Hector Martin

Today in "ffmpeg's AAC encoder is still a embarrassment and nobody should ever use it": OBS on Windows using it, at 320kbps, makes music sound like a low bitrate mp3 (metallic hi-hats, etc). No problem with a custom OBS build on Gentoo with libfdk_aac enabled, at *160* kbps.

Make sure you're not using an ancient ffmpeg version. How can this issue be duplicated? Need an input file. Need your command. Need the complete console output ("log").

Yeah, no. The last ticket I saw on your tracker about AAC from another user, they were rudely and incorrectly accused of not reading the docs (while that person had in fact incorrectly read the ticket). The AAC encoder dev has also accused me of making up audiophile BS.

Despite no clue how to duplicate whatever issue you're experiencing I did a few lazytests and didn't notice a huge difference between aac and libfdk_aac. Sounded fine to me. So at this point all we can offer are apologies for the behavior of the encoder and the rude developer.

If you're serious about listening and fixing this and willing to listen and either improve the encoder or change the documentation to stop claiming it's better than libfdk_aac, I can put together some samples (not now though, busy organizing an event).