What Is the HE-AAC Audio Format?

There are two versions of this compression scheme: HE-AAC and HE-AAC v2.

The second version uses enhanced features and is more standardized than the first.

The trade name the company uses is CT-aacPlus.

SBR, which Coding Technologies also developed, is used to enhance audio by efficiently coding higher frequencies.

In 2003, HE-AAC v1 was approved by the MPEG organization and included in theirMPEG-4document as an audio standard.

This second revision includes an enhancement calledparametricstereo.

Parametric stereo focuses on efficiently compressing stereo signals.

This side information describes the spatial arrangement of the stereo image in the HE-AAC v2 audio file.

FAQ

It depends.

HE-AAC is only recommended for streaming audio at bit-rates lower than 128k.

Otherwise, you should stick with regular AAC.

AAC encoded audio files can have different extensions likeM4AandMP4.

Regardless of the extension, all AAC encoded files sound the same.

HandBrake for Linux and Windows uses the FFmpeg AAC encoder.

HandBrake for Mac uses Apples CoreAudio AAC encoder.