qaac VS nvidia-patch

I've been looking around and am still figuring out the perfect solution but alac to flac is possible through a pipe. https://github.com/nu774/qaac/wiki/refalac-usage to convert to wav with specified folder is like this:

Second, you will want to install the foobar encoder pack and set up qaac (here's the qaac wiki). In short, apple's AAC/ALAC encoder in iTunes is the best around (better than Nero, Fraunhoefer, ffmpeg, etc) and ensures full compatibility with iPods. But fuck iTunes, you know, for being difficult. So qaac takes the encoder binaries from your installation of iTunes and sets it up as a standalone program which you can use however and wherever you want. So you set up qaac and then tell foobar to use qaac to do all your AAC/ALAC encodings and you get the benefits of apple's encoder without the nonsense of iTunes being uncooperative.

I use qaac as a CLI wrapper for the iTunes encoder. I don't use foobar, but I'm sure there's the option to set up using an external encoder. Every music manager I've ever used (except iTunes of course) has some way of setting up an external encoder via a command line.

I'm running an ABX test right now between that and a transcode made using qAAC, which is a windows port of Apple's AAC codec. Here is the spectogram of that, as proof.

AAC is still my go-to lossy codec for mobile purposes, although 256kbps is enough for me. it's also worth poiinting out that not all encoders are created equal - Apple's own encoder far superior to FAAC, for example, so Windows or Linux users outside the Apple ecosystem should use qaac instead, as it is a port.

On Github click "Releases" on right, or go here - https://github.com/nu774/qaac/releases

Qaac is the best AAC/ALAC solution as it uses apple's own libraries that are included with iTunes. iPods sometimes don't like files that were made with other encoders, so using apple's own libraries ensures the files will play. Setting it up might look intimidating if you aren't familiar with command line input though. Once set up, you can configure Media Monkey, EAC, etc to use qaac as an external encoder.

By the way, I found a thread from 9 months ago with the same problem, and someone suggested using qaac, which requires Apple software to be installed.

QAAC: https://github.com/nu774/qaac/releases/tag/v2.76

In any case, you'll need to provide the ALAC encoder since it isn't included with either MM or MB, and I'm pretty sure it's the same with the others on that list. Setting up qaac as an external encoder isn't hard, though you do need to follow instructions.

This can be patched out. https://github.com/keylase/nvidia-patch

NVIDIA Corporation GA106 [GeForce RTX 3060] and I applied the patch here https://github.com/keylase/nvidia-patch

> CUDA, and pretty much all optimization(hacks) done to run games better

And arbitrary limitations implemented at the driver level to force you to purchase their enterprise GPUs, see https://github.com/keylase/nvidia-patch#nvenc-and-nvfbc-patc...

Nvidia has no motivation to make a consumer card with lots of VRAM, that's basically the only (relevant) separator between the GeForce family and the Quadro lineup.

There are restrictions on NVENC streams with consumer cards, but that has been a solved problem for a while [0].

If they were to make a consumer card with more VRAM, it would immediately undercut their own Quadro/Tesla lineup, which cost substantially more. I don't see a reason for them to do it.

0: https://github.com/keylase/nvidia-patch

I have never had to do the session limit bump thing from the last link. I have a 3090 as well and simply did the initial unlock, which worked fine. I would reinstall fresh drivers from Nvidia, making sure you install the newest one that is supported by the unlock tool (536.40 as of this post, the GitHub for the patch has links to the drivers - https://github.com/keylase/nvidia-patch/tree/master/win)

Aren't these Quadro versions. The patch here. https://github.com/keylase/nvidia-patch supports Quadro versions of you click on the win clickable.

Second, the GPU. The GPU is probably as important as the CPU, and in some cases more important, and when we talk about GPUs we will primarily talk about Nvidia GPUs as they are officialy supported by the Plex team. NVIDIA GPUs are important for Plex hardware transcoding due to their dedicated video encoding/decoding units, superior performance, wide codec support, improved video quality, reduced CPU load, power efficiency. They offer a powerful hardware acceleration solution that can greatly enhance the transcoding capabilities of a Plex server. It's also important to note that Nvidia GPUs require a patch to unlock the number of HW transcoding streams. Dedicated GPUs are large pieces of hardware and have their place in desktop PCs. However, they can also be used with mini-PCs by using an external GPU enclosure.

As there's no NVENC patch available (yet) for the Beta driver branch - referring to this one: https://github.com/keylase/nvidia-patch - which can lift the limits of HW transcoding, I was now wondering a little, as I can see 5 (hw) streams on Plex, which actually shouldn't/cannot be the case no?

I haven’t done this yet but there is a patch on GitHub that removes the limitation for consumer GPUs. Makes lower end cards more attractive for this type of work