aac encode

The problem is still the licensing fees.
Adding this - properly, using the real thing as opposed to a hack or a clone, will ramp up the price dramatically.
Apple can afford to do this as a loss leader, as they only want to sell you their hardware & could not care less about software so you can always grab Quicktime Pro (nobody should be without this anyway - it is just too useful) and that will do all your AAC with no issues - the Apple variant, of course.

Steinberg cannot afford to swallow the licensing costs - so seriously, go blame Dolby Labs. They are the ones who charge the outrageous prices (believe me, I know)

BTW, it is also useful (to me) to be able to decode .aac files, especially those derived from DAB, for technical examination and quality control.

WaveLab (32 bit) can already decode AAC files, if Qucktime is installed (always the case on Mac, and optional on Windows).

Philippe

“Steinberg cannot afford to swallow the licensing costs - so seriously, go blame Dolby Labs. They are the ones who charge the outrageous prices (believe me, I know”

But MonkeyTools can afford the license fees when they sell Sound Grinder for $39.00?

I’m not saying your incorrect Neil; maybe Dolby and Apple are choosing to charge insanely higher licensing fees to Steinberg… I’m just saying I don’t understand it. I don’t understand that Sound Grinder has AAC batch encoding for $39.00 and Sample Manager has it for $79.00 and Wavelab doesn’t for $499.00.

I hope PG and Steinberg can find a way to support the AAC format at least as well as Bias Peak does since it is the same price as Wavelab 7 and is the market leader on the Mac platform and includes AAC encoding (not just decoding). However, I’ve made my point here in this thread so I won’t beat this topic further unless new info arises.

Ha, on Nuendo forum we have been over this topic a few times. SB has developed this actually great plugin: the Nuendo DDE. We bought it for a 900 Euro and used it happily till they stopped support and selling. Same reason: licensing is too expensive …whoaahaha… 900 quit for the plug alone !!!

A not small number of Nuendo users have even offered to pay once more and extra for the license and the continuation of Nuendo DDE. !!! It was not even considered by SB. So, SB left us surround workers in the scheits and we had to look elsewhere for an adequate substitude…for even more money. THANK YOU, again… SB.

For me, already the WL7 upgrade was unnecessary and of very little interest. Took it anyway.
But I am very sure that it was the last I bought, unless they come up with some either brillant and/or needed
things like ac3 encoding. Mastering is so much easier in Nuendo and WL is used here only to chain up songs for
the master and burning… This offers little future, 'cause others can do this for 50 bucks and less…

Big K

There is a free AAC-Encoder available form Nero (the CD-Burner).
If you google for it you should find it.
And as a frontend you can use Lame XP (also for free) that supports several encoders.

Unfortuantely it is not a Plugin and you cannot use it for commercial use (then you need to have a license from Nero too).

Just what I found out.

FYI,
The reason I started this thread is to request AAC format support and encoding from within Wavelab.

I have plenty of inexpensive batch processors that do this, but would like to see Wavelab support the AAC format fully.

Thanks for the recommendation about yet another utility that does this inexpensively though!

[quote=“wavcatcher”]
The reason I started this thread is to request AAC format support and encoding from within Wavelab.

I have plenty of inexpensive batch processors that do this, but would like to see Wavelab support the AAC format fully.
[/quote]

For the record and in the interests of Steinberg knowing there are users of WaveLab 7 wanting this, I thoroughly agree.

www.twistedwave.com

includes aac batch encode and a good wave editor as well.

ollie

Thanks for pointing that out Oliver.
We’ll add that application to the growing list of competing applications that offer AAC encoding while charging far less than Wavelab.

I’ll take Oliver’s example as yet another reason why Wavelab should fully support the AAC file format and include AAC encoding as a batch process function. Hopefully PG and Steinberg will agree!