Bugzilla – Bug 10
Really love to see native AAC playback
Last modified: 2005-03-28 08:39:04 UTC
... not liking the idea of killing my network with raw decoded music flying over it, and not keen on LAME decoding the AAC and re-encoding it to MP3. Judging from the lists, a lot of people are using AAC for their files. Is there any chance that native AAC playback could be added to the squeezebox? Thanks!
By native, you mean DRM protected & decoded to PCM?
Oops, I forgot the comments are on the bottom of the page. Nevermind. Sounds like he wants the decoding in hardware? I imagine AAC is much harder than FLAC. PCM isn't all that much data anyways...
Well, that would be particularly cool if you could get the DRM'd files going, but I don't see you being able to do it really without Apple's blessing, or hiring a bunch of lawyers and using Jon Johansen's hack. Neither would be particularly easy paths to go down... though Apple may be attracted to being able to play their iTunes song files on people's stereos. If they're not already working on it. But, no, what I'm really talking about is playing back un-DRM'd AAC files without any server decoding involved. Get the AAC file, send it to the Squeezebox without having to: a. Re-encode it to MP3 using LAME on the server, or b. Decode it and send it raw across a wireless network.
What is your opposition to sending it raw across the network? I ask because I'm not sure the CPU in the Squeezebox has enough power to decode AAC on the fly.
We're talking about decoding it into a .wav file and then broadcasting it across what is in effect a 2 Mbit network! You get a couple of squeezeboxes going and then try to use the network for something... I obviously have no knowledge about how powerful the decoder is in your box, but it is my understanding that the 1st gen iPod wasn't designed with AAC in mind, and they managed to get it going. Thanks! :)
This is not a bug?
SB doesn't have enough horsepower to do AAC decoding