FAAD2 and FAAC

FAAD2 or Freeware Advanced Audio Decoder is a project for decoding AAC in MPEG-4 and MPEG-2.

FAAC or Freeware Advanced Audio Codec is a project for encoding AAC in MPEG-4 and MPEG-2.

Both projects are released under the GPLv2, making them open-source.^† SourceForge hosts Git (source code) for both components, and there are respective GitHub mirrors. SourceForge also hosts binaries (executable code) for Windows (*.exe) and Linux (*.tar.gz).

VLC media player uses the FAAD2 library, libfaad, in the faad.c module; but VLC no longer uses the FAAC library, libfaac.

Note

^† When audiocoding.com says it supports DRM, it does not mean Digital Restrictions Management but rather Digital Radio Mondiale. Supporting Digital Restrictions Management might (arguably) cast doubt on whether the project is truly open-source.

Links

• Audiocoding.com
  • FAAD2 page
  • FAAC page
• SourceForge - FAAC project
  • FAAD2 Git (GitHub mirror)
  • FAAC Git (GitHub mirror)
• Git commit search for faac in VLC
  • contribs: disable libfaac on Darwin (as part of ffmpeg) as it considered nonfree now
  • Contrib: remove faac from ffmpeg. Without this, ffmpeg refuses to build due to licensing problems.
  • Faac is NOT compatible with VLC. Too bad for your AAC encoding, but, well.