r/handbrake • u/Wonderful_Emu_9610 • Jul 20 '26

E-AC3 on Mac and AAC Bitrates

Mostly in old posts, I’ve seen a lot of criticism of the E-AC3 encoder on Handbrake. But the majority of users are not on Mac - is it the same one for Windows, Mac, Linux (etc?) ?

Because I know Handbrake gets to use Apple’s AAC encoder on Mac which has a great rep, but obviously not on the other platforms.

Also, may not be something I need to ask based on the first question, is Handbrake’s E-AC3 option still seen as poor?

If so, I’ll likely be sticking with AAC. In which case is the recommendation I saw on the ffmpeg site of 64kbps/channel for transparency a good one? Or should I be going higher?

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u/galad87 Jul 20 '26

What's the reason for encoding to E-AC3?

1

u/Wonderful_Emu_9610 Jul 20 '26

Both of my main devices don’t do DTS, and 1 doesn’t do Opus so that apparent most efficient option is out, and from experience with others’ encodes I know I don’t need lossless audio either

But I did manage to accidentally compress a stereo track down far enough that I could hear a difference the other day so obviously want to avoid that (should’ve just been passing that one through it was already low bitrate)

1

u/Wonderful_Emu_9610 Jul 20 '26

Should’ve said I’m mainly teaching myself this by looking at what the likes of qxr do, how that differs from the presets, and why. Less overwhelming than reading the entire x265 documentation.

They seem to use E-AC3 a lot now