FAAC(1)

📦
version 2.1 · 3 versions
, in arch rolling

🎀 FAAC(1) — the faac manual, bestie edition 🎀

okay so you picked up the faac page, congrats, this is the whole thing explained with zero gatekeeping. grab a snack 🍓

✨ NAME ✨

faac — the open source MPEG-4 and MPEG-2 AAC encoder. that's it, that's the whole vibe. 💅

🌈 SYNOPSIS 🌈

faac [options] [-o outfile] infiles ...

and here's the cute part: <infiles> and/or <outfile> can be -, which literally means stdin/stdout. yes bestie, the hyphen is a whole personality. 🫶

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

FAAC is an open source MPEG-4 and MPEG-2 AAC encoder, and it's licensed under the LGPL license. icon behavior.

real talk though: the quality of FAAC is not up to par with the currently best AAC encoders available. like, it said what it said, no cap. 😭

🦋 FEATURES 🦋

  • Portable — runs places, slays everywhere.
  • Fast — zoom zoom.
  • AAC-LC and HE-AAC v1 (SBR) support — the good stuff, both of them. ✨

🌸 HELP OPTIONS 🌸

like, when you're lost and need a hand 🫶

  • -h — short help on using FAAC.
  • -H — description of all options for FAAC. the full lore drop.
  • --license — license terms for FAAC.
  • --help-qual — quality-related options.
  • --help-io — input/output options.
  • --help-mp4 — MP4 specific options Quality-related options. (yes that's exactly how it's written, i don't make the rules 💀)
  • --help-advanced — advanced options, only for testing purposes.

the main character section, honestly 👑

  • --object-type <type> — force the AAC object type: lc (Low Complexity), he-aac-v1 (High-Efficiency AAC v1, i.e. AAC-LC plus Spectral Band Replication), or auto (default), which selects LC or HE-AAC v1 from the bitrate and sample rate. and listen: HE-AAC v1 targets low bitrates; its core is coded at half the input sample rate and reconstructed to full rate by SBR in the decoder. it's giving glow-up. 🦋
  • --joint <mode> — joint stereo coding mode: 0 (off, independent left/right), 1 (Mid/Side), 2 (Intensity Stereo), or 3 (Mixed Mode, dynamic per-band Mid/Side and Intensity Stereo). Default is 3.
  • --pns <level> — Perceptual Noise Substitution level, 0 to 10; 0 disables PNS.
  • -q <quality> — set encoding quality. set default variable bitrate (VBR) quality level in percent. max. 5000, min. 10. default: 100, averages at approx. 120 kbps VBR for a normal stereo input file with 16 bit and 44.1 kHz sample rate. so specific, so cute.
  • -b <bitrate> — set average bitrate (ABR) to approximately <bitrate> kbps. max. ~500 (stereo).
  • --cap-rate <bitrate> — cap any single frame at <bitrate> kbps, for packet-oriented transports that drop an oversized frame rather than splitting it. must be at least the -b bitrate. a ceiling, not a second average: frames that already fit are left alone, so the stream stays ABR. best-effort — a frame cannot shrink below the cost of its own side info, so a low enough cap is still exceeded on a few percent of frames. 🙈
  • -c <freq> — set the bandwidth in Hz. the actual frequency is adjusted to maximize upper spectral band usage.

🧚 INPUT/OUTPUT OPTIONS 🧚

where the audio comes in and where it goes out, the whole pipeline bestie 🫶

  • -o <filename> — set output file to X, only for one input file; you can use *.aac, *.mp4, *.m4a or *.m4b as file extension, and the file format will be set automatically to ADTS or MP4. the file extension is doing the deciding, we love an autonomous queen. 👑
  • - — use stdin/stdout. if you simply use a hyphen/minus sign instead of a filename, FAAC can encode directly from stdin, thus enabling piping from other applications and utilities. the same works for stdout as well, so FAAC can pipe its output to other apps such as a server. 🔥
  • -v <vebose> — verbosity level (-v0 is quiet mode). (and yes it's spelled vebose in the option, we keep it, we respect it 💀)
  • -r — use RAW AAC output file. generate raw AAC bitstream (i.e. without any headers).
not advised!!! RAW AAC files are practically useless!!! like literally don't, bestie 😭
  • -P — Raw PCM input mode (default 44100Hz 16bit stereo). raw PCM input mode (default: off, i.e. expecting a WAV header; necessary for input files or bitstreams without a header; using only -P assumes the default values for -R, -B and -C in the input file).
  • -R <samplerate> — Raw PCM input rate. raw PCM input sample rate in Hz (default: 44100 Hz, max. 96 kHz).
  • -B <samplebits> — Raw PCM input sample size (8, 16 (default), 24 or 32bits). raw PCM input sample size (default: 16, also possible 8, 24, 32 bit fixed or float input).
  • -C <channels> — Raw PCM input channels. raw PCM input channels (default: 2, max. 33 + 1 LFE).
  • -X — Raw PCM swap input bytes. (default: bigendian). flip it, flip it 🦋
  • -I <C[,LFE]> — input channel config, default is 3,4 (Center third, LF fourth). input multichannel configuration (default: 3,4 which means Center is third and LFE is fourth like in 5.1 WAV, so you only have to specify a different position of these two mono channels in your multichannel input files if they haven't been reordered already).
  • --ignorelength — ignore wav length from header (useful with files over 4 GB). big file energy.
  • --overwrite — overwrite existing output file. no questions asked, just vibes.

⭐ MP4 SPECIFIC OPTIONS ⭐

container time, let's decorate 🎀

  • -w — wrap AAC data in MP4 container. (default for *.mp4, *.m4a and *.m4b)
  • --tag <tagname,tagvalue> — add named tag (iTunes '----').
  • --artist <name> — set artist name.
  • --composer <name> — set composer name.
  • --title <name> — set title/track name.
  • --genre <number> — set genre number.
  • --album <name> — set album/performer.
  • --compilation — mark as compilation.
  • --track <number/total> — set track number.
  • --disc <number/total> — set disc number.
  • --year <number> — set year.
  • --cover-art <filename> — read cover art from file X. supported image formats are GIF, JPEG, and PNG. put a pic on it, it's iconic. 🖼️
  • --comment <string> — set comment.

🧪 ADVANCED OPTIONS, ONLY FOR TESTING PURPOSES 🧪

bestie these are lab-experiment options, testing purposes only, you've been warned 🙈
  • --tns — enable coding of TNS, temporal noise shaping.
  • --no-tns — disable coding of TNS, temporal noise shaping.
  • --mpeg-vers X — force AAC MPEG version, X can be 2 or 4.
  • --shortctl X — enforce block type (0 = both (default); 1 = no short; 2 = no long).

👑 AUTHORS 👑

giving credit where credit is due, periodt 💜

  • FAAC was written by M. Bakker.
  • Developed and maintained by Krzysztof Nikiel <knik@users.sourceforge.net>.
  • This manpage was written by Fabian Greffrath <fabian@debian-unofficial.org> for the Debian Unofficial project (but may be used by others, of course).

and that's the whole page bestie, you ate 💅✨

this gorgeous piece of documentation is version 1.50.0, dated 2026-06-25, and it comes to you from the Free Advanced Audio Coder corner of the universe — go make some AAC files, you've got this 🎀🦋💖

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