FAAC

FAAC
Original authorsMenno Bakker and others
ReleaseOctober 9, 2001 (2001-10-09)
Stable release
2.2 / September 29, 2026; 24 days ago (2026-09-29)
Written inC
PlatformCross-platform
Available inEnglish
TypeEncoder
LicenseGNU Lesser General Public License version 2.1 or later
Websitefreewareadvancedaudio.github.io
Repositorygithub.com/FreewareAdvancedAudio/faac
FAAD2
Original authorsMenno Bakker, Nero AG and others
Release2000 (FAAD1)
Stable release
2.11.4 / October 1, 2026; 22 days ago (2026-10-01)
Written inC
Operating systemCross-platform
Available inEnglish
TypeDecoder
LicenseGNU General Public License version 2 or later
Websitefreewareadvancedaudio.github.io
Repositorygithub.com/FreewareAdvancedAudio/faad2

FAAC (Freeware Advanced Audio Coder) is a software project which includes the AAC encoder FAAC and decoder FAAD2. It supports MPEG-2 AAC as well as MPEG-4 AAC. It supports several MPEG-4 Audio object types (LC and SBR for encoding, and SBR, PS, ER, LD for decoding), file formats (ADTS AAC, raw AAC, MP4), multichannel and gapless encoding/decoding and MP4 metadata tags. The encoder and decoder is compatible with standard-compliant audio applications using one or more of these object types and facilities. FAAC and FAAD2, being distributed in C source code form, can be compiled on various platforms and are distributed free of charge. FAAD2 is free software. As of version 2.0, FAAC was completely rewritten to remove legacy reference code and is distributed as free software under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL v2.1 or later). Older versions contained code distributed under a proprietary license and supported Digital Radio Mondiale.

FAAC was originally written by Menno Bakker.

FAAC encoder

FAAC stands for Freeware Advanced Audio Coder. The FAAC encoder is an audio compression computer program that creates AAC (MPEG-2 AAC/MPEG-4 AAC) sound files from other formats (usually, CD-DA audio files). It contains a library (libfaac) that can be used by other programs. AAC files are commonly used in computer programs and portable music players, being Apple Inc.'s recommended format for the company's iPod music player.

Some of the features that FAAC has are: cross-platform support, "reasonably" fast encoding, support for more than one "object type" of the AAC format, and multi-channel streams like 5.1. FAAC focuses primarily on the Low Complexity (LC) and HE-AAC v1 (Spectral Band Replication / SBR) profiles. The MPEG-2 AAC profile supported by FAAC is LC. Support for HE-AAC v1 encoding was added in version 2.0.0, while legacy object types (Main, LTP, SSR) were removed. Support for Digital Radio Mondiale streams was removed in version 1.4. The object type "Low Complexity" is the default and also happens to be used in videos meant to be playable for portable players (like Apple's iPod) and used by video-hosting sites (like YouTube).

Earlier 1.x versions of FAAC have historically been evaluated as a somewhat "lower quality" option than other AAC encoders.

Alternatives for AAC encoding in Unix-like operating systems

FAAC is one of six alternatives that Linux/Unix users have for creating AAC files. The others are:

FAAD2 decoder

FAAD2 is Freeware Advanced Audio (AAC) Decoder including SBR decoding. It is MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 AAC decoder and supports MPEG-4 audio object types LC, Main, LTP, LD, ER, SBR and PS, which can be combined also to HE-AAC and HE-AACv2 Profile (AAC LC+SBR+PS). It contains a library (libfaad) that can be used by other programs.

FAAD and FAAD2 were originally written by Menno Bakker from Nero AG. FAAD2 is the successor to FAAD1, which was deprecated.

FAAD is Freeware Advanced Audio Decoder. It was first released in 2000 and it did not support SBR and PS audio object types. The last version of FAAD1 was 2002-01-04. All development later focused in FAAD2. The SBR decoding support (HE-AAC) was added in the version release on 25 July 2003. FAAD2 version 2.0 was released on 6 February 2004.

Licensing

FAAC versions 2.0 and later are fully licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License. Older versions contain code based on the ISO MPEG-4 reference code, whose license is not compatible with the LGPL. Only the FAAC changes to this ISO MPEG-4 reference code are licensed under the LGPL license. The ISO MPEG-4 reference software was published as ISO/IEC 14496-5 (MPEG-4 Part 5: Reference software) and it is freely available for download from ISO website. ISO/IEC gives users of the MPEG-2 NBC/MPEG-4 Audio standards free license to this software module or modifications thereof for use in hardware or software products claiming conformance to the MPEG-2 NBC/MPEG-4 Audio standards. Those intending to use this software module in hardware or software products are advised that this use may infringe existing patents.

FAAD2 is licensed under the GPL v2 (and later GPL versions). Code from FAAD2 is copyright of Nero AG (the "appropriate copyright message" mentioned in section 2c of the GPLv2). The source code contains a note that the use of this software may require the payment of patent royalties. Commercial non-GPL licensing of this software is also possible.

FAAD (FAAD1) modifications to the ISO MPEG-4 AAC reference code were distributed under the GPL.

Other software

FAAC and FAAD2 are used in the following software products and libraries:

There is also other software that uses FAAC libraries.

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Freeware Advanced Audio Coder". ohloh.net. Archived from the original on 23 June 2009. Retrieved 3 November 2009.
  2. ↑ "FAAC 2.0 Release". GitHub. Retrieved 11 September 2026.
  3. 1 2 3 4 AudioCoding.com. "FAAC". Archived from the original on 11 December 2009. Retrieved 3 November 2009.
  4. 1 2 FAAC (4 September 2001). "SCM Repositories – faac – README". SF.net. Archived from the original on 8 June 2020. Retrieved 3 November 2009.
  5. ↑ FAAC Source – README (ZIP), Sourceforge, retrieved 3 November 2009
  6. ↑ "Freeware Advanced Audio Coder". Sourceforge.net. Archived from the original on 10 January 2010. Retrieved 3 November 2009.
  7. ↑ FAAC (7 August 2003). "FAAC – ISO/MPEG 2/4 AAC Encoder Library version 1.0". SCM Repositories. Archived from the original on 8 June 2020. Retrieved 4 November 2009.
  8. ↑ PS3 H264/AAC 5.1 Encoding with FFmpeg – SpinOneSolutions Archived 19 January 2013 at the Wayback Machine
  9. ↑ "Ubuntu Packages – libfaac-dev". Canonical Ltd. 2009. Archived from the original on 8 January 2011. Retrieved 3 November 2009.
  10. ↑ "FAAC 1.40 Release". GitHub. Retrieved 11 September 2026.
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  14. ↑ "Nero AAC Codec". Nero AG. 2006. Archived from the original on 14 December 2012. Retrieved 10 December 2010.
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  19. ↑ "GuidelinesHighQualityAudio – FFmpeg". Archived from the original on 22 July 2013. Retrieved 13 April 2013.
  20. ↑ "December 5th, 2015, The native FFmpeg AAC encoder is now stable!". ffmpeg.org. Archived from the original on 16 July 2016. Retrieved 26 June 2016.
  21. ↑ http://superuser.com/a/370637/39364 Archived 23 August 2020 at the Wayback Machine – only supports 2 channels http://ffmpeg.org/pipermail/ffmpeg-user/2012-February/005187.html Archived 5 October 2013 at the Wayback Machine
  22. ↑ http://tipok.org.ua/node/17 Archived 7 August 2012 at the Wayback Machine – only supports 2 channels http://betterlogic.com/roger/2012/07/libaacplus-maximum-number-of-channels/ Archived 4 October 2013 at the Wayback Machine
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  24. 1 2 "Debian packages – libfaad2". May 2006. Archived from the original on 20 November 2009. Retrieved 3 November 2009.
  25. ↑ AudioCoding.com. "FAAD2". Archived from the original on 11 December 2009. Retrieved 3 November 2009.
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  27. ↑ FAAC (4 September 2001). "SCM Repositories – faad – README, revision 1.8". SF.net. Archived from the original on 23 January 2025. Retrieved 3 November 2009.
  28. ↑ FAAC (4 January 2002). "Freeware Advanced Audio Coder – File Release Notes and Changelog – 2002-01-04 – last release". SF.net. Archived from the original on 10 February 2011. Retrieved 3 November 2009.
  29. ↑ FAAC (2009). "SCM Repositories – faad2 – ChangeLog". SF.net. Archived from the original on 23 August 2020. Retrieved 3 November 2009.
  30. ↑ Schimmelmann, Nils (23 July 2026). "FAAC 2.0: A Free, Fast AAC Encoder Built for the Edge". Nils Schimmelmann's Blog. Archived from the original on 9 August 2026. Retrieved 3 August 2026.
  31. ↑ "AAC Reference Software". MultimediaWiki. 23 February 2009. Archived from the original on 28 September 2011. Retrieved 3 November 2009.
  32. ↑ ISO (27 October 2009). "Freely Available Standards". ISO. Archived from the original on 26 October 2018. Retrieved 3 November 2009.
  33. ↑ FAAC (17 October 2004). "SCM Repositories – faac – README". SF.net. Archived from the original on 8 June 2020. Retrieved 3 November 2009.
  34. ↑ ISO, Information technology – Coding of audio-visual objects – Part 5: Reference software – Amendment 20: MPEG-1 and −2 on MPEG-4 reference software and BSAC extensions (ZIP), ISO, archived from the original on 5 July 2017, retrieved 3 November 2009
  35. ↑ "Debian packages – libfaad2 – copyright". Debian packages. May 2006. Archived from the original on 15 November 2009. Retrieved 3 November 2009.
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  37. ↑ "Avidemux-Audio encoders". avidemux.org. Archived from the original on 20 August 2009. Retrieved 3 November 2009.
  38. ↑ "CDex Features". CDex project. Archived from the original on 18 September 2009. Retrieved 3 November 2009.
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  40. ↑ FFmpeg. "FFmpeg Changelog". Archived from the original on 14 December 2010. Retrieved 10 December 2010.
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  42. ↑ MPlayer team. "MPlayer – The Movie Player – Codec installation – AAC". MPlayer team. Archived from the original on 6 October 2009. Retrieved 14 November 2009.
  43. ↑ VideoLAN Wiki (8 March 2006). "Advanced Audio Coding". VideoLAN Wiki. Archived from the original on 31 January 2010. Retrieved 3 November 2009.
  44. ↑ Audiocoding.com. "Programs using FAAC or FAAD". Archived from the original on 5 October 2009. Retrieved 3 November 2009.