What is a .AAC file?
AAC is a lossy audio format that succeeded MP3, offering better quality at the same bitrate.
- Did you know
- AAC was standardised in 1997 as MP3’s successor and is the default for YouTube and Apple Music.
- AAC was first published as MPEG-2 Part 7 and later folded into MPEG-4, where it became the headline audio coder of the standard.
- It was developed by a group including Fraunhofer IIS, Dolby, AT&T, Sony and Nokia, building on the experience gained from MP3.
- Apple chose AAC as the default format for the iTunes Store and the iPod, which hugely accelerated its mainstream adoption.
- On the web a .AAC file is served with the MIME type
audio/aac.
- What Analyser shows you
- Inspect the waveform, spectrogram, codec, bitrate, channels, and tags of MP3, WAV, FLAC, M4A, AAC, OGG, and Opus audio.
- Open a .AAC file
- Drag a .AAC file onto the Analyser home page (or tap to pick one). It opens entirely in your browser - nothing is uploaded, there is no account, and it works offline once installed.