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MacMethod has announced AACelerator, which the company bills as "the quickest way to easily encode all of your audio files into MPEG-4 Advanced Audio Codec (AAC) audio files." This new encoding format included in QuickTime 6 allows users to create high-quality digital copies that are much smaller than comparable quality mp3s. "By all accounts, audio encoded at the same bit rates as MP3 files will result in audio files with superior sonic quality," enthuses MacMethod. "This encoding format will also produce a file with equivalent sonic quality at much lower bit rates, allowing you to store your music collection in much less disk space." AACelerator works together with QT 6 to encode files. The application uses AppleScript to feed QT Player the files you would like encoded and exports them with the settings you specify. A valid, registered license for QuickTime 6 Pro is require for this process to work. More information on AAC can found on Apple's very own Advanced Audio Codec page. The mothership also has an AAC audio gallery with four tunes encoded at 40 and 128K using this cutting-edge codec. AACelerator costs $12 and a demo can be downloaded here. Editor's note: Although QT 6 and MPEG-4 have been available since about the middle of last year, the technology has yet to take off, which is somewhat surprising given the vastly superior technology employed. Perhaps it has taken until now for MPEG-4 and ACC to gain sufficient "mind share" to begin making an impact? [One catch would be that the iPod does not yet support MPEG4. A firmware upgrade might be able to add this. I found MPEG4 to be considerably superior to MPEG3 in terms of size/quality. - mdf] What's your take?
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