Please add AAC & HE-AAC support

[K1WIZ]

This looks like a great project and hats off to the developers. As I understand it, the VS1053 does support decoding AAC and AAC+ (HE-AAC) streams. Can you include support for those? Many stations I am finding are moving to AAC+ because of the quality at much lower bandwidth.

[Edzelf]

As far as I know, the AAC format will work on the radio. Please send the URL of the station that does not work.

[kost-1]

As far as I know, the AAC format will work on the radio. Please send the URL of the station that does not work.

https://fed.fmplay.ru:8000/relax-32.aac?uid=198683153

[Edzelf]

It works on ESP32 version. It works on the ESP8266 version. Just remove the "https://" from the station name.

[Edzelf]

Maybe you have a fake VS1053 chip. Try to read the printing on the IC.

[kost-1]

Sorry, it vs1003 chip. My mistake.

[Derek-K]

Tested. "fed.fmplay.ru:8000/relax-32.aac?uid=198683153" works on ESP-Radio as well. :)

[m040601]

As far as I know, the AAC format will work on the radio

@Edzelf

Could you update the README front page ? Only one sentence more or just type a few characters to make this crystal clear for end users finding this page for the first time.

Please make it so, that it is unnecessary to come here ask this question.

Right now when one lands on the front page, the first thing one bumps into, is this:

...New version 24-may-2017.

2017 ? Maybe this could be edited or removed ?

It then follows immediately:

NOTES:

    If you are using V2.4.0 of the core library: set IwIP Variant to "V1.4 Prebuilt" in the Tools of the IDE.
    The radio will NOT play AACP streams.

Features:

    Can connect to thousands of Internet radio stations that broadcast MP3 or Ogg audio streams.

I find it confusing. Does it support aac or not ? Does it support aacp or not ? Or just doesnt support aacp in the V2.4.0 ? What do they mean exactly by aacp here ?

I can never be sure if it does or does not support aac. And which aac.

It then keeps talking a lot about "mp3" and "ogg" without any explicit reference to aac and it's variants

I've been checking this project on and off for some time in the last months. I've searched the documentation extensevely.

And I could not decide my self to buy a VS1053 and try out this, because I could not be 100 % sure.

And I want to be 100% sure. Not 90% sure. And I want to know exactly which version of AAC. Is it only aac or aac+ or aacp he-aac or whatever.

Nowadays aac is long established, and personally it's the only thing I'm interested in. It's nice to read and know that it supports ogg and mp3. But I want to read the same for aac in the readme.

It used to be some years ago that aac was rare and mp3 was common. Maybe because of licenses or similar. Most official and public radios were stuck in mp3 and only amateur private internet only radios provided aac.

But nowadays it's the other way around. Most public and national radios all support aac. And most of the thousands of internet radios providing only mp3 are the amateur or internet only radios.

Please copy paste to the README some bits from or link to

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Audio_Coding

to help the user understand this.

Thanks in advance

[Edzelf]

The ESP8266 version of the radio is replaced by the ESP32 version. Please use the ESP32 version. AAC is supported by the VS1053 and therefore also by the radio. If AACP is supported by the VS1053, it will probably work on the radio as well.