. The change in the Music Manager other than the newer

  16. Juegos wrote August 13th, 2007 at 5:47 pm

    Thanks for confirming. You guys need to shout about this technology a lot more in your PC Suite docs/pages! 8-)

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