AAC vs AC3

[rdeffley]

Just curious what people prefer. I started out using AAC because I read that it as a superior format. However, I've been getting better sound quality with AC3.

[El Heggunte]

Depends a lot on the chosen encoder and on the chosen bitrate.

Depending on the phase of the moon , I may use AC3, AAC, DTS, MLP, MP2, MP3, and even the infamous ATRAC3 from Sony

AC3 is considered perceptually-transparent at 128kbps per channel, whereas
AAC (Low-Complexity) is considered perceptually-transparent at somewhere between 64kbps and 80kbps per channel.

FWIW: Opus is the newest toy in the playground, and many people are liking it
Caveat: it's locked at the 48kHz sampling rate, possibly because ATRAC3 is locked at 44.1kHz

[poisondeathray]

I prefer the original audio . But if you need low bitrates , then a good AAC encoder will wipe the floor against any AC3 implementation

[fritzi93]

AC3 5.1 at 640 kb/s, for widest compatibility. And it's good enough.

[DarrellS]

AC3 5.1 at 640 kb/s, for widest compatibility. And it's good enough.

This. A lot of hardware players have trouble with aac. Especially in a mkv container or 6 channel audio. I cannot understand why anyone would take a perfectly good ac3 file and convert it to aac unless all they have to play it back on is an Apple Player. Then I would recommend buying a cheap media player before recommending converting all their audio files to aac.

[redwudz]

I use AC-3 at 640 kb/s for my Blue-ray backups to MKV/H.264. For DVD backups, I just pass the existing AC-3 through.

[netmask56]

I do exactly the same as Redwudz.

[hech54]

Beauty is in the ear of the beholder.