qaac - CLI QuickTime AAC/ALAC encoder

Notice(2024-12-21)

It turned out that CoreAudioToolbox 7.9.8.x or greater (upto 7.10.9.0, the latest version at the moment) can produce glitches on the encoded result.
The issue is only found on AAC CBR mode.

CoreAudioToolbox 7.9.7.x is OK, but you need very old iTunes installer for that version (it's released on 2012).

cf. https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php/topic,85135.msg1056191.html#msg1056191

How to build

qaac/refalac are built with CMake (CMakeLists.txt at the repository root). The basic invocation is always the same:

cmake -B build -G Ninja .
cmake --build build

(drop -G Ninja to use the default generator instead -- e.g. make on Linux/macOS, or a Visual Studio solution on Windows -- or pass -G "Unix Makefiles" explicitly if you prefer make over ninja.)

Windows

qaac needs the platform SDK (for the Win32 API) either way, so on Windows you always build from a Visual Studio Developer Command Prompt (or a shell that has run vcvarsall.bat/Import-VisualStudioVars), except when using MinGW-w64. Several toolchains are known to work; pick whichever you already have installed:

• MSVC (cl), from a Developer Command Prompt:

  cmake -B build -G Ninja .
  cmake --build build
  

  Or, from Visual Studio 2017 or later: use "Open > Folder..." on this repository; Visual Studio's built-in CMake support will configure it and you can build/debug directly from the IDE.
• clang-cl, from a Developer Command Prompt:

  cmake -B build -G Ninja -DCMAKE_C_COMPILER=clang-cl -DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=clang-cl .
  cmake --build build
  

• clang targeting the MSVC ABI, from a Developer Command Prompt:

  cmake -B build -G Ninja -DCMAKE_C_COMPILER=clang -DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=clang++ ^
      -DCMAKE_C_COMPILER_TARGET=x86_64-pc-windows-msvc -DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER_TARGET=x86_64-pc-windows-msvc .
  cmake --build build
  

  (use i686-pc-windows-msvc for a 32-bit build)
• MinGW-w64 GCC (e.g. from MSYS2), no Developer Command Prompt needed:

  cmake -B build -G Ninja .
  cmake --build build
  

  Both the UCRT (MSYS2's UCRT64 environment) and the legacy MSVCRT (MINGW64 environment) runtime variants build and work.
• Cross-compiling from Linux with mingw-w64 (e.g. llvm-mingw, or a distro's mingw-w64-gcc):

  cmake -B build -G Ninja -DCMAKE_SYSTEM_NAME=Windows \
      -DCMAKE_C_COMPILER=x86_64-w64-mingw32-gcc -DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=x86_64-w64-mingw32-g++ .
  cmake --build build
  

Linux

On Linux, only refalac is available. Needs a C/C++ toolchain (gcc or clang), cmake, and ninja or make. refalac links against iconv, so make sure your libc's iconv development headers are installed -- on glibc-based distros this is normally already pulled in with the rest of the toolchain (e.g. as part of libc6-dev/glibc-devel), but if CMake's find_package(Iconv REQUIRED) fails to find it, install your distro's iconv/glibc development package explicitly.

ALSA development headers (libasound2-dev on Debian/Ubuntu) are optional -- without them refalac still build, but --play loses its ALSA backend (falling back to the silent dummy backend).

cmake -B build -G Ninja .
cmake --build build

Optional codec libraries (FLAC, libsndfile, Opus, WavPack, libsoxr, ...) are loaded at runtime via dlopen(), not linked at build time, so they aren't required to build -- only to actually use the corresponding --flac etc. features.

macOS

Needs the Xcode Command Line Tools (clang; also provides the SDK and iconv), cmake, and ninja or make. As on Linux, optional codec libraries are loaded at runtime via dlopen(), so install whichever ones you want to use via Homebrew, e.g.:

brew install flac libsndfile opus wavpack libsoxr

cmake -B build -G Ninja .
cmake --build build