FAAC
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FAAC is the oldest free and open-source LC AAC encoder. It is available for practically all Linux distributions. Present version (June 2012) is 1.28.
What is FAAC?
FAAC stands for Freeware Advanced Audio Coder. FAAC is a software to compress audio in the AAC format.
Best Settings
The default quality setting for faac, q=100, generates files at an average bitrate of approx. 128kbps. This quality level is good enough for casual, non-critical listening, but note that other encoders for aac and other compressed formats may provide better quality files at similar bitrates.
For better quality encoding, I suggest q=150, resulting in average bitrates around 175kbps. Based on my own (subjective) tests, at this quality level faac provides high quality artifact free music reproduction and is comparable in quality to proprietary encoders at similar bitrates.