afcovert uses the superior inbuilt AAC converter. FFmpeg can do this as well with the right arguments but you have to dig them up and the quality is capped to a lower value than you can get with afconvert.
I have three reasons: when using a good encoder (Core Audio, FDK or Nero) it's a quality-wise better lossy format than MP3, it's smaller than FLAC which matters for storage footprint, and unlike Opus and FLAC it's supported pretty much everywhere. At some point Opus will reach the same level of adoption and that's the point where I'll make the switch from AAC, because Opus is evidently a better lossy encoder per same bitrate.
It’s nuts using youtube-dl and unwrapping to get the opus files are like 96kbs and sound good. 96kbs mp3 would need to mix to mono and still sound like gravel.
No. Opus support in the PSTN is still unfortunately almost non-existent. Adoption is growing but the pace is very slow. Source: me, working in the European telecommunications industry for over a decade, specializing in telephony and SMS.
I like to load WAVs on my iphone if lossless uncompressed available. AAC is the next highest quality supported lossy compression file in apple music app. From my understanding they won’t ever go to flac or opus because don’t want software decompression.
I like opus on VLC for youtube-dl rips but if I’m buying music I want lossless uncompressed.
